Zimmerman said improvements in graphic image quality over the past few decades make him optimistic about the future of game design.
"Games are becoming more and more cinematic," he said. "Imagine what games could look like 10 years from now."
Designers' and players' approaches to games have also evolved, Zimmerman said.
"The real phenomenon of game culture is how games are changing the way we work, learn, conduct finances and interact with the government," he said.
Players' interpretations of games can offer insight into social relationships, he said.
Games can change the way people think about their normal environment, Zimmerman said, explaining that the popular childhood game rock, paper, scissors generates new meaning for ordinary symbols and actions.
"A fist has many different meanings in society, but a very definite, concrete meaning within the game of rock, paper, scissors," he said.
Zimmerman also engaged the audience in several simulations to demonstrate how games can change the way players interact with each other.
Games can be viewed in terms of the concepts of systems, play and design, Zimmerman said.
"In systems, rules create relationships between parts that produce unexpected results," he said.
The complex nature of systems allows players to interact with games on many different levels, Zimmerman said. In the board game Scrabble, for example, the placement of letter tiles challenges players to think beyond spatial relationships to linguistic and contextual relationships, Zimmerman said.
The understanding of systems reflected in game design can also be applied to real world issues, including global poverty and the economic crisis, he said.
"Solving these kinds of problems involves an understanding of the way that systems interact with each other," he said.
Rules establish a system's structure, but play makes the system dynamic rather than rigid, Zimmerman said.
"You design the rules, but they can play out in unexpected ways," he said. "Play can change, affect and transform those structures."
Zimmerman said he believes Wikipedia exemplifies how a system can be "playful."
"A human system, like Wikipedia, has blurred the lines between the people generating and the people gathering information," Zimmerman said.
Zimmerman also stressed the importance of creating new systems instead of only reworking older versions.
"Design is constructed, not given," he said.
Zimmerman said he looks forward to inhabiting a "more playful world" in the future.
"In the changing world of gaming, inter-connectedness and transformation will create possibilities for things we can't imagine in advance, but will emerge from people at play," he said.
Zimmerman spoke as part of the Digital Arts and Humanities Lecture Series, which focuses on the relationships between digital technology, gaming and culture.
