Kelly Clancy

It turns out that uncertainty is really, really compelling to the brain, and games are all about uncertainty.

Games are in what ads were served, how we're paired on dating apps, how we're matched with jobs.

So it's really important to understand how this impacts us, because games kind of play us as well.

Hi, thanks so much for having me.

We can learn a lot about people by studying what fascinates them.

And for thousands of years, people have been fascinated by games.

We have games in the archaeological record dating back 7,000 years, making it older than written language.

So what is so compelling about games?

It turns out that uncertainty is really, really compelling to the brain and games are all about uncertainty.

Once we started studying games, we learned a lot about how we make decisions, especially in uncertain situations.

So the study of games led to a lot of our economic and technological systems today.

Games are in what ads were served, how we're paired on dating apps, how we're matched with jobs.

So it's really important to understand how this impacts us because games kind of play us as well.

So when you play Monopoly, you have to act like a cutthroat capitalist, even if you're actually a hippie at heart.

Games are a system with rules and like furnished with a goal.

And so the idea is that you have to achieve this goal, but you're kind of restricted in how you can do it.

So for example, golf, you want to bring a ball to a hole, but you can't just like pick up the ball and walk it over to the hole and plop it in.

You have to hit it with a funny stick and follow all these little rituals.

So a game is kind of just a self-contained system with a goal.

Yeah, definitely.