The Future of Commerce Is a Sim?

Play shapes how we compete, connect, and express identity. Commerce is becoming its own infinite game. Will AI deepen agency or automate it away?

For as long as humans have existed, we’ve played games.

Perhaps our desire to survive has always been paired with our desire for play.

Some of the oldest artifacts unearthed are not tools or weapons, but game boards. Take Mancala, believed to be the oldest game in the world, dating back to c. 6000 BC in modern-day Jordan. A game of sowing and reaping, Mancala required players to move seeds or stones across a board—an early reflection of resource management and economic survival. The Royal Game of Ur (c. 2600 BCE, Ancient Mesopotamia) was a race to victory, while Go (c. 2000 BCE, Ancient China) tested control over space and territory. The earliest games were more than just entertainment; they were simulations of power, competition, and social progression.

The digital era introduced persistent, infinite worlds of gameplay. Winning wasn’t a singular endpoint, but a reason to keep playing. James Carse writes:

A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.

A video game (Siri, play Video Games by Lana del Rey) represents an ever-deepening, almost devotional entanglement between player, story, and machine. To play is to submit to the logic and the world of the game. And where, once, a game was something you could finish, today, open-world mechanics, multiplayer economies, and AI-driven dynamic content ensure there is always another level, another reward, another mob boss to beat. We speak through our choices, and the algorithm deepens the dialogue, shaping the game around us.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the lines are blurring between our offline and online lives. Our digital identities have become as valuable as our real-world counterparts, if not more. Commerce is following the same trajectory.

Commerce as the Ultimate Infinite Game

From the bazaars of ancient civilizations to the doomscroll feeds of modern e-commerce, shopping has always been a social, emotional, and even performative act—has always been, in a way, a game. The scarcity of an object enhances its desirability (think: flash sales, limited drops), its exclusivity compelling its purchase. We want to collect the elusive pokémon in the same way that we want to collect rare cards, or stamps, or anything else. We aim not just to own, but to win.

For most of history, commerce was a finite game—you chose an object, bartered, and completed the transaction. Today, commerce is infinite. Modern e-commerce tools do more than just turbocharge product sales; they craft digital narratives and worlds around our purchases, making them feel like extensions of our aspirations and identities. There’s something about generative AI in search that makes objects transcend their object-ness. You search for a denim jacket, and the resulting product spread is a curated aura of a cool autumn night, of soft-spoken rebellion.

Shopping has always meant more than pure accumulation—it’s a curation of the self. Kurt Vonnegut’s critique of consumerism in Slaughterhouse-Five now feels eerily prescient:

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.

He satirized how modern consumer culture encourages people to build identity through objects. But what he deemed a shallow search for coherence could instead be a deeper search for the self. Perhaps the introduction of AI into commerce does more than gamify consumerism—it redefines the way we engage with our own identities.

The Next Phase of Commerce

Below, we share a few predictions (some dystopian, and some utopian) for how we think the fundamental mechanics of commerce might change.

1. From browsable commerce to playable commerce
   
   Shopping will evolve from passive scrolling to a more interactive, gamified, and immersive experience. Imagine an AI shopkeeper welcoming you into a dynamic story, running parallel to the products you use in daily life. An ad doesn’t just recommend running shoes—it invites you on a quest to find the perfect shoe for your terrain. Playable ads have already gained traction in mobile gaming, and will likely seep into e-commerce as interactive experiences where brands let users experience products before committing.

   • Doji already turns selfies into your AI likeness, enabling you to try on real products and shop a personalized digital boutique. They’re still sharpening the edges, but it’s pretty futuristic stuff.

   • Infinite Reality recently announced its acquisition of Obsess, a 3D digital experience platform that has launched over 400 highly-visual, discovery-driven storefronts and experiences for consumer brands.

   • Starbucks Odyssey attempted to turn loyalty into a game, where customers complete interactive “Journeys” to earn NFT-based rewards and real-world experiences. This and KFC’s Rewards Arcade exemplify how large corporations are leveraging gamification to retain customers through addictive rewards programs.
     

2. Emotional pricing and sentiment-driven commerce
   
   Pricing will be adaptive and contextual, influenced by a consumer’s online history and even mood. AI will be able to analyze voice, facial expressions, and browsing behavior and adjust pricing and recommendations accordingly. Similar to dynamic airline pricing, frequent buyers or brand advocates might see better deals than casual shoppers, and AI could even assign “trust scores” that determine eligibility for exclusive products or personalized financing options.

