[-empyre-] playing vs productivity (and what does it has to do with videogames?)

[davin heckman]

I really enjoy certain tabletop games (Settlers of Catan,
Caracassonne, and Illuminati) and rarely play video games (I would, I
suppose, if I owned some).  But a large part of the gaming experience
is intensely social.  There is a circle of people that get together,
students and faculty, that play these kinds of games.  I also play
Carcassonne a few evenings a week with my wife.

At times the play can be competitive, even vengeful, trying to make up
for previous humiliations.  At other times it is very peaceful and
collaborative.  It all depends on who is playing and how you are
feeling.

My thought with these games is not that they are "utilitarian" or
"frivolous," but that they simply offer another dimension of social
experience which can be estranged from the purely subjective.  The
game offers opportunities to play with aggression and cooperation via
a contractual buffer.  In some sense, it is not all that different
from the more obvious forms of play-acting that people engage in
through other estrangement strategies: Larping, inebriation, costume
parties, etc.  I think that we all have this artistic faculty that
wants to abstract, detach, examine, modify, and reincorporate our
various experiences into our being.  Having said all that, I don't
think that all games are neutral.  I think, for instance, we need to
notice which games are social and solitary, and pay close attention to
both the overt content, but also the deeper significance of these
activities.  We also need to look at the form of the games, do they
operate on a visceral or cognitive level, to what extent, how do they
operate on both, etc.  Geertz's Notes on Balinese Cockfight comes to
mind, here.

Davin

On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 12:18 PM, Cynthia Beth Rubin <cbr at cbrubin.net> wrote:
> Rafael and all:
> Thanks for the observation that the ultimate drive is to stay within the
> experience. This points to a  connection between video games and other
> immersive experiences.
> Think of Char Davies' early immersive VR work "Osmose"
> <http://www.immersence.com/osmose>, in which you had to learn the rules
> (special breathing techniques) in order to move through the space and have
> the full experience.  There was no competition - nothing to brag about
> (although some users found ways to brag).  This work is all about the
> experience itself being so alluring, so absorbing, that they wanted to move
> among the many non-heirarchical levels of the work just to be "in the
> experience".
> A great example using a video gaming engine is Ruth Gibson and Bruno
> Martelli' s "Swan Quake" <http://www.swanquake.com>.  As in Char's work, we
> move through levels, with the experience itself as the goal, not
> competition.
> Simon's observation that play is rehearsal is helpful for clarifying that
> games are not useless.  Rehearsal for young "learners," but perhaps we crave
> new experience and challenge at every stage?
> In this age of so much cultural production being tied to a supposed "market
> analysis," it is no wonder that mass produced games would be modeled after
> competitive activities, such as war and football.  After all, war (I have
> been told) is the ultimate challenge to be fully aware and alert - a
> challenge that we may need (crave) to stay fully alert as humans.
> Therefore the challenge may be to produce inter-active activities that
> stimulate our need to be "on edge" and fully alert -- with competition as
> just one way to do this.
> Cynthia
> Cynthia B Rubin
> http://CBRubin.net
>
>
> On Nov 30, 2010, at 11:08 AM, Rafael Trindade wrote:
>
>  It's about winning, in order to stay within the experience; to keep the
> thing going on.
>
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