Play-Grounds

Game Design, Theory, Debate and Love

1 note

christielouwho asked: As with the problems found in a lot of mentally disturbed individuals-- such as those suffering from schizophrenia, sociopathy, and otherwise-- how do you distinguish the level of fun someone (let's use a sociopath) experiences when they are harming or manipulating another compared to an individual who is playing a game of soccer or tag? Physiologically, this person would probably be experiencing the same amount of endorphins as the mentally stable individual would be, which makes the physiological component no different.

I'd mainly just like your thoughts on it...

I actually wanted to write more toward this but felt that the post was getting too long. So thank you for the question, it’s an excellent one.

First of all, I would like to open the question up. Without inappropriately getting into my opinion on mental disorders (psych undergrad), I’m going to simply state that we all have the capacity to find fun in ways that negatively influence other people. Your example of harming or manipulating another person is easier to talk about if we can attribute it to a disorder. Easier, but we’d be missing out on some important introspection.

The German word Schadenfreude (pleasure derived from the misfortunes of others) comes to mind. I’d prefer not to ramble about pleasure vs fun right now, suffice it to say we can all think of situations or anecdotes where we’ve had what we would call fun at the expense of someone else.

I think fun is considerably intrinsic. In the sense that, what you find fun is a matter similar to what you find tasty or what you find sexually appealing. For whatever reason - through billions of years of selection, the particular expression of genes that is “you” has certain inclinations as to what you find fun. And yes, often those inclinations include finding fun at the expense of other people. But that’s a pretty short sighted take on fun. I mean obviously that’s only a fraction of what any individual finds fun. Whether this socially malignant fun becomes the path of least resistance - the most rewarding way to find your fun - that is a matter of social construction.

See, I don’t think very many people ever stop having fun. Even into old age, even the ones who seem serious and humorless. We just stop encouraging people to have fun, and at a certain age we encourage them to hide it for the reasons I got into in my last post. So instead we find fun in ways that society accepts, in ways that line up with our career goals and serious responsibilities.

And this is where a dangerous positive feedback loop happens. The people who allow themselves to have fun at the expense of other people have an arguable advantage in the business / career world over those who do not. If you can derive pleasure, motivation and satisfaction from “cut throat” activities, you’ll be better at them. People who might not be inclined to find fun in this way now feel a systemic pressure to start. 

I don’t think that this is the entire story (and I think in a lot of cases that “advantage” is illusory - just very convincing). But it is a prevalent story.

I think that the behaviors and business practices that are enforced when you find fun at the expense of other people aren’t sustainable. This is, of course, a matter of perspective. As an individual it might be the best strategy to take every advantage over other people that you can. However, when you look at it socially, as a member of a society, it becomes a lot harder to argue that this strategy is doing us any good. In other words, we can fight over the crude oil we have now and make sure we have enough for us and our children. Or we can work together and figure out an alternative so that none of our children need ever worry about it again.

Maybe I’m walking the dangerous line into “socialist” territory, but it’s a pretty firm belief of mine that when we act in the interest of the group, everyone is better off. Of course, we can’t stop people from finding fun in the expense of other people. But we can stop ignoring the alternatives - that we have intuitive inclinations toward working cooperatively and constructively with one another. That we can teach these alternatives. And rather than preach the merits of cooperation, if we can show people how to find fun in it, they’ll seek it out for themselves.

TL;DR: I’ve never read any research, but I’d imagine that physiologically it would be very similar. At the very least, an important difference is the social merit of the fun. Without guidance I think we’re all more inclined to seek fun at the expense of other people. This is an important reason why we need to educate our children on more productive ways of having fun.

