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Akimbo: A Podcast from Seth Godin

Games matter (E)

Akimbo: A Podcast from Seth Godin

Midroll Media

Society & Culture

4.81.9K Ratings

🗓️ 28 June 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What game are you playing?


Akimbo is a weekly podcast created by Seth Godin. He's the bestselling author of 20 books and a long-time entrepreneur, freelancer and teacher.

You can find out more about Seth by reading his daily blog at seths.blog and about the podcast at akimbo.link.

To submit a question and to see the show notes, please visit akimbo.link and press the appropriate button.



Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Who was the world lightweight boxing champion of the world in 1951?

0:08.0

It's a multiple-choice question.

0:10.0

The choices are Ronald Reagan, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, or none of the above.

0:22.0

Hey, it's Kevin Beach and this is a special archived episode of Akembo.

0:31.0

Social mammals spend almost all of their time playing games.

0:36.0

From the time there are cubs, they're wrestling, they're jockeying for position, they're considering their status.

0:44.0

Sometimes they play games with their predators, but usually they're filling their day playing games with each other.

0:53.0

Humans are no exception.

0:56.0

I've been lucky enough to be a game designer for a really long time.

0:59.0

The first game I launched was when I was 16 in high school and then I did it as a professional at Spinnaker Software in the early 80s,

1:07.0

pioneering the first generation of educational computer games.

1:11.0

And what I've discovered through the years is that we love to play games, even people who say they don't.

1:19.0

But those high school kids who say I don't play games end up spending hours, days, or weeks figuring out what to wear to the prom,

1:28.0

which of course is nothing but a game or a politician who say I don't like sports.

1:34.0

Well, what exactly are you spending most of your day doing when you're a politician?

1:39.0

It's a sport.

1:41.0

However, the scoring is imprecise and no one knows how long the haves last.

1:47.0

We play games all the time. There are a few reasons.

1:50.0

One reason is to think that we're smart or physically talented or have some sort of attribute that makes us feel good about ourselves.

2:00.0

Another reason is that we want to feel lucky.

2:04.0

Third reason is that we want to feel connected part of something and a fourth reason is to feel powerful.

2:13.0

So when we think about something like trivia, we do it to reward ourselves with a small dopamine hit,

...

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