Tycho on PAX:

…it is something that happens when we get enough of you together, quite on its own, and it is our task to construct an ecosystem around you that does not impinge on that culture’s inherent virtues.  When they had us down at GDC for that Ambassador Award thing, what I told them (when I was thrust before a microphone in abject terror) was that the basis for our work is the idea that the experiences that games create form the basis of a coherent culture – that the bank of shared experiences, simulated but no less real, coalesce into a collective memory.