Are you Game?
"With age, some games turn serious" - image below and quote (c) Raph Koster, from A Theory of Fun
Quite a while ago, friend and colleague, Colby, alerted me to the importance of ‘gamers’, creaters/designers/players of online games, and their future role in society "they’ll be the future CEO’s" and they will understand what you are talking about vis a vis your interest in context…And games and gamers are important in your quest for sustained virtual space.
If you read nothing more in this post to understand why, at least read this story: A Story About A Tree to see just how powerful an idea Colby was passing forward to me.
As a background my current bent is physical and virtual spaces and their influence on dialogue, conversation…on healthy communities…and how to create those spaces so that dialogue, at best experience face to face, can be created and sustained in the virtual space…or can be extended to significantly large groups of people…I also believe in shared mental spaces and community building that come about as a result of dialogic practices including storytelling, shared meaning and…
With the benefit of a lot of thinking around this, Colby’s comment was a gift. This Tree story echos back to a story I heard when sharing my views and expereinces with Dialogue in Washington. A man, Frank, responded that he was part of a networking group that was recently going through a painful downturn…a member of their group, let’s call him Jim, had died. Though Jim was not the most social or the most heavily involved in the group in terms of organization of events etc, he was known to spend a lot of time thinking about the group, and sending the odd email out to check up on individuals within the group and make sure they were ok etc. His death had left a significant gap in their group…and had changed the nature of the group…forever.
So how does this relate back to games?
No many of you out there think games are exactly that, not real? Or feel that there is very little relevance and relation of tabletop and online games - from the dungeons and dragons variety through to the latest ‘big games’ - large multiplayer games coming out of Tisch - to real life.
Yet at the same time you have all enjoyed a round of monopoly while also noticing how easy it is for the bank and the major property holder to control all!? Or spent a lot of time absorbed with a game trying to get to the next highest level on [substitute childhood game of choice - tetris super mario pinball solitaire etc]. That is, games represent models of systems we operate in, and they serve as deeply motivating and challenging, even if the premise seems very simple.
Periodically, I have kept coming back to Colby’s comment and last night was again confronted with the idea when a gamer, another Oren, was out to dinner with me and some friends…He pointed me in the direction of several gamers, including Raph Koster (pronounced Rayf), Sony’s recently ex-Chief Creative Officer.
Raph, has some interesting thoughts, and there are many other’s who do too…(such as Steven Berlin Johnson, and this article on using games to tap collective intelligence).
Essentially Colby was alluding to the fact that gamers, those out there who make games, understand the importance of story and environment in creating reality for people…and they do also understand the importance of human communication…and they know how to create those stories and environments that captivate/energise people - hold them in that space. And games themselves are a powerful contet for the creation and sustaining of community…and are influenced by intention and connection between players in the community. My lessons today has shown me that there is a lot to suggest that both games and gamers have a great capacity for good - to be used/to create healthy physical and dialogic spaces and sustained positive change in community organizations and individuals alike. To reduce obesity (see this article)
And as many people with some social psychology understand have likely read, when we as individuals/human’s experience something, the line of what is objectively ’real’ and perception of reality of an experience, even if it was virtual/dream, is significantly blurred.
If you haven’t already, and your interest in the power of virtual spaces and power of games as community builders etc has been piqued read A Story About A Tree. It also echos my belief that there are things that can’t be seen that operate in this world, there are intentions and mental spaces that are shared and serve as a connecting point around which we meet, and learn, and share, and grow…and…
…games and gamers are powerful indeed. And suggest a key in navigating the creation/design of spaces that lead to healthy dialogue, healthy communities…or perhaps that should read, embody* healthy dialogue, communities.
McLuhan’s ghost keeps whispering in my ear the medium is the message^
*I believe spaces are living…
^ My new clarity on this includes the physical environment, our spaces: our buildings, homes, workplaces, cities…all of these carry the pattern of the message…they are the message embodied. Change the environment, change the media, you get a different message…
Please note: This is only the beginning of my furore into gaming, so I encourage you to share your knowledge / begin exploring with me. As part of my commitment to documenting my thinking and making my encounters with new ways of thinking accessible you are likely to read more of such pre-synthesized work…it is part also of the demonstration of the evolution of ideas…and my needing to appreciate that things take time…
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September 7th, 2006 at 3:10 am
Communication can happen when two entities share a language.
Language typically involves signs and semantics.
Semantics usually grounds in geometrical and physical intuition, though with enough education just about anything can act as ground.