5 notes

Fun and Seriousness I’d like to explore how fun relates to seriousness. Are they mutually exclusive? Do they exist on a continuum? Does one necessarily lead to the other? Are they simply degrees of maturity? Is there really any relationship at all beyond the commonly held assumption? And what are the factors that make up that assumption?  For arguments sake I’m going to take the (contrary?) position that the negative correlation between the qualities of fun and seriousness - their seeming opposition - is not necessary and is simply a mistaken circumstantial and social construct, and a harmful one at that. Mistaken, but understandable, especially when we look at our development. As babies, simply the use and progression toward the mastery of basic motor skills is something we find fun. Successfully grabbing at a stuffed animal is a fun activity. As are seeing shiny things spin around, seeing the face of our mother or being fed. If we look at Maslow’s hierarchy this is obviously very basic stuff.  As we grow older, the situations that lead to us having fun increase in number and complexity (or maybe subtlety?). We can have fun being in the company of our friends, or in learning new information. We have fun exploring and understanding the world around us. All of these things I have mentioned, relative to the child experiencing them, are just as serious as anything dealt with by an adult.  I think it’s easy to forget how serious and rewarding a game of peekaboo is for a being that cannot understand object permanence. Certainly, as adults we understand a different kind of seriousness. But that distinction only matters to adults.  I think I’ve made a case for seriousness and fun being relatively inseparable as a young child. So then, if we maintain that seriousness and fun are generally considered mutually exclusive for an adult - what changes about the “seriousness” an adult faces, and why can it no longer account for fun? At what point do the obstacles we face stop being serious and fun and become simply serious?  My answer: our system of education. Until we enter the school system, we are allowed relative freedom in how we approach the world. We are allowed to play and have fun and develop at our own pace. With exceptions, of course, our family life is generally less structured than a school. And again with exceptions, we are allowed to pursue what we find fun and interesting without a great deal of intervention beyond our own safety.  Why? Because this works. Because evolution has wired us to find enjoyment and fun in the most fundamental tools to our survival. Because you can let your kid build sand castles all day and rest assured that the fun they’re having isn’t completely without purpose. That to learn the skills they’ll need as adults, they first need to learn how to hold and use a toy shovel, the basic properties of gravity and how the idea of the castle they see in their mind is translated (or isn’t) into the castle they see in front of them. Now, don’t think I’m arguing against educating our children. If we let our kids continue to climb trees and play in the mud - completely left to the whim of what they find fun - the world would stop turning and most of us would die. No, at a certain point it is a parent’s and society’s job to anticipate the serious obstacles a child will need to eventually face and to give them the skills to deal with those obstacles - because for many of the obstacles we face as adults and as a society, there is no way to anticipate them until it is too late. That process by the way, is the history of our species. Adults learning from their mistakes, passing those lessons to their children in the hope of giving them a better chance. Over and over. Refining the lessons until we come to something like the modern school system, where the lessons children are taught are a reflection of the obstacles we know they will face - confusing, often over-simplified, abstract and removed from anything we could call fun. The focus shifts from “do what you find fun and in the process you will learn serious lessons” to “learn this serious material and we will allow you to have fun” to “learn this serious material or there will be immediately serious consequences” to “learn this serious material or you will regret it for the rest of your life” There is an implicit leap in logic behind this marginalization of fun. It begins with what we’ve already stated less succinctly, that “to properly deal with serious responsibilities you must sometimes sacrifice doing what you find fun.” And this is an important lesson, and one that we cannot afford to wait for our children to learn on their own. Now, so far I completely agree with the conventional wisdom. And if we follow this wisdom, often enough it will happen that ”sacrificing what is fun for what is serious is responsible.” And while the exceptions might be few and far between, we’ve unwittingly begun to quantify responsibility in terms of seriousness and fun, when I don’t believe that was part of the original lesson whatsoever. But that statement, less nuanced, is a lot easier to teach. It’s also not far from what we know today, that “responsibility is sacrificing what is fun for what is serious.” which seems to me such a disgusting, tragic misunderstanding. The neurologist Oliver Sacks believes that our concept of genius is not a matter of particular skill, but of particular passion and love for a particular interest. That skill is just a side effect of participating in something with great intensity. If you can’t accept that, you can at least accept that teachers and professors who successfully find ways for their students to have fun engaging in something have allowed their students a more meaningful experience. This is not a defense of any capable person who chooses fun in lieu of engaging in the world seriously or taking responsibility for themselves. And with acknowledgement that fun is not a sufficient motivator for the lessons we need to teach our kids… Our society’s complete disregard and disrespect for the experience of fun is senseless and absurd. That “buckling down” and simply working hard was the most responsible lifestyle we could strive for may have made sense to our grandparents and our parents, but it is very obvious to me the kind of world that mindset has created - and it’s falling apart all around us.  I’m going to end this before it gets too preachy. I will simply say that I believe one of the most important skills we’re forgetting to teach our children is how to have fun and enjoy their lives -their entire lives - because many of us never learned that ourselves.

