PUBLISHEDDecember 20, 2024

IFLScience The Big Questions: Why Do Humans Love Playing Competitive Games?

Are you team "fight to the bitter end" or team "sit back with snacks and watch it all play out"?

Laura Simmons

Health & Medicine Editor

Laura holds a Master's in Experimental Neuroscience and a Bachelor's in Biology from Imperial College London. Her areas of expertise include health, medicine, psychology, and neuroscience.View full profile

Laura holds a Master's in Experimental Neuroscience and a Bachelor's in Biology from Imperial College London. Her areas of expertise include health, medicine, psychology, and neuroscience.

View full profile

a smartphone playing an episode of The Big Questions, with people playing games in the background — Let the games begin.
Image credit: PicMy/Shutterstock.com; modified by IFLScience

It’s the holiday season, and what better time to gather your loved ones together and absolutely trounce them in an hours-long board game marathon?

Humans have been playing and enjoying competitive games for centuries. For this special episode of The Big Questions, host Laura Simmons sat down with Kelly Clancy, neuroscientist and physicist, and author of recent book Playing with Reality: How Games Shape Our World, to find out more about why we love competition so much, and what our long history of gameplaying together can teach us about each other – and ourselves.

You can listen to this episode and subscribe to the podcast on all your favorite podcast apps: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Podbean, Amazon Music, and more.