I would love to believe in the heralded adhocratic revolution--that Wikipedia is the vanguard of a glorious new Star-Trek-like age in which humanity's greatest accomplishments are driven by two hundred billion hours per year of collaborative volunteering--but more than ever, I am skeptical of that dream after starting Fable II last weekend. Honestly, if I were single, I think I would be considering asking work to drop me back to part-time or looking into just doing freelance work so I could spend most of my day smithing, trading, and investing for my character. I was frustrated needing to stop by the grocery store for hair gel last night after ditching class; adding "citation needed" flags to a Wikipedia article was the furthest thing from my mind.

You can argue that I'm unusual or that video games are at most a tempting (in the economic/neurological sense) diversion, devoid of lasting satisfaction, but ultimately, I think it's foolhardy to pit the inherent satisfaction of human progress against the creativity of content developers trained to trigger our addiction mechanisms and, especially in the case of subscription-model games, increasingly incentivized not only to provide a tantalizing marketing image but an enduringly enjoyable experience. Certainly, I would include the development of ever more engrossing television in this trend, but in the long run, I'm confident that video game producers will succeed in targeting broad segments of the general population.

Frankly, I don't think this is such a tragedy; for most users, user-created content is horrifying (see also every comment on cbsnews.com). In fact, in my opinion, the most disappointing aspect of a digital entertainment economy is the loss of free consumer surplus to abandonware.