Michael Abbott of the Brainy Gamer has me thinking again. His latest two provocative posts concern how we think about games – a child’s fancy or an adult’s pursuit. Ultimately, Michael and the great majority of commenters seem to side with the ‘games are serious business’ camp.. which I am no doubt sympathetic towards (why else would I write here!). After all, every morning for the last month I’ve spent 30 minutes on the train playing the original Final Fantasy VII on my PSP, nervously avoiding the glances of curious riders. It does feel exposing playing games in front of other adults.
For me, however, something’s missing. I don’t play games because they’re serious business. Sure, I can defend why they’re serious to other adults – but when I play them that’s not what I have in mind. And I even research games (ie. follow it through and record some observations, do background reading, etc) … but that’s not playing the games. Playing a game involves something else – a suspension of desire, a willingness to invest oneself in the world and accept it at its face value. In this very short article I want to explore the idea that in order for games to move or grip us, they must remain toys or forms of childish entertainment. Seems counterintuitive?
What got me thinking about what value games are to a society was this abstract from Michael’s post:
… In general, American society harshly judges adults who engage in activities that aren’t considered productive. As several commenters to my previous post observed, play is usually seen as time-wasting, only valuable as a means to an end, such as blowing off steam, or relaxing after a hard day in order to recharge for more work.
Play, by itself, is reserved for children – but even here the Puritan ethic holds because doctors and psychologists tell us kids must play so their brains and bodies may properly develop…presumably in order to prepare themselves for a lifetime of work. How children play and why they play hold clues that help explain the value of such activity, even for adults…
I agree. There is something of a Puritan moralism with games – many a’parent has spent hours upon hours explaining to their children that games are a waste of time… they really should be spending that time studying or doing homework!
But, if we think back to our own childhoods – those were exactly the kinds of situations that made games a wonderful, taboo, secretive, pleasure. I can remember many nights that I pretended to go to sleep, only to sneak back upstairs an hour later and turn down the brightness on the computer monitor so I could just do one more cargo mission as a pilot in Wing Commander: Privateer. Other nights, I’d wait until midnight so I could dial-up to Bulletin Board Systems, and pirate a copy of The Incredible Machine or Lemmings. And when I was 14, I secretly bought a copy of Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender knowing that it depicted pixellated breasts; even saving the game at the nude scene so I could impress my friends when my parents were out. In those cases, what made those experiences so real for me as a child was that my parents so strictly felt that games were a complete waste of time.
That certainly seems to run aground the idea that, as parents or teachers, we must embrace games as serious, adult, pursuits. What makes a game a game per se is that it must be a child’s fancy… games no longer do anything for us without their entertaining, amusing, value. I include adults here too – part of what we find so joyful with games is that they penetrate us at a non-serious level. They literally allow us to regress and feel childish emotions such as joy and amusement. That’s not something that adults like us like to hear, because it plays against our own Puritanical guilts … but if we lose our ability to feel joyful or amused by a game, we lose the ability to be playful.
Games, like fairy tales, allow us to ’live in’ fantastical spaces that we otherwise cannot. Like fairy tales, games contribute to a child’s personal growth not by teaching them any lesson (.. that’s a ‘Fable’), but by simply depicting a world of desires, problems, worries, that the child can ‘live in’ for a while… and when the book is shut, that world goes away for a little while. Games produce that same kind of world for kids… a world away from adults. When adults like us seize upon that world and turn it into a reflection of our adult selves, instead of our childhoods, we deny them the chance to ‘grow up’ or live playfully through games. And as adults-that-play-games we ourselves lose the opportunity to live playfully, and instead render games to just another form of consumption like art, movies, or books.
At face value this seems to be a call for adults to ‘stay out of Never-Never Land’ and let kids be on their merry – and I admit that I had a temptation to levy that kind of argument. In retrospect, however, I think there is an opportunity for a deeper approach. Rather than denying ourselves entrance to the secret world of Animal Crossing or the terrifying world of Silent Hill, we have to remember that we ourselves are children when we play these games… and have no right to turn them into a kind of ‘serious business’ in our self-conscious fears that other adults will not take us seriously. When games become serious business, and when other adults want to talk about them with us in the same breath as wedding arrangements or grocery lists, we won’t be able to play them anymore. Let’s keep Never-Never Land alive for our kids – and most importantly – for ourselves.