   • Tandym enables brands to roll out a branded credit card program that decreases processing fees by avoiding big banks, passing on economic benefits through rewards to loyalty customers.

   • Anglera is helping businesses automate product catalog management to adjust pricing dynamically, while Synerise uses behavioral analytics on real-time interactions to help businesses tailor pricing and promotions.

   • And in case you forgot, PopID is already accepting facial recognition payments in Santa Monica. So yeah, AI can already see you.
     

3. Digital twin negotiation & smart bartering
   AI-powered buying agents (let’s call them digital twins, for better or worse) will negotiate purchases on our behalf. Instead of static pricing, brands could implement real-time bidding systems where your AI twin haggles for deals tailored to your preferences and willingness-to-pay thresholds.

   • Indigo helps merchants integrate AI agents into customer journeys, suggesting the best product suited to an individual’s preferences.

   • Kingship and Vetted are two personal shopping assistants that conduct real-time price comparisons and tailor recommendations to specific shopping habits.

   • Fetchr is essentially StitchFix 2.0, a personal shopper that buys clothes uniquely tailored to you.

   • And we’re already seeing digital bartering unfold in other sectors. Nous does it for household bills in the UK, while Ownwell does it for property taxes in the US.
     

4. Hyper-personalized storefronts
   Users may craft a storefront that reflects their aesthetics, values, and cultural identities. Instead of a static, one-size-fits-all shopping experience, AI might curate evolving digital stores that align with a consumer’s personal brand. Google Shopping already organizes their online storefronts in a way that optimizes for ad spend and clickability; AI can do it in a way that optimizes for personal preferences.

   • With Kart, brands can adjust website layouts by user, re-ranking products based on what a user is most likely to purchase.

   • Daydream is offering the next generation of personalized consumer search.

   • Arcade pairs consumers with artisans to turn your imagined AI prompts into real-life products. Now that we’ve mentioned this company twice in our newsletter, seriously check this one out—it’s pretty cool.
     

5. From search-driven shopping to predictive commerce
   Finally, traditional search will become obsolete. AI will eliminate the need for manual browsing altogether as your devices coordinate to present to you the perfect product at the perfect moment. We will lose the need to think about what we need—perhaps even what we want. And if that feels too apocalyptic, wouldn’t it still be nice if AI got you new toothpaste as you were squeezing the last life from your current tube?
   
   And just as search will anticipate your wants, so too will finance anticipate your needs. Predictive AI is enabling financial services to align consumer spending with financial planning. Stores might detect when you’re about to make a major purchase and start surfacing tailored investment and savings suggestions weeks or even months in advance.

   • Rebuy and Algolia are just two AI-driven product discovery engines that are aiming to display relevant products before consumers explicitly search for them.

   • Personetics enables banks to offer proactive savings programs and investment recommendations precisely when customers are most likely to need them.

Ok cool, but why is this a good thing?

If you’ve made it this far and feel a tinge of cynicism, congratulations! You are still human.

So what’s the there, there?

Technology doesn’t have to accelerate mindless consumerism. At its best, it can make shopping more playful, intentional, and even poetic. Commerce as a form of play can be a reflection of our personal narratives, rather than an engine for pure accumulation.

Take poetry, for quick example (a quick plug for our last issue). The great poets did not simply name objects—they imbued them with significance. A jar upon a hill may be but a jar on a hill, or it can be Wallace Stevens’ jar upon a hill:

I placed a jar in Tennessee,
And round it was, upon a hill.
It made the slovenly wilderness
Surround that hill.

The wilderness rose up to it,
And sprawled around, no longer wild.
The jar was round upon the ground
And tall and of a port in air.

It took dominion everywhere.
The jar was gray and bare.
It did not give of bird or bush,
Like nothing else in Tennessee.

So, a jar could be a mere product of commercialization (a mass-produced, functional object), or it could be a way of playing out a tension with another famous poet who once wrote on a kind of jar: Keats, not with his Tennessee jar, but with his Grecian urn. It could be an ekphrastic exercise in finding one’s own “jar” language for one’s own modern American culture, for one’s self.

The jar poses a similar question to that which lies at the heart of AI-driven commerce: Does technology help us see the world more clearly, or does it impose an artificial structure that constrains our choices?

AI has the potential to make objects feel personal, both physical and metaphysical, helping us see what advances the broader story of our lives, rather than just what’s trending. Instead of manipulating us into buying more, the best versions of this future may help us buy better.

For the first time, we can play alongside technology as a partner and even shape the rules of the game. In this new paradigm, we are co-creators.