One thing I want to point out is that I in no way meant to belittle the value of mastery as an aspect of the fun and deep involvement that games can provide. As you know, Darius, I love Gee’s book on games, learning and literacy.

As a matter of fact, I think that mastery can, on some level, be an even more important aspect of the gaming experience for “casual” gamers than for less-than-casual ones. The trick is: how much mastery is needed for it to be appreciable? Adding to that I’d ask: how much mastery does it take to reach the height of the game’s experience or experience most of its content?

For example: how much mastery does it take to simply get through all of Final Fantasy X’s storyline — as opposed to how much it takes for a presumably hardcore player to accomplish all the tricky and time-consuming side-goals?

(and I’ll actually just leave it at that!)