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I can totally agree that there should not be an imaginary line between the whimsical need of children and the desires of adults, but I am weary of the conclusive play-space you deemed Never-Never Land.
Unfortunately, I’m not sure where exactly I disagree. I too find the serious business approach evasive of the actual problem. You are correct that losing the childish interactivity would probably destroy the experience. But somewhere in this situation there should be a certain level of importance that applies to both children and adults who are playing games. I guess my problem lies with the term “fancy” that seems to take away from its contribution to developing human beings. Hopefully this discussion continues and I can find some clarity in my position, but until then keep up the good work.
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Yes, I think I agree with you. We – that is, adults – tend to see games as frivolous and ‘childish’ in a negative sense, and if the game is not to be frivolous then it must have some sort of purpose, such as teaching things, developing cognitive skills or improving reflexes and so on. But actually, although games do do these things, it should not be their point, and that should not be our reason for playing them. Our reason for making them and for playing them should be so that we can play – or so that we can ‘be playful’. No child would say “I want to play the game to develop my reflexes” – if they did, they surely wouldn’t mean it. And adults needn’t say such things either.
As it is, I think the main reason that I play games is for escapism, a word you may have come close to using. But escapism should not be the motivation for play. Play is the motivation. You suggest that games should not be serious business. But what if play *is* a serious business?
I do think it’s worth bringing the game developers into the question. What do they think is the purpose of their games? And who is playing more – the developers, who create the fairy-tale lands from their imagination, or the gamers, who run around in them afterwards? It’s interesting that you see video games as distinct from “just another form of consumption like art, movies, or books”. But aren’t we consuming the video game too?
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I agree that we need to retain the pure thrill of games. That experiential thrill of entering Never-Never Land is a joyous, powerful, life affirming experience, but I think the medium (Or whatever term you feel is appropriate) of gaming is vast enough that such games can be one type amidst many.
I feel that what you are saying is that play is the domain of children and that when we choose to play we actively choose to return to a child like state. To me this seems as damaging a statement as the assessment that imaginative play is something only good for children. We shouldn’t stop playing just because we grow up, but we shouldn’t require ourselves to become children whenever we desire to play.
Play needs to be accepted and appreciated not as simply a means but as an end in itself, and one with worth to everybody regardless of age of culture, or personal belief. However the desire to play need not be stem solely from a game being “a child’s fancy”.
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Just out of curiosity…do you not think that you can have “serious business” and “childlike fancy” going on at the same time? Maybe it’s because of what I do for a living (teach literature, mainly science fiction and fantasy), but I find that if I encounter a book that can’t wow me with a sense of wonder but also get my intellectual juices flowing, it’s really not worth my time. I’m starting to feel the same way about games. The best ones can do both at once, and, consequently, I feel like anything that skimps on either side is only half of the experience I’m looking for.
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Wow, thank you for the generous responses. I think all of you have pointed out the main risk with taking the ‘childlike fancy’ argument too far – it seems to trivialize our feelings, our experiences, to some degree. In response to that concern – I can imagine that we might have to characterize the emotional depth to which the adult player is engaging with the game – are their feelings/emotions more complicated than the average child? We all know folks that throw their controllers against the walls in a fit of rage when they lose a game – that form of emotional expression is definitely uncomplex and child-like. Similarly, I know a couple of kids that engage with games at a higher, more mature level, than many adults I know of. In all cases the people are captured by the child-like world of the game – but their *experience* of it lies at different levels of emotional development …. what is just ‘joy’ for the youngest child might be something more complicated for the mature adult.
