This reminds me of a hypothesis made by cognitive scientist Ben Goertzel regarding complex systems dynamics and emergent phenomena. He suggests that when a system’s nodal regions of state space have too many transition connections to each other the system tends to fall over the “edge of chaos” into highly chaotic activity, much like highly connected individuals skewing the activity of system with human components (i.e. a game or virtual world). If my association is valid, then the same principles which guide the engineering of AI pattern recongition systems work for the design of games harnessing the “wisdom of the crowds”, even though common sense would suggest them to be the inverse of each other.

“No, because I doubt I could design a (fun) game that would feed players all the relevant real-world information they’d need to make an informed decision. Too many variables. Maybe Will Wright could pull it off — he’s much smarter than I am. ;-)”

Wright once dismissed a guy’s empassioned pitch of a game idea with “it doesn’t sound very fun”, but I don’t think we should idealize his philosophy of game design as extending to the domain of harnessing collective intelligence, even though its tempting to do so considering he is the singular exception in this industry of a creative visionary with major financial backing and freedom. I think if you accept there are other ways to make participating in a system engaging other than “fun” then the task of design a collective wisdom harnessing system becomes more tangible. In the “real” world financial incentive is the way incentive is given, the challenge here is to find a way to incite people voluntarily without financial compensation, and that involves re-evaluating our basic concepts of what drives people to play.

Maybe Raph’s next book should be called “A Theory of Engagement For Game Design”.