Fun and Seriousness

I’d like to explore how fun relates to seriousness. Are they mutually exclusive? Do they exist on a continuum? Does one necessarily lead to the other? Are they simply degrees of maturity? Is there really any relationship at all beyond the commonly held assumption? And what are the factors that make up that assumption? 

For arguments sake I’m going to take the (contrary?) position that the negative correlation between the qualities of fun and seriousness - their seeming opposition - is not necessary and is simply a mistaken circumstantial and social construct, and a harmful one at that.

Mistaken, but understandable, especially when we look at our development. As babies, simply the use and progression toward the mastery of basic motor skills is something we find fun. Successfully grabbing at a stuffed animal is a fun activity. As are seeing shiny things spin around, seeing the face of our mother or being fed. If we look at Maslow’s hierarchy this is obviously very basic stuff. 

As we grow older, the situations that lead to us having fun increase in number and complexity (or maybe subtlety?). We can have fun being in the company of our friends, or in learning new information. We have fun exploring and understanding the world around us.

All of these things I have mentioned, relative to the child experiencing them, are just as serious as anything dealt with by an adult.  I think it’s easy to forget how serious and rewarding a game of peekaboo is for a being that cannot understand object permanence. Certainly, as adults we understand a different kind of seriousness. But that distinction only matters to adults. 

I think I’ve made a case for seriousness and fun being relatively inseparable as a young child. So then, if we maintain that seriousness and fun are generally considered mutually exclusive for an adult - what changes about the “seriousness” an adult faces, and why can it no longer account for fun? At what point do the obstacles we face stop being serious and fun and become simply serious? 

My answer: our system of education. Until we enter the school system, we are allowed relative freedom in how we approach the world. We are allowed to play and have fun and develop at our own pace. With exceptions, of course, our family life is generally less structured than a school. And again with exceptions, we are allowed to pursue what we find fun and interesting without a great deal of intervention beyond our own safety.  Why? Because this works. Because evolution has wired us to find enjoyment and fun in the most fundamental tools to our survival. Because you can let your kid build sand castles all day and rest assured that the fun they’re having isn’t completely without purpose. That to learn the skills they’ll need as adults, they first need to learn how to hold and use a toy shovel, the basic properties of gravity and how the idea of the castle they see in their mind is translated (or isn’t) into the castle they see in front of them.

Now, don’t think I’m arguing against educating our children. If we let our kids continue to climb trees and play in the mud - completely left to the whim of what they find fun - the world would stop turning and most of us would die.

No, at a certain point it is a parent’s and society’s job to anticipate the serious obstacles a child will need to eventually face and to give them the skills to deal with those obstacles - because for many of the obstacles we face as adults and as a society, there is no way to anticipate them until it is too late. That process by the way, is the history of our species. Adults learning from their mistakes, passing those lessons to their children in the hope of giving them a better chance. Over and over. Refining the lessons until we come to something like the modern school system, where the lessons children are taught are a reflection of the obstacles we know they will face - confusing, often over-simplified, abstract and removed from anything we could call fun.

The focus shifts from

“do what you find fun and in the process you will learn serious lessons” to

“learn this serious material and we will allow you to have fun” to

“learn this serious material or there will be immediately serious consequences” to

“learn this serious material or you will regret it for the rest of your life”

There is an implicit leap in logic behind this marginalization of fun. It begins with what we’ve already stated less succinctly, that “to properly deal with serious responsibilities you must sometimes sacrifice doing what you find fun.” And this is an important lesson, and one that we cannot afford to wait for our children to learn on their own.

Now, so far I completely agree with the conventional wisdom. And if we follow this wisdom, often enough it will happen that ”sacrificing what is fun for what is serious is responsible.” And while the exceptions might be few and far between, we’ve unwittingly begun to quantify responsibility in terms of seriousness and fun, when I don’t believe that was part of the original lesson whatsoever. But that statement, less nuanced, is a lot easier to teach. It’s also not far from what we know today, that “responsibility is sacrificing what is fun for what is serious.” which seems to me such a disgusting, tragic misunderstanding.

