ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors suggest that interactive virtual environments are able to address our evolved mechanisms well beyond other media technologies, and thus represent advanced digital sandboxes for Stone Age minds. They explain how the model would see video games as high-tech simulation environments for the Stone Age content. Games invite players to test and practice the overcoming of drifts and barriers within the virtual world. From the model's perspective, video games can be understood as externalized internal simulators for the solution of adaptive problems. In terms of Bischof's model, each fixed action pattern with its small, surrounding taxis area needs an even larger catchment area in the fitness potential landscape. Beyond drifts, Bischof's model describes other aspects of the environment that can impede adaptive behavior. If an internal representation of the environment's semantic meaning is constructed, it is far from being an objective depiction; rather, it is sufficiently true.
