Tristan Louis, of TNL.net, has written an article discussing the ways that hacking and gaming culture have been perceived over time. The two groups have tended to get along rather well over time but now more than ever, they are both becoming accepted by the greater culture at large as well.

The reason hackers and players have been growing on such parallel tracks is that below each of their approaches sits a much more fundamental element that most of society seems to have been driving away: the idea that experimentation and exploration for the sake of satisfying one’s curiosity has value.

At the same time, since the 2008 crisis, society’s faith in existing institutions has been shaken up. This has resulted in an increasing amount of people looking for alternatives to the current model and discovering that the hacker community has been working on figuring out some of those issues for decades. The results has been a growing acceptance of hacker’s approach as there is increasing evidence of its success.

It’s a great analysis of the past few decades and the way that these cultures which have often fed (off of) each other are finally growing from their separation and seclusion on the edge. With growing acceptance in the mainstream, we will have the opportunity to expose the rest of the world to all of the great things about the gaming community as a whole: the way that people can work together no matter who they are, the ability to borrow and pull from various games and designers, and a caring community of people that are always helpful, trying to help you learn and improve.