I’m going to start off-topic here, but did you know that you can buy magazine subscriptions on Ebay? And if you’re looking for a mass-market magazine (The New Yorker, Cosmo, Spin, whatever), they’re really, really cheap.
Anyway, I bought a year subscription to Wired for $3, and it ain’t much of a magazine. Once in a while there’s something interesting, but not too often. That said, though, there’s a fascinating piece by Will Wright, the designer of SimCity, the Sims and many other games, about the future of gaming.
Games are evolving to entertain, educate, and engage us individually. These personalized games will reflect who we are and what we enjoy, much as our choice of cooks and music does now. They will allow us to express ourselves, meet others, and create things that we can only dimly imagine. They will enable us to share and combine these creations, to build vast playgrounds. And more than ever, games will be a visible, external amplification of the human imagination.
Great stuff.