I just came across a new talk by Quintin Smith of Shut Up & Sit Down fame. It's a closing statement for a conference which I didn't go to, nor did I watch any of the talks mentioned, but I think he makes some great points regardless.
The whole premise is that game designers should be exploring concepts of play beyond their current format. He presents three different formats - video games, board games, and live action roleplaying. According to Quinns, it may be possible to make gaming's "atom bomb" by combining the greatest designers from all of these formats and seeing what they make.
I like where he's going with it. Board game rules run inside of human's heads - that means they have an execution environment that is potentially much more powerful than any of our modern computers. Maybe any computers if you factor in the games like Apocalypse World or Gloom that center around story and narrative.
That's super exciting to me.