@Justin Keverne – I agree that there is something dangerous about arguing that we have to regress in order to play games – but I challenge people to examine the kinds of emotional expressions they have while they play games – I’m betting that the great majority of people do in fact regress. So, I suppose, I should have made that an empirical claim rather than an analytical necessity. I appreciate that play is something that can be enjoyed by everybody – but have you tried to teach an adult to play that never played as a child? It is .. impossible. Play is the domain of the child – adults play too, but it is all steeped in their experiences of childhood play. We were all children at some point in our lives – and I cannot imagine how this could trivialize our adult experiences of something. At the same time, I do appreciate that adults do experience the world differently than children; that’s not at question. I just want to avoid the mistaken idea that adults somehow live at a level of maturity/experience completely devoid of their childhoods.
@mummifiedstalin – (nice name). I agree. I think intellectual development in adults is reflected in the kinds of games we play. I too find that emotionally simple games do not engage me to the degree that other games might … but at the same time, I know that I cannot play a purely intellectual game for its own sake. That leads to a whole other discussion, I think – in terms of the value of intellectual play vs. emotional play… and the values each have on psychological development.
Thank you for the responses thus far. It’s given me a lot to think about, and I think I want to write a follow-up article that addresses some of your concerns. I agree, it’s a troubling thesis.
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This is in part due to my upbringing, but the issue I’m seeing reflected here and on Abbott’s blog (to which I’m just now getting to comment because of a mini-vacation) is of a larger scale than just games.
We don’t like the idea of adults supposedly ‘regressing?’ What is regressive about exploring our full emotional ranges? I think of the fact that I enjoy many cartoons to this day and how this is looked upon as odd by many people (not my friends, per se, but the occasional date singles me out as out of touch with society).
I think the issue is being able to divorce ourselves from the thought that enjoyment, joy, and more ‘simple’ emotions (which aren’t that simple if we can just choose to ignore them) are denied us adults. Yes, we can think things are cute. Yes, they can make us giddy.
There is no disparity in being able to read Foucault one moment and giggling over the play presented in Zack & Wiki, in my mind. Much like with the hardcore/casual divide, I think we (as a society) are using the wrong terms. Of course, distancing child from necessarily being requisite with play would in no way be easy.
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I think it’s interesting that you included a picture of ‘My Neighbour Totoro’ in your post. Miyazaki, the genius behind the movie and many of the other studio ghibli films, was a member of a children’s book club during his college time, where he and the others would discuss why they like the stories, how they worked and why they worked. This, I think, had major infulence on this film making. Essentially, in order for him to create these movies meant having to think as a child and to ENJOY children’s stories as a child would. But at the same time ENJOYING it as an adult.
My thinking is that that’s the only true difference between children and adults. It’s not that we regress when we play, the emotions we have are the same as what we had as children, it’s just we don’t see that now we have more layers to contend with. These extra layers of complexity come from the normal process of growing up, experiencing life and gaining knowledge. It also explains why we stop playing games and start to see them as childish.
When you first see playdo, the possibilities are infinite,” I can my balls! I can flatten them!”. But soon that’s not enough, so next you get plasticine, “Wow! I can make characters!” But soon even that is not yeilding enough, so you get clay “Wow I can sculpt statues! Maybe I can exibit them!”And this maturity is not something that gets in the way, being adults give us experiences that children can’t. We can see subtlety in art and we can understand it, every experience we’ve wrought from life informs our perceptions and enriches us.
But unfortunately it often does get in the way. When someone feels guilty when they play a game it’s those upper parts that get in the way. We have to deal with the views of others, the society we live in, how we are expected to behave. And I think this comes from the massive amount of time humans have been here toiling as opposed to how long we’ve really had to relax and play. It wasn’t too long ago that if we didn’t work hard all day, everyday, we’d literary starve to death.
I think ultimately though that that statement is actually a positive one. It means that (barring an apocalypse or other such collapse in society) our culture will change to fit this new way of life.
Also, if there ever was a Johnny Depp movie that illustrates this idea it’s “finding neverland”.;)
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Your statement that as adults we deny ourselves the ability to be playful when we discuss video games in a serious manner is a dangerous claim. The problem is that “play” is often subversive in the adult world. Looking at many counter-cultural movements where play is a foundational element of its identity (i.e. rock and roll or even modernism) we would still view them as mature within there respective realms as art or cultural significance.