Experienced Go players talk of groups “making a living,” “having Ko fights,” etc., even though they’re “only” stones on a piece of wood.
Virtual reality leverages the baseline geometrical and physical intuition we all develop by modelling that inside a computer.
Online Go communities exist with players engaged in an extended dialogue most of us cannot understand because we lack the education to interpret what was said on the Go board.
Computers discretize/granularize data. You look at a screen and see a tree, but really it’s a bunch of dots so small your brain connects them into an image. Can the butterfly effect take hold between the dots?
We say a machine is “buggy when it doesn’t do what we think it should do. What we think it should do is physically realize an abstract model of behavior. E.g., a soda machine should implement a “put $1 in and push button, get soda out” model. But the buggy machine is doing exactly and only what it should be doing as a physical object. What’s “wrong” or “buggy” about obeying the laws of physics?
Who controls the model of reality implemented in the virtual, and why do we trust them with this power? Could they, by creating these realities, be trying to convince us that the model is more important than the reality? That you always get a soda when you put $1 into a (virtual) soda machine? That, for the sake of the game, it’s not important that real soda machines don’t act that way?
You might argue that virtual reality, and games, factor reality and education out of interaction. One can specify what needs to be learned before communication can occur (rules of the game), and one can specify the contexts in which those communications gain meaning (virtual physical laws).
Is what remains after such a factorization really “interaction,” or is it a digitized approximation which our brains dutifully smooth over till it looks real? Does the difference matter? Will it matter to children raised in a world bent on asserting, without really knowing yet, that it doesn’t?
September 7th, 2006 at 6:35 pm
Anthony, thank you for this…
it is clarifying although it links to a conversation with a random but lovely illustrator human Oren (of the Kandinsky not gaming post) on whether an oil painting image that is created on the computer and when printed will look like the image of an oil painting, even though it never existed in the physical beyond the computer program as an oil painting ie no-one painted the oil painting in oils and took a photo of it is a. real and b. the same.
I was arguing that even if I couldn’t ‘tell’ it wasn’t real in the physical wall hanging painting sense, even if the image looked the same, the oil painting was NOT the same, it was simply a representation of what was real…and there were things that on other levels beyond seeing that were missing…I was trying to explain it in the context of ’simple’…I am currently looking at simple in the positive. But making something more simple than it is concerns me. The loss concerns me.
I acknowledge that there is a simple that exists. But an oil painting that has been painted with oils on a canvas that is as simple as an oil painting gets. Making an image that simulates an oil painting, in my thinking, strips the oil painting of many layers that are essential to our experience of it at a bodily and beyond seeing level…
I am concerned that this is what we are allowing to happen all over the world - we are creating interactions with things that have stripped away qualities that are inherent / healthy and accepted the virtual or simpler than simple form.
Simple is beautiful, simpler than simple is scary.
This doesn’t mean I don’t want to learn and grow my understanding knowledge and love for virtual spaces..it means I want to also hold the space of concern for what we are giving up in the process if we substitute rather than compliment the physical…
A story, a truth:
The nasty line ‘the best thing since sliced bread’ is rearing its head…in a post-WWII world, the triumph of industrialisation was convincing people to give up healthy rye bread, a more complex form of simple sugar, in favour of simple white bread…which is worse for us…we then chose frozen over fresh and longer lasting than lasting as long as it does on its own and…so forth…
The worst part is, sliced processed white bread was / is a simpler than simple thing … it reduced the quality of our bread …and marks an interesting departure in our age…
we were willing in the name of progress to accept and believe something was BETTER even though it was worse for us. We were willing to give up old in favour of new even if it meant giving up healthier, or perhaps an even better word is, more NOURISHING choices. What is it about us that allows us to do that?
Your question, does the difference matter? continues to knaw..it does, and it does not…it does not and it does…
thank you for opening up my thinking to re-visit this conversation with Oren and document it, and making it accessible, something I am committed to do currently and connect it to one I had with a dialogue partner colleague and friend, futurist Paul Schumann on ‘best thing since sliced bread’. thank you also to Greg for your response via email. I will post it following his permission.
September 7th, 2006 at 9:51 pm
I agree with your new found importance on this topic. For me it goes much much further. I don’t recall exactly what I’ve shared with you, but taking from a lot of bright people let me see how I can break this down:
Nonaka’s thoughts on knowledge creation and transfer…going fom implcit to explicit understanding. Unfortunately the nature of a list is that it reads in order, however, as you will see…I believe it is a never ending cycle. Socialization, Externalization, Combination, Internalization I like his model because it shows the importance of both individual and group work. Further it supports the notion that knowlege is really a social process. On a playful note because of the truth it holds…watch this Steven Colbert commentary…http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmHm0rGns4I.
