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Jessie Scanlon of Businessweek has a nice round-up of some of the interesting things happening on the fringes of the traditional gaming market which, strangely enough, might end up meaning that there’s more of a “mainstream” market there than in the Xboxes & PlayStations of the world.

Ultimately, I think it all depends on your definition of traditional gaming. If gaming is shooting aliens, big breasted heroines or even following down a near-linear path towards a larger goal, then you’re probably looking at a semi-limited market which will grow with those that grew up with gaming.

So yes, you’ll ultimately get the game that makes you cry and things like Halo will continue to mint millions as have traditional entertainments for thousands of years. This is just the natural evolution of our new entertainment tools.

However, if you broaden that definition of gaming to include the idea of “virtual play” or even further to the idea of “virtual life”, both of which are deeply rooted in the fundamentals of games, then the market for gaming is virtually limitless.

Potentially every social exchange we’ll have in the future will be influenced by the rules of games.

Also worth noting in this article: Raph Koster has a new company called Areae that I hadn’t heard about. And it sounds awesome.