"I don't want to hear that Facebook games are Skinner boxes," he adds. "You know, when you come down to it, basically all games are Skinner boxes -- meaningless activities where you're not getting anything out of it other than enjoyment. But in traditional or more complex videogames, the Skinner box core is more buried under a lot of sizzle. In Facebook games, just because they are so stripped down to their simplest, barest elements, the Skinner Box skeleton is just more visible."

Steve Meretzky articulates well essentially the same point I tried to make in the NYU debate with Ian Bogost & co couple of months ago. For a reason or another, people that consider themselves creative and spearheading new frontiers of gaming do not seem to like their work being associated with the term and take it as inherently to pejorative. As does most of the discussion around it.

Without doubt, that negative association is hard to shake off - well that is the case with anything that has rats in it, isn't it? I try to keep an objective stance, as I am not pretending to change the world with the games I contribute into developing, even if I do strongly believe there is a case for making the world a slightly better place through games and play.

In any case, the Gamasutra feature is well worth reading in its entirety.