The Installation Game

How Choice, Redundancy, and Reluctance Shape Our Digital World

There was a time when installing something—whether it was a piece of software, a game, or even a new idea—was an event. It carried with it a sense of anticipation, a curiosity about what lay beyond the progress bar. Installing Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II in the late ‘90s wasn’t just about playing the game—it was about watching the files transfer, hearing the hum of the hard drive, and wondering, Will this run on my machine? That moment of uncertainty was exhilarating. It wasn’t just about the game itself but the process of getting there.

Fast forward to today, and installation has become something else entirely. It’s no longer a moment of excitement but a barrier—an obstacle standing between people and the things they might want to experience. We live in a world of abundance—a world where the sheer volume of choice has paradoxically made us less willing to engage with new things. There are endless video games, endless apps, endless tools, cars, streaming platforms, and even types of bottled water. But with that abundance comes exhaustion.

The Cost of Too Much Choice

Having options was once seen as a form of progress. More games, more apps, more everything—surely, this meant we were moving toward a future of greater freedom? But something strange has happened. Instead of feeling empowered, people now feel paralyzed. The more choices we have, the less we want to engage.

Take video games as an example. There was a time when getting a new game meant commitment—installing it, setting it up, and figuring out how it worked. Now, with hundreds of new games dropping daily, how many do we actually engage with? How many sit untouched in digital libraries, bought on impulse but never played? The ease of access should have led to more exploration, but instead, it’s led to more hesitation.

It’s not just video games—it’s everything. Cars now come with features that require a learning curve just to operate them. A new smartphone means reconfiguring everything from settings to accounts. Even a simple food choice—say, a salmon fillet—can turn into a frustrating experience if it’s slightly different from the one we had last time. We are constantly installing, adjusting, and relearning, even for things we supposedly already know.

The Hidden Redundancies of Modern Life

Every new choice demands adaptation. It requires learning something just different enough from what we already know that it feels like a burden. Consider something as simple as an automatic shifter in a car—most people already know how to drive, yet every car manufacturer places controls in slightly different ways, forcing drivers to relearn something they fundamentally already understand. The effort to accommodate all this variety becomes exhausting.

From a developer’s perspective, this redundancy is even more glaring. Why would anyone willingly commit to the painstaking, monotonous task of optimizing a product across dozens of platforms, each with different requirements, constraints, and quirks? The process is frustratingly inefficient—a constant cycle of testing, tweaking, and fixing issues that aren’t even about the product itself but rather about making it work in every possible environment.

But we already know that AI can solve these problems. The real challenge isn’t making something function across every system—it’s cutting through the noise of unnecessary redundancy so that developers can focus on what actually matters: innovation and creativity.

The Apex of Innovation vs. Market Saturation

If AI can handle the monotonous grunt work, then what should human ingenuity be focused on? The answer should be pushing boundaries, creating something new, rather than endlessly regurgitating slight variations of the same thing.

Instead, we see market saturation everywhere. Video games that clone each other with minor tweaks. Cars that look like rebranded refrigerators, indistinguishable except for a slightly different logo placement. Phones that offer marginal improvements but still demand yearly upgrades. The landscape is filled with Hyundais with italicized Honda logos—barely a difference, yet sold as if it were something new.

This is where true innovation is being lost. Instead of refining and elevating the best, the market is flooded with replications and low-effort variations, diluting real progress. If something is already the best, why should we need knock-offs? You don’t need another film with bullet time—The Matrix already did it. You don’t need a dozen Tesla imitations—just make the next revolutionary car.

The goal should not be flooding the market with iterative versions of the same thing but refining and perfecting the best things so that new innovation can emerge. If the marketplace naturally weeded out redundant products, it would encourage developers and creators to push forward, not sideways.

The Installation Barrier

When Trinity downloads the ability to fly a helicopter in The Matrix, it’s an idealized vision of learning—instant, seamless, effortless. But in reality, every new thing we install—whether software, a skill, or even food—is frictional. It doesn’t just integrate instantly. It requires effort, troubleshooting, adaptation.

And this is why installation has become the enemy. Not just for software, but for everything. People are reluctant to install new things because, deep down, they know the process rarely feels worth it. Even if what’s on the other side is valuable, they hesitate.

What we’re witnessing isn’t just a digital shift, but a psychological one. The world hasn’t just given us more choice—it has given us more responsibility to navigate those choices. The result? People are opting out. They scroll past, they delay, they hesitate. They leave things in their shopping cart, their game library, or their download queue, untouched.

More Choices, Less Freedom

At a glance, having more choices seems like freedom. But real freedom isn’t just about having options—it’s about feeling able and willing to engage with them. When every choice comes with effort, when every new thing feels like another miniaturized learning curve, we don’t feel liberated. We feel trapped in an endless cycle of adaptation.

In a world where everything is an installation, where every product requires some form of learning and recalibration, the real challenge isn’t building great things—it’s getting people to step past the initial friction of experiencing them.

And until we break free from redundancy, until we stop filling the marketplace with near-identical variations of the same thing, we won’t truly be progressing. True innovation doesn’t come from tweaking what already exists—it comes from creating what doesn’t yet exist.