"To play is to explore possibilities, to test limits, to move beyond the functional and utilitarian and into the realm of the unexpected and inappropriate"
The video above is a presentation by Eric Zimmerman from earlier this year, about his new book on the importance of games and play, The Rules We Break (Eric speaks from this point).
Here’s the opening paragraphs from a feature in Psyche by Eric:
To play is to explore possibilities, to test limits, to move beyond the functional and utilitarian and into the realm of the unexpected and inappropriate. Punk rock played with the conventions of how to make music. Political revolutions play with the established order. New ideas play with old ideas. In experiencing play, we are training ourselves to be flexible and creative. To be critical. To not just accept things as they are.
As we play with something, we start to understand it in new ways. Often, we even transform that something into something new. Play is like a shamelessly generous parasite. It grabs on to other things – behaviours, objects, situations – but, instead of sucking the life out of them, it does exactly the opposite. It enlivens them. It brings joy. It opens up potentials you never would have thought possible.
Games – from 5,000-year-old boardgames to last year’s video-game blockbusters – are miniature laboratories for playing with possibility. Because play never happens in isolation (we are always playing with something, after all), games can be a way of deepening our connections to each other. Play puts us in a strange dance of cooperation and competition, where we come to know others and ourselves more deeply.
A game is a conflict. That’s true whether two teams are facing off for a basketball game, a handful of friends are role-playing a fantasy boardgame around a kitchen table, or you are absorbed in your latest smartphone puzzle addiction. Every game pits players with or against each other in a system of conflict. This ‘conflict’ might sound negative, a kind of antagonistic competition. In fact, the conflict in games is always collaborative in some way.
This is because everyone participating agrees, voluntarily, to take part in the game together. If we’re being forced to play, it’s not really play. We all decide to spend the next couple of minutes – or hours, or weeks – within the space of play, and together keep the struggle of the game going. Even when we play alone, we are in a sense collaborating as part of a community of players who are all playing the same game.