Deep Play

Play :: Games :: Realism ::

Play/ Deep Play

• play is "... a free activity standing quite consciously outside "ordinary" life as being "not serious," but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds with its own proper boundaries of space and time according to fixed rules and an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common word by disguise or other means." - - - Johan Huizinga, from Homo Ludens, 1938.

• deep play is “ "Play in which the stakes are so high, it is irrational for me to engage in it at all." - - Clifford Geertz, drawing from Jeremy Bentham

Immersion

• Immersion, according to Margaret Morse, can be understood as "as a metaphor, as a state of mind and as a frame, mental or technological."

• "... 'the state of being deeply engaged or involved' in something. (OED) That is, one may immerse oneself in something as a body or, in an extended sense, as a mind. In this figurative sense, immersion invokes the subjective experience of entering a realm or space through a surface or limit and becoming engrossed within it."

• "The very idea of 'immersion' is a frame that separates it from everyday wide-awake behavior and grants (or denies) it cultural value. 'The suspension of disbelief' is the formula for this being-carried-away by a novelistic fiction.”

• Diving into the Wreck by Adrien Rich

Immersion

• Char Davies, Ephemere and Osmose

Alienation or Distancing effect

• A theatrical strategy used by Bertholdt Brecht to disrupt the passive identification an audience member would have with the character. The "distancing," or "alienation effect" would incite the viewer to be a critical observer rather than an unquestioning one.

Liminality

• "Public reflexivity is also concerned with what I have called "liminality." This term, literally "being-on-a-threshold," means a state or process which is betwixt-and-between the normal, day today cultural and social states and processes of getting and spending, preserving law and order, and registering structural status. Since liminal time is not controlled by the clock it is a time of enchantment when anything might, even should, happen. Another way of putting it would be to say that the liminal in socio-cultural process is similar to the subjunctive mood in verbs - just as mundane sociostructural activities resemble the indicative mood. Liminality is full of potency and potentiality. It may also be full of experiment and play." - - Victor Turner

Games

• According to Jesper Juul, games are:

1.a rule-based formal system;

2.with variable and quantifiable outcomes;

3.where different outcomes are assigned different values;

4.where the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome;

5.the player feels emotionally attached to the outcome;

6.and the consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable

Types of Games // Caillois

• agon: Competition. Rethinking War Games // 3 player chess

• alea: Chance

• mimesis: Mimicry, or role playing World Without Oil

• ilinx: Vertigo, altering perception - ie. spinning, or a roller coaster Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater

• from Man Play and Games, 1961

Other types of games in digital culture

• pervasive games are games that are tightly woven into daily life and into the physical world. Day of the Figurines

• role playing games (RPG or MMORPG - massive multiplayer online role playing games) World of Warcraft

• FPS stands for first person shooter Grand Theft Auto

• serious games are “ones that intend more than entertainment for its players”

• alternate reality games (ARG) are “interactive, transmedia narratives that evolves in response to what its players do” World Without Oil

• location based games: Blast Theory, Can You See Me Now?

Realism

• In art and cinema, realism refers to the ability of arrangment of images and to enact a critical reflection of socio-cultural conditions.

• realism != realisticness (in programming “!=” an exclamation mark before an equals sign means “does not equal”)

• “I suggest that game studies should follow these same arguments and not turn to a theory of realism in gaming as mere realistic representation, but define realist games as those games that reflect critically on the minutiae of every day life, replete as it is with struggle, personal drama, and injustice.” -- Alex Galloway

• Through action

Video Games and Social Realism

• Galloway’s “Columbine theory” of realism in gaming, vs. a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between games and reality.

• “Columbine theory:” games+gore=psycotic behavior

• inside outward --> affective action (Ender’s Game)

& outside inward --> realistic modeling and simulation

Representation

• The meaningful depiction of the world through text or images.

• “... because games are not merely watched but played, they supplement this debate with the phenomenon of action.”

Realism

• “newsgames” a short game quickly created in response to a news event.

• Gonzalo Frasca, September 12th & Madrid

Realism

• If some forms of play allow us to explore possible solutions to embedded socio-cultural problems, should these forms of play have a realist structure to be the most effective?

• America’s Army

• Dead in Iraq

• “Any game that depicts the real world must grapple with this question of action.” - Alex Galloway

Case Study: Domestic Tension

• link to selected vids