Howard Gardner’s thoughts on “frames of mind”. Ways in which the human mind categorizes and holds knowledge. Concepts, Stories, Theories, Skills. Again, the list reads as if there exists a linear progression. I believe we start at any of these places and go through them. I like his model because each frame serves as the vehicle for moving through Nonaka’s model.
Stuart Brown “institute for play” reinforces the whole notion of play. Separate from game. Your quote suggests that our games get more serious as we get older…true enough…but the bigger issue is that we forget to play. I believe that our protestant work ethic has taught us that play is for kids. However, it is exactly the state of open ended discovery that creates new things…Stuarts quote, “The opposite of play is not work…it’s depression”
So in typical Greg think, I have tried to mash all of these thoughts and ideas into a model. To make sense of them all simultaneously. Attached is a slide deck that holds some of these thoughts. Feel free to post the play graphic if you can.
Lastly there is the why. Why do people do this? Why are we so inclined to follow this path? For this I lean on Maturana (cognition) and Lawrence & Nohria “Driven”. From Maturana on the “nature of nature” I take that there are three intrinsic human drives (almost reasons to exist and think) 1) the search for truth, 2) the search for operational coherence, 3) the search for mythical causes. I’ve often thought that you could apply these three “rules” or measure the existence of them to determine the overall heatth of something. If any of the three are missing in an endeavor, be it personal or business, will it be found lifeless?
Similarly, Driven gives us these four human drives: 1) Drive to learn, 2) the drive to bond, 3) the drive to defend, 4) the drive to acquire.
So what does this have to do with gaming? Well….I believe the most successful games are those that deliver on all these fronts. Games that do are intrinsically addictive. Why are marriages breaking up over games? Why do I have to beg/punish my kids to do their homework, but can’t seem to get them to stop playing games? When will we both appreciate the power of games, and develop them responsibly to a greater social end? There is a segment of the gaming population who share this perspective…they call their work Serious Games….I think it should be called Serious Play.
September 8th, 2006 at 12:14 am
thanks Greg!!
I will post the slides you sent me shortly
in the meantime I wanted to add that I love the concept of ’serious play’. I remember that a while back I wanted to write an article on fun and play at work (in ones workplace) - that there is a huge and crucial role that it plays
I think I got as far as a title along the lines of ‘more than child’s play’ or something…
glad to pick up those concepts in your thread, and come back to humaness…
September 8th, 2006 at 2:38 am
Flight simulators don’t actually fly, no matter how realistic they are.
Real flight can cause death. Death is scary.
If you can pretend to be flying without risking death, why would you bother flying for real? You can get some of the benefits of flying by pretending to fly, after all.
Isn’t that where the risk of addiction to games arises? Partial benefit without risk, confabulation about the value of the what is being missed.
Simulation breaks from reality. No matter how hard you try, you can’t get from point A to point B in a flight simulator. It’s a matter of whether you care about that or not.
How many Americans live their entire lives without moving more than ten miles from their home town?
I like the name “serious play” too — “game” emphasizes the simulation, but “play” emphasizes the real process.
I had this ironic thought, that games are sometimes about forgetting to play. Because playing is about experimenting, and experimenting requires an object to experiment upon. But when you’re addicted to the fantasy world of a game, aren’t you giving up experimentation for a facsimile?
Even these massive, online games which involve people and an interactive element necessarily restrict the nature of possible interactions to a set of rule-governed possibilities So there might be more rules, and the spectrum of possible interactions may be much broader than in chess, say, but how’s that any different from increasing the resolution of a digital camera? You still see the pixels when you zoom in close enough, right? I still wonder whether that matters, or not (though to be fair, I believe it does — I believe that simulations, no matter how faithful and no matter how many people they fool, are never the real thing).
Dunno. I’m just playing around with these words and ideas. I think about games a lot as I try to get computers to learn how to play them.
September 12th, 2006 at 9:31 am
Natalie,
Very big subject and very complex…
Not much I can add casually except…
A lot depends upon the direction that games take in the future. If they can be used to educate, then some positive things can come from the approach. But, no matter what, businesses will have a tough time dealing with people who have learned that failure is the way to learn. Even though I know that this is true, the flippant attitude that business is game will be tough for executives to handle.
August 16th, 2007 at 7:41 pm
I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100% regarding Are you Game?, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong :)