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

[Brock Dubbels]

Hi Everyone,

My name is Brock Dubbels, and I am new to this list. I appreciate
being included in the conversation!

I did a paper on this topic trying to explore what sustains engagement
in games with a heavy emphasis on applying social learning theories on
motivation and identity.
http://vgalt.com/2009/10/11/dance-dance-education/ The point of the
paper was to design an after school game club for DDR and get the
students to play regularly enough so that when we measured them for
bone density growth, we would have a reliable measure through a good
sample of commitment to the intervention.

In order to structure this DDR club, I looked at why a young person
would play this game, and develop expertise acknowledged by their
community, without a true reward -- grades, money, etc.

Playing games and getting good at them is hard work. The young woman I
used in this phenomenological interview practiced everyday even with
varsity soccer, traveling orchestra, and being an IB student.

For her, the purpose of gaming changed as she played, and so did her
views on her community and her views on the reinforcement (rewards)
for the activity.

The idea of why is difficult to pin down, because it seems to be all
attribution and purpose.

The issue I am trying to explore is what was mentioned by Simon,
Cynthia, Cicero, and Menotti. The idea of the immersion, and what
leads to it.

My informant played initially to belong to a group. Later she played
for herself and found other groups after her initial play group moved
to a new game.

Although we may enter the game for leisure, and there is an
interesting essay on this by Joseph Pieper, we may find ourselves
contradicting Pieper and working harder at play than we would at work.
This hard work, I have found, is rewarding in that I have set a goal
and learned how to accomplish that goal,but it can represents having a
cognitive-affective game hangover--and I have to attribute that the
suffering was fun.

The real question is whether folks take the next step: Now that can I
do it, can I play through the puzzles in a way that is unique and
satisfying to my own aesthetic?


The idea of Sutton Smith's ethos of an activity -- work/play can have
an ambiguous aspect, because play as often defined by theorists as an
aimless behavior for exploration.

But, as Sutton-Smith points out, there are many types of play. And
play for Sutton-Smith is an evolutionary adaptation as defined by
Stephen Jay Gould, because of the variation of ways play can be
expressed and used.

In my opinion, it is an acceptable cultural notion of practice, or as
Gee called it,a social moratorium. Or as van Gennep looked at it in
the 60's, it is the basis for our rites and rituals.

Also, Mumford equated society as a big example of a game, where we
absorb the real consequence of death and deprivation through
fashioning a huge system of dramatic play and production.

So is play aimless if you gain relations and social status?

The difficulty is that play often turns into work-like activities,
where a game is difficult and un-fun, but the learning is gratifying.
The activity becomes dependent upon attribution, often a determination
by the player that the hard work was fun, and worth it. This can come
about because of the social aspects--the later sharing, the status,
and building expertise to be used for the next experience. A study by
Csikszentmihalyi, Talented Teens, looked at performance, engagement,
and content in schools and found that students prefer to perform where
they can display expertise rather than their novice state.

If we look at the work of Bentham and Geertz, as was mentioned by
Davin, Deep Play has consequences. And though there are consequences,
the games provide the structure needed for interaction without having
to spill our guts for empathy and understanding--freudian melt downs.
When these happen, according to Corsaro, the play groups break up. Too
real. The games, as a structured form of play, provide a spontaneous
authentic shared experience that allow for relationship building.

But, this analysis is awkward for games that are single player. I am
40, with work and family, and play by myself. I like a good story, but
I also like a good puzzle.

The idea of staying in the game is very useful for some contexts, but
people play for different reasons, and they play differently. When I
play Civilization, I have to admit that having all of the world's
religion and monuments is my goal, and I often forego other avenues to
higher scores to achieve this.

The observation I am trying to make is that my not staying within the
game goal (high score) is probably not common, but maybe not uncommon
either. In this instance, I have changed the win-state for myself, and
have begun to play for an aesthetic of my own.

There many examples of bending a game to one's will, as in tool use
described in activity theory.

In this instance, I don't play with others, and i do not participate
in any regular groups that discuss the game or play together.

I may be part of a subculture of gaming, but I may not recognize or
know any others in that subculture.

Just as the guy who goes shooting bankers in GTA.

I think this can be useful, as it begins to express the once and while
examples of innovation and creativity --- bending an activity to fit
your own needs? This is often how new products, killer apps, and new
markets are created.

But how many folks stick with a game to perform an aesthetic? Play
through again even after they have beaten the boss? Find holes in the
mechanics and bend them to their will?

That seems to me a very interesting sub-culture as well.

 This may lead to others embracing that idea. Admiring that
difference. I did another paper
(http://vgalt.com/2009/10/13/reading-comprehension-as-a-transmedial-sub-medial-trait/)

where one of the middle school students I observed demonstrated a
double bomb drop to other kids who really wanted to be seen as gamers,
but really had no gaming skills--why didn't Napoleon Dynamite include
that in things girls like? Just as good a nun-chuk skills--they
claimed the identity, but did not have the evidence or the expertise.
They expressed the culture from the semiotic domain, but could not
perform.

In a sense, I see now another sub-culture gamers who want to be gamers.

This seems to be the pattern in anthropology and ethnographic studies,
is the claiming of categories we can construct about social and
anti-social behavior.

If I am a fish, am I the only one who does not that I am underwater?

Is it useful for critical science to point this out and empower me as a fish?

What do identifying these gaming sub-cultures offer us?



On Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 12:09 PM, davin heckman <davinheckman at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> empyre forum
>> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
>> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre at lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre
>



-- 
--
Best regards,

Brock

Brock R. Dubbels
brock at vgAlt.com
612.747.0346
415.968.9072

The Center for Cognitive Sciences
The University of Minnesota
Room S310 Elliott Hall
75 East River Road
Minneapolis, MN 55455

University page
www.videogamesaslearningtools.com

Consulting
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One of the greatest mistakes of our day is to think of movement by
itself, as standing apart from higher functions . . . Mental
development must be dependent  on it. It is vital that educational
theory and practice should become informed by this idea . . . Watching
a child makes it obvious that the development of his mind comes about
through his movements . . . Mind and movement are parts of the same
entity.

Montessori, 1967, pp 141-142

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