I find is extremely frustrating in the idea that the “sense of play” is reserved for children. If you look at many forms of art, there is are wide instances of play present in “adult” mediums whether you look at the artworks of Picasso or the films of Godard. Both artist spark extremely intellectual forms of discourse, but still contain elements of play whether its is playing with the medium or amusing the artist and spectator.
It is absurd that the notion of play will become divorced from games once adults view them as “serious busines.s” This does not occur in other mediums and it is doubtful that video game are the exception to this trend. I do not believe that to approach games intellectually inherently sacrifices the ability to enjoy a game’s intent as entertainment. In fact, my enjoyment in games has grown immensely since looking at them critically. As with many great books and films, revealing the work’s intertext and context has allowed me to appreciate and enjoy games more so than ever before.
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While speaking to an old Anthropology professor of mine, we got on the discussion of the nature of humans. One topic that came up was that of neoteny, the retention of childlike characteristics in adults. What he said was that almost all humans retain certain key childlike elements that may have been part of humanity’s success as a species; the elements he mentioned were curiosity and playfulness. The majority of mammals are curious and playful while young, but when they become adults they lose these qualities. Humans, however, retain these qualities in their personalities even as adults.
So, play is a childish activity, but this does not mean it is a regression. Almost all adults retain their childlike desire to play, and, as Graduate School Gamer points out, playfulness in adults can still be mature.
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I think I’ll ask, first, what is the distinction between play and serious business?
We label things that are a tremendous amount work, as play: playing an instrument or playing sports, for example. Both of these activities can be picked up instantly, by children or adults, but to be good at, say, the trombone, requires years of dedication and practice and work. They must, at times, take their playing seriously, or they won’t be able to play the more interesting sonatas.
On the other side, we generally label other activities as work: working on cars, working on a research paper, working a crowd. But any of these activities, when asking the right individual, is fun, and interesting, and that right individual is usually better at that activity than anyone who didn’t play at it.
So, I think my point here is that “play” and “work” are inseparable, and are not exclusively childish or adult-ish. Rather, when we play, we are exploring the world around us, making new connections and observations. When we work, we are practicing and rehearsing specific activities for some particular gain.
And, at all times, work and play are feeding off of each other. When we play (i.e. explore) we find more things to work on and perfect, and when we work (i.e. perfect) we find more things to play with and explore. Working seriously on playing the trombone makes a trombone player more proficient. He or she, then, can play more compositions, can explore more musical ideas, and can confidently play their music with emotion and fidelity. As her/his skill increases, so do the interesting musical bits he or she can play with.
So, to make a long-winded (and winding) comment short, I agree that we shouldn’t stop playing our video games and we shouldn’t stop our video games being played. A video game is meant to be an exploration into foreign lands and ideas, and to sacrifice this right to “play” would be suicidal to the creation of new, original, and engaging video games. But, to say that we shouldn’t take video games seriously would also cripple the creation of those same new, original, and engaging video games.
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There are certainly different games that manage to accomplish different tasks. Some games are more fun to simply “play,” while others I prefer to analyze and research. Some games I fun only frustrating and a chore, and I can categorize some of the games I played as a child this way in particular.
Yet there are also games that fall into the category of being purely “art.” Without starting any debates on the subject, there are those games which were created to be first art, and games second. I’m not really talking about some of the best commercial offerings a la Ico, Killer 7, etc. Mostly I’m looking at something like The Marriage, or the games of JPH Wacheski (www.iterationgames.com), The Endless Forest, etc.
I think the point I’m trying to make is that it does not seem entirely appropriate to me to classify games in a black-and-white manner of playful vs. serious. Doing so shoves a broad range of experiences in to a tight and narrow structure, and I feel it more accurate to present this as a spectrum, allowing for variations on this concept. Our favorite games would likely fall somewhere in the middle between playful and serious.
The problem with this whole idea though, as I hinted at above, is how actual art games seem to not even fit into this paradigm. I don’t think of art games as necessarily being playful, but then again I don’t find them to be exactly “serious business.” They appear to however somewhere just outside the boundaries of the entire playful/serious structure in a sort of unclassifiable space.
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Oh and btw, I’m not sure I understand why you used the image of RedHat in this post.
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