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Why We Play: Intro

Why We Play

-A series on the value of play in healthy development.-

Ahoy ahoy Internet, MKG here. I just got back from California, I had a long job training with Digital Media Academy, a technology camp for kids based all over nationwide. I'm not blowing smoke when  I say it's one of the most positive environments I've ever been in professionally. I highly recommend them.

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Anywho, all that training getting to know kids made me start thinking of a good topic for today's post. I thought a good place to start would be at, well, the beginning.

Why do we, as human beings, do anything? The answer? Because something motivates us to. Now, this is a very different subjective experience for every human that has ever been, but essentially, we all have the same basic needs. Abraham Maslow, an American psychologist, created this chart to illustrate the point:

While transcendental ideas; like finding your calling, answering destiny, etc, are complex notions and different for all people across all possible lives and modes of existence, simple needs like food, warmth and sleep can be easily understood by all people. All living creatures, really. If you've ever watched a movie and witnessed someone starve to death, or burn, or drown, you didn't need to be explained why that was bad. Your instinct and knowledge of these states of being inform you of this, thus filling the scene with tension of your own creation.

"Why do we, as human beings, do anything? The answer? Because something motivates us to."

This is illustrated in the pyramid by the use of layers. The very foundations of your entire sense of identity lies in your ability to feel safe. This is why children raised in environments where they cannot, (for whatever reason) feel safe, display extreme developmental disorders. This is also why people, when afraid, do awful things like trample each other. Their sense of identity has been compromised, and their bodies will fight to preserve themselves. The after effects of this type of psychological "injury," for lack of a better word, can be witnessed in the effects of PTSD :

• Recurrent, unwanted distressing memories of the traumatic event
• Reliving the traumatic event as if it were happening again (flashbacks)
• Upsetting dreams about the traumatic event
• Severe emotional distress or physical reactions to something that reminds you of the event

(courtesy of www.mayoclinic.org)

I would call these feelings a type of "wound" to the psyche. The pain will fade, but the memory will never, much like a scar on an old injury. 

So this, naturally, leads us to but one conclusion:

What the fuck does this have to do with video games?

Well, everything. The reality of the situation is life is very difficult. We aren't all born with the exact same potentials, the same access to resources, not even the same destinies. This makes what we could call, the "game" of life, a very subjective game. It would be like if every time you played a game Skyrim, your hero could only access a random set and number of abilities, instead of being able to put experience into anything they wish. Sometimes, the Dovahkiin is gonna blow.

To alleviate this, as we have evolved and developed civilization to keep our safety a little more "guaranteed," we have seen to the development of games. In a game, the goals are clear. In most, every player has the same advantages, to cheat is to violate the unspoken contract of the game, and, most importantly, goals come quickly and feel good to accomplish. In this way, a game can sometimes become (psychologically) almost "better" than life.

Now, to understand what a "game" can really be described as, we need to think of a definition of what it means to 'play.' There are many people who have taken many stabs at defining what "play" is, or even what it means to animals, in general. For our intents and purposes here, let's create a working definition. 

In my opinion, to "play" is to engage in structured (or unstructured) activity for the purpose of satisfaction, fulfillment, or, well, fun. 

This makes things a little muddy, as fun is different to everyone. 

I personally enjoy long drawn out military board games like Axis and Allies, but when I played it with my girlfriend, she got termites, she was so bored. So does that mean she doesn't understand fun? Of course not, her neural pathways are simply different, meaning she finds pleasure through different forms of play.

"This is what I imagine the Earth looks like in Heaven."
Copyright © 2015 Livid Labs, LLC. All Rights Reserved

People naturally want to play. Babies and children best exemplify this. A babies natural state is to be playing, making a mess, hurting itself. These simple notions we now take for granted are the organism's first attempts at interacting with, or controlling, the world they are able to perceive.

Think of when you were a child, everything was very fun. Not because of the inherent way you interacted with the activity, but because it was among your first attempts at doing so. We experience this memory most powerfully during moments of nostalgia.

This is why "play" has evolved into games. A game is that same unstructured (or structured) activity, but now influenced by a presence of rules and goals. Adults, having more complex minds, want a more complex experience. All games have a point, if they don't, you will probably think to yourself at some point while playing, "this isn't a very good game." These types of games, like say, hoola-hooping, usually are done for the satisfaction of simply performing the action. The goal of how many rotations you can make is an enjoyable one, but it is such a shallow goal, it is almost never adhered to for very long, other than to boast mastery of the activity, that is, "Eh, yous guys watch hows longs I can dos da thing."

