I interviewed Danny "Applied Minds" Hillis, entrepreneur and Disney Fellow, about the similarities and differences between a day in Disneyland and playing a video-game — the interview ran in last month's Wired:
WIRED: In a sense, Disneyland itself was the first massively multiplayer game – all these people milling around, lots of open-ended missions to choose from.
HILLIS: You go to a theme park with people you have a relationship with – friends, family – and you interact with each other in ways you wouldn't in normal life. You get into situations where you're frightened or excited together.Parks take you out of the everyday and re-create that sense of wonder from childhood, the time when nothing made sense, when you didn't know what would happen next and didn't need to. They're wonderful, thrilling, and unpredictable – but safe. That's how I felt the first time I played The Legend of Zelda. It was a new thing. I didn't know what the rules were or what would happen next. But I didn't worry about it.
