While thinking about Galloway’s special treatment of video games as a special kind of game, I initially thought “Aren’t they basically just really complex board games with a ton more pieces (i.e. millions of lines of code)?” Then, I realized there was more that separated video- and board-games than scale, in much the same way that there was something unique about the first financial institutions.

Before banks, lenders and borrowers had to find each other and trade directly. This worked for small economies, but limited the amount of money an entrepreneur could get to fund a new or growing business. Similarly, many games (board games included) require the direct action of the players to make it work. Every piece in Monopoly is moved by a human, with the exception of gravity and inertia working on the dice. This allows for great diversity in games, but there is a limit to their complexity (Anyone who has ever played the game Squad Leader by Avalon Hill understands this all too well). However, when financial intermediaries (banks) came around, they provided a valuable middle-man with larger networks of lenders and borrowers than any individual. This opened up a new world of financing for businesses, and the result has been a tremendous increase in prosperity. Again, in a similar way, the game console is that middle-man for games. No group of players could possibly keep track of everything necessary to play a game like Civilization or World of Warcraft without the help of a computer. Much like banks opened up many new financial possibilities, computers have, to an even greater extent, opened up a new world of games that were previously unimaginable.