Research on games goes mainstream?

I was intrigued to see the NYTimes Science section this morning with '...prognostications for science in 2011 from 10 leading figures...'one of which is Jane McGonigal, featured below and visiting our campus TODAY! so cool. She mentions a really nice GeoGame platform called GROUNDCREW - http://groundcrew.us/



I guess the take-home is...well... maybe that gaming is now so ubiquitous/powerful that it can't be ignored by anymore who is interested in environment - society - technology relations. We (the plugged-in part of the world) are all the cartographers of a mirror world (see Gelernter 1991). We shape it through our daily activities, consciously or not. Games will be part of that cartography as we progressively mix reality with imaginary worlds, so the games will record and also help us understand our soon to be past, present and, in my opinion, also educated guesses about our future.