The neurologist Oliver Sacks believes that our concept of genius is not a matter of particular skill, but of particular passion and love for a particular interest. That skill is just a side effect of participating in something with great intensity. If you can’t accept that, you can at least accept that teachers and professors who successfully find ways for their students to have fun engaging in something have allowed their students a more meaningful experience.

This is not a defense of any capable person who chooses fun in lieu of engaging in the world seriously or taking responsibility for themselves. And with acknowledgement that fun is not a sufficient motivator for the lessons we need to teach our kids… Our society’s complete disregard and disrespect for the experience of fun is senseless and absurd. That “buckling down” and simply working hard was the most responsible lifestyle we could strive for may have made sense to our grandparents and our parents, but it is very obvious to me the kind of world that mindset has created - and it’s falling apart all around us. 

I’m going to end this before it gets too preachy. I will simply say that I believe one of the most important skills we’re forgetting to teach our children is how to have fun and enjoy their lives -their entire lives - because many of us never learned that ourselves.

0 notes

Fun! I could write as many words as I wanted, but I’m pretty sure this video would still do a better job of explaining what fun is.

Fun!

I could write as many words as I wanted, but I’m pretty sure this video would still do a better job of explaining what fun is.

3 notes

Defining Fun

It’s been a while since I’ve made a post, so I’m going to give a quick recap of what I’m trying to do here. I’m trying to create theoretical framework to talk about games and game design. I am not the first to do this. A lot has been written on the subject of game design. But every theory I have read seems incomplete. Every definition I read for “play” “games” and “fun” feels insufficient. Worse, the methodology never feels useful; the theories never help me design games. When I’m discussing features or planning content, I always prefer to talk about them colloquially. Perhaps I am simply unaware of a better framework. Until I find one, this space will be used to create a working, useful framework that actually aids in the designing of games. 

(So when I refer to this as a “theory” or a “framework” it’s with complete acknowledgement that it is anything but. I’m referring to what it could potentially become)

Read more …

1 note

Meaning, Play and Choice

“Even in its simplest forms on the animal level, play is more than a mere physiological phenomenon or psychological reflex. It goes beyond the confines of purely physical or purely biological activity. It is a significant function - that is to say, there is some sense to it. In play there is something “at play” which transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts meaning to the action. All play means something.”
-Johann Huizinga, Homo Ludens 

If all play has meaning, then how exactly are play and meaning related?

Read more …

2 notes

Rules of Play

Check out the about page!

I have experience designing games but I’m only just beginning to study the formal theory. I’m hoping that this tumblr will help broaden my horizons. For the time being, the most inclusive text I’ve read is Salen and Zimmerman’s Rules of Play.  If there’s going to be discussion we’ll need to start with shared terms and approaches. And while I have my own issues with the text, I think Rules of Play does an impressive job of setting the stage. Within my next few posts I’ll introduce key terms and passages from the book. 

To begin, a passage from the [kindred and hyperbolic] forward written by Frank Lantz:

“…from certain angles this book appears to have the burning impatience of a manifesto. What is the nature of this impatience? to some extent it is the frustration of workers who are asked to build a cathedral using only a toothbrush and a staplegun. Games are remarkably complex, both in their internal structure and in the various kinds of player experiences they create. But there exists no integrated set of conceptual tools for thinking about games. Until recently, if you were a game designer interested in the theoretical underpinnings of your field, you would be forced to stitch together a set of perspectives from sociology, anthropology, psychology and mathematics, each of which brought its blindman’s view of the elephant, and none of which considered games as a creative domain.

More recently, within the field itself there has emerged a Babel of competing methodologies. Most of these have a practical focus on the nuts-and-bolts questions of the creative process of game design; few of them have attempted to ground their insights in a general theoretical system. But the impatience that gives this book its undercurrent of urgency is more than a response to the field’s underdeveloped level of discourse. Why, after all, does game design need a theoretical framework? There is something more than insight, knowledge, and understanding at stake here.”

 I’d love to tap into that ”impatience” and “frustration” here.