Why Cooperation Might Have Shrunk Our Brains
It’s good thing, too! Collective intelligence FTW
Back in 2010, the game designer Matt Wood was working on a sequel to the hit title Portal, when he ran into a really interesting problem:
The awesome power of two brains working as one.
And that, as it turns out, may be related to the mystery of why our human brains have been shrinking for thousands of years.
Let’s unpack this!
Released in 2007, the original Portal was a devilishly clever puzzle game.
You were given a gun that could shoot a portal into any two surfaces, and they’d be connected: Shoot a portal into the wall next to you, one on a remote wall, and you could jump through the nearby portal to emerge far away. In effect, it let you teleport around the room. Your goal was to escape each room by placing the portals in such clever locations that you avoided obstacles and foes while reaching an exit.
The puzzles got harder and harder; I actually never made it to the end. <shrugs> But millions of people are cleverer than I, and man, they loved the game. It sold over four million copies.
In 2007, Wood was tasked with creating the sequel, Portal 2.
