This is my twelfth monthly Patch Wednesday post where I discuss a question about video games that I think is unanswered, unexplored, or not posed yet. I will propose my own tentative ideas and invite comments.
The series is called Patch Wednesday to mark the sometimes ragtag and improvised character of video game studies.
A modest observation, connecting Greek Mythology, Shakespeare, play theory and game definitions. I wrote this after learning that Brian Sutton-Smith had died, though he would have outlined a learned book in the same time I took.
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In Chris Crawford’s game definition, the notion of Safety means that “a game is an artifice for providing the psychological experiences of conflict and danger while excluding their physical realizations“.
Going back to Roger Caillois’ definition, games (jeux) are unproductive – a similar (though not identical) observation.
These are two variations of one of the most basic, and most difficult observations about games, and play: the idea that play/games do not have the full weight or impact of regular non-game activities. Why is that? The strange thing is that we in a backwards way can find a similar consideration in Greek mythology. Consider when Plato lets a voice describe man as a plaything for the gods:
God is the natural and worthy object of our most serious and blessed endeavours, for man, as I said before, is made to be the plaything of God, and this, truly considered, is the best of him (Plato: Laws.)
Why would we be playthings of the gods? Gods are generally immune to human action, but what makes it play? Enter play theory. Gordon Burghardt’s The Genesis Animal Play: Testing the Limits (MIT Press 2005) lists 5 criteria for identifying play in animals (I am paraphrasing them here):
- The activity has limited immediate function.
- The activity has an endogenous component – it is voluntary and autotelic.
- The activity differs structurally and/or temporally from the “real” activity it is based on.
- Repeat performance.
- The activity happens in a relaxed field – the animal is not stressed or frightened.
Number 5 is the interesting one: for play to happen, the animal has to feel … we could call it safe. Which an immortal does in the presence of mortals.
This is also what makes the standard Hollywood villain scary: when he says “Let’s play a game”, he is saying that he considers himself above any potential consequences of the activity. I.e. he believes himself infinitely stronger than our protagonist and/or he is not afraid of death. It can also be found outside Hollywood, now that I think of it. James Bond villains tend to hubristically believe that they can play a game with James Bond.
Also Shakespeare, King Lear:
As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods.
They kill us for their sport.
In my own game definition, I used the softer idea of negotiable consequences. This idea points to the fact that gods can make bets about their playthings, but that those bets may have dire consequences for them. So it is entirely possible for two gods (we are probably polytheistic in this argument), to suffer consequences that are not quite safe, but it is a bet they must make between themselves in order to get outside safety.
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On two occasions I heard Brian Sutton-Smith claim that play provides a modicum of joy in our pain-filled lives. Although that wasn’t meant as a definition of play, it is interesting by reversing the order of events: we aren’t safe, and therefore we play. Rather, play is the animal deliberately pretending to be safe, while play lasts.