The ‘for whom’ part raises a lot of questions around equity. Who will have access to the latest and greatest game technology? Knowing that technology usually starts high end down and trickles down, should we expect that only students in developed countries, in the top income bracket, will have access? And if that is not what we hope to see, then what can we do about it? Does that responsibility fall on the government to set policies around it? Parents / teachers to demand it? Designers to acknowledge and build for wider access?

The ‘in what context’ is also interesting. I was really struck by the line: “As designed cultures, persistent world games function more like digital nations than like traditional games, making them intriguing sites for studying how people reciprocally inhabit and create culture (p. 23)” While observing such environments can be like a laboratory for how societies function, designers also have a role to play in shaping what kind of world they want to see. That is both powerful and daunting for designers. If the only context that exists today are videogames designed by private enterprises and the military, then parents and teachers should be asking themselves what kind of context they want their students exposed to.