To rectify this, games have become increasingly complex over the millennium, mostly driven by available technology and the basic concerns of present society. One of the earliest board games existed in ancient Egypt. It was called Senet, a game similar to Backgammon, the premise being the player is passing souls through the netherworld. This narrative aspect (the pieces of the game representing something greater) is almost always central to help create meaning in the experience.

A Senet set, the dice would have not existed in the ancient world, instead being replaced with "throwing sticks," an archaic way to create chanced rolls.

During Sony's last E3 presentation, they announced a game called No Man's Sky (24:20), a game where an entire galaxy is created for the players to explore, from the deepest seas to the farthest stars. The developers lamented that there are places in the game where no player will likely ever go.

How far we've come...

Gamepro walk through for No Man's Sky, level 1

Now rules and goals are all fine and dandy, but how can they make something fun? No one like rules, right? Well, yes and no. The reason we are ultimately playing the game is because the goals you can achieve during that short time of playing can mimic, and sometimes even surpass, achieving similar, tangible goals during actual, practical life. This means that landing that clutch final hit on a tough boss, or escaping the base at the last second are every bit as fulfilling, psychologically, as say, climbing a tree, getting a job, or even eating a sandwich (when you are not starving). 

To your brain, a challenge has simply been met and accomplished, a desire fulfilled, and you are now better for it.

But with playing, as any educator will tell you, comes learning. In the act of goofing off in a tree, children learn hand/eye coordination, build upper body strength and balance, and have a blast. In a biological sense, this also increases their ability to climb, in general. This means food that needs to be gathered from trees are now accessible to you. Your brain encourages these advantages by giving you the feeling of satisfaction when you learn something new and exercise mastery of the activity.

The same learning occurs in a game. Anyone who has played a particular game for long enough will report moments where they can observe similar patterns in real life because of the deep immersion in the experience. 

For example, anyone who has ever played Tetris, a simple block stacking game, for extended periods of time will likely report a feeling of looking for the natural ways for shapes to "fit" together. People still often refer to stacking groups of objects most efficiently as "Tetris-ing" them, thus demonstrating the principle and the effectiveness of the game play.

People who play a great deal of Guitar Hero note how they will often look at music in new ways, often listening for the patterns that were once invisible to them through the nebulous nature of a song. 

People who play a great deal of Portal are excellent in spatial reasoning, that is the awareness of what is around you in physical space and how you mentally 'map' your traversal through it.

Every game engages us in a different way, every activity motivates us through a different type of learning. Nothing exists in a vacuum. 

During the course of this blog, I hope to highlight some specific titles throughout the course of gaming history that are near and dear to my heart. 

I want to dissect them. 

I want to not only gush over my satisfaction with them, but why I derive such joy from such a seemingly trivial activity. 

I hope to open your eyes and challenge you to evaluate the experiences we enjoy for more than what they appear to be at face value and display in further detail, 

Why We Play. 

Thanks for reading.

- MKG

(Ending Credits Music)

Welcome to the Show...

It's hard writing an opening statement. I mean, it's the first thing the audience is going to hear (or read, I guess) and in many ways, it's going to determine if they tune in or tune out. Hopefully me explaining the obvious to you was sufficient enough to invite the former. :p

This blog will be devoted to my own personal examinations of the world around me, through the context of the mediums I consume. I may choose to relate cultural biases with video game narratives, I could review release schedules of movies in line with propaganda for foreign policy, but mostly I just want to get a good chuckle and a "hmmm" from you.

Most of my posts will be various series of articles, if I get any readers they will always have first say of which series should continue, die, change, etc.

If I may, allow me to present my first article and planned series:

*Drumroll*

*Kazoo*

Why We Play: A Look Into the Mechanics of Mechanics.

WWP will be an ongoing series in which I take a popular video game, play it, then attempt to explain the true engagements of the experience. From a gamer's perspective, why is it fun? What do we see in the bleeps and boops other see as so trivial?

Very often games are falsely attributed as being appealing solely due to gratuitous depictions of violence or over sexualization of characters.  This is a stigma I wish to clarify as to when this is absolutely true...:

(Warning, extreme depictions of sex & violence, duh)

Dead or Alive (Strangely, not the violent one)
Hatred


...and when knee-jerk reaction has rendered people unable see anything different:

Bayonetta


These will start out as mainly text posts with links to relevant video, but I hope to eventually graduate to making full videos. Well I think that explains everything nicely for now. First installment of WWP should be up in a few days. Enjoy the ride.

- MKG