evolution and games

I've been thinking about sticking to a central topic in this space.

Video games have always interested me more then anything in this life, and I think, like soccer, it's a global phenomenon that we all take part in. Some people spout off stats from the NFL, but an acronym that's a little more worldwide might be SC3, or, Starcraft 3.

What is it about video games and games in general that captivate us so much?

I'm a FPS gamer, lately, I've been getting back to my roots with Team Fortress 2, and I was thinking about how a group of scouts can sometimes act like a flock of birds, especially when they're all focused on the same target. There are a lot of aspects to the game that remind me of the wild, like hording health packs reminds me of animals protecting food. There are many "fight or flight" moments. While, respawning is always available and the game never really matters like dying in real life does, watching a match play out reminds me of evolution.

Especially on a new map. Sometimes I think about how each round is a generation, the players that failed, adapt, and do something else to try and survive, they learn from the other players that live on, and try again.

There's a game that came out for the Wii called Dangerous Creatures. I don't own a Wii, but it looked pretty interesting. It tried to make realistic settings in the wild, where you play as different critters. As we study animals more and more and profit from bio mimicry, it makes sense to me that modeling them on the computer in more and more detail is a really good idea.