Pie Palace

So someone has come up with a definition of online games. They involve:

• Collecting stuff
  
• Getting points for doing stuff
  
• Getting encouragement/feedback
  
• Trading with others
  
• Tweaking your environment to be more enjoyable

As someone who has been meaning to update their blog for ages, I have to say that blogging fits into these categories. Let’s see how:

• Collecting stuff maps onto posts. I feel a desire to have a relatively up-to-date blog, with posts on issues and events that I feel are important. The “stuff” being collected is posts. The “full collection” is an inventory of my interests.
  
• Getting points maps onto rankings like Technorati’s linkage list. The higher my ranking, the better I feel that I’m doing.
  
• Getting encouragement comes from my readers. I want my posts to be interesting enough that readers respond. Ideally, I’ll generate real discussion.
  
• Trading with others is performed by posting on other blogs, and linking. I can give points to others by linking and commenting, in the hope that they do the same for me. Of course, posts that link back to my blog are also advertisements for what I have to say.
  
• Tweaking are the endless hours that I’ve spent poking and prodding my blog software to look the way I want it to.

Of course, the list might be enough that one could argue that it embodies any engaging activity, from working, to being in a successful relationship.

Edit: Removed some absolute language in the last paragraph. I just think that it’s possible to describe those activities with this list, not that it’s necessarily possible.