Will Game design shape the future of our entire world ?

Hello everybody,
I'm duplicating here a very interesting post that I started on another forum, I hope our thinking will interest some of you and that your inputs will nurture the thought process .
Here is a link to the original post, but you can participate here and i'll be happy to respond :
http://boardgamegeek.com/forum/1530031/boardgamegeek/design-theory

First and foremost I'll introduce myself, my name is William, i'm American but only by birth right, my English is not perfect since I've always lived in France, now i'm 25 and entering the real world so i have 0 experience in game design but I have a good amount of knowledge on it.

I want everybody reading this to understand that you might possibly get offended by what comes next, but if you read it whole and don't start judging before understanding maybe you and me will stay in contact for some time.

I feel like a lot of you have an unconditional love for games in a broad sense, but maybe also a lot of you never wondered if games isn't just shortening the pleasures of life, simplifying them, making them easy to achieve in a 90mn time-frame.

I've been mourning for years my dying love of games, feeling betrayed by my favorite thing in life. You can't deny me the fact that gamers get a whole lot more of the " i don't understand you " look that any other consumer market segment. Maybe I've understood why .... or maybe i only have my own explanation and at least it can help you think to your own.

Games makes you better .... that's it in a nutshell, the better the game, the better the player, if your brain has grown with a habit of " treating" a certain amount of problems daily you'll end up with a faster working machine than someone that never questions himself or is never put in a complicated situation.

A faster working machine yeah .... but is it really better ? Because if your machine is fast, damn fast, but you're only making it roar at it's full potential when it's in a pitiful, 4 players, copy of life ..... Then i'm not sure anymore.

But i still love games, i try not to love them but i do ! They do make me better, they do make me learn anything 100 times faster than any boring stressed not happily married with a strong complex of inferiority teacher that is trying to tell me how to succeed in life.

Succeed in life .... that's it ? One day i just fell on my ass and wondered, maybe my problem is that i wan't to win, like in every game, i want to play, enjoy, laught, and win, but not in any other game that the one of life, sure it's a shit load more complicated, but a whole lot more gratifying, at least for me.

That very very long message had two purpose, first i wanted only the persons with time to share to read the end, and second i wanted to give a glimpse of my persona.

I'm looking for the oldest, most experienced, shrewdest, angriest or loneliest game designer that would be interested in having some hours of casual discussion with me.

I hope we would have a very fruitful conversation.

For all the others , that red until the end but don't feel like talking in private with me, feel free to answer in this forum i'm glad to respond to anybody interested in conversing.

Thanks a lot for your time.
W.B.

Edit N°1 :

In an attemp to simplify new readers experience, I'll try to resume the thought preocesses, the ideas, the questions and the remarks that went on the first 2 pages of this post :

The first solutions that was proposed was to learn more about Gamification, I've been studying the concept for years now and I'm trying ot prevent this post to shift on another gamification topic. If you love games and don't know what gamification is, you should check it out and I think you would find some interesting material to nurture your mind.

Then I tried (unsuccessfully) to make someone react about the possible flaw(s) of the question in the title of this post.

From there we tried to reflect on the simplest but most accurate definition of a Game in the broad sense, we pointed out various caracteristics : they rely on loops, they are learning catalysts, they involves dozens of dynamics and they bless the player with skills in a large array of domains, competition, construction, exploration, socialization, critical thinking, problem solving etc.

I proposed a first condensed definition that is still waiting to be upgraded :
" A game is any kind of activity simplifying one aspect of life to both make this aspect understandable, and accelerate the mental growth of the player about this aspect "

It's deceivingly a very complex definition and i spent a lot of time defending it.

A very interesting person pointed out that the focus of this post is turn toward the history of games rather than the entirety of what gaming is today and i completely agree as i think that one of the focus is to understand where/when/why/if the gaming industry went wrong.
He also made a beautiful remark that i think we have to always keep in mind : " I understand that games in animals and originally in hominins was and is a set of simplified adult mimicking behaviors that allowed juveniles to prepare for adult life"

Most opponent to my definition found it restrictive because is doesn't clearly say anything about games being fun. My mains arguments are :

Games are NOT funny or pleasurable things in essence, sex is pleasurable in essence, so is eating or sleeping, playing is not, playing a game you like is pleasurable, that's where i draw the line.

On the other hand it's clear that a game that is not enjoyable by anyone couldn't really be called a game. But their is a very slight implicit detail that take this into account in my definition, that's why i talk about " accelerated growth", because growth or simulated growth in a field of interest will always result in your brain in a positive feedback.

Later on another interesting person asked this simple question :
"If gaming makes you better - what does game design do to you??"

I responded :
Gaming makes you better, game designing is a way to be a teacher !

The next participant add some issues with my image of a mind performing " Faster" and described a very precise lists of elements that were transformed in him by games but he didn't feel it made him faster.
I Clarified with : Games "evolved" you in a large array of various field, making your brain a " faster machine " in those fields.

After that we ended on the fascinating topic of Extrinsic VS Intrinsic rewards in game and how balancing them impact the experience. Understanding this concept is very important to fully grasp the whole thought process.

A remark to also keep in mind : "there are things that are universally enjoyable ! And so mixing with some other secret ingredients it gives life to a game."

Finaly Josiah made a connection with the dialogue between reductionism and holism. Both very interesting concepts that i was glad to be introduces to and worth checking out.

We agreed on keeping the general thinking process a reductionist process without forgetting about the holistic points of views.

To use reductionists language : we're trying to indentify the fundamental phenomena that defines games, to better understand the epiphenomenas thats happens from them and maybe better understand this industry, its strong points, and its weaknesses.

We then ended up talking about the dangers of beeing a designers, like orienting too much the experience, and the example of chess forced me to wonder then: To what extent are rules enought to make a game ? another interesting question where i would love some more development.

That's it for this first update. Thanks to everybody that stepped-up and gave his/her opinion.