Reading notes from Callois - from Man, Play, and Games, and Huizinga - from Homo Ludens:

I’ve asked you to read Huizinga and Caillois because they are two of the most important thinkers in regards to theorizing play (Huizinga) and games (Caillois). They are also important because later game designers have cited them as important influences and tried to build their ideas into their games. 

Huizinga is important because he attempts to think of play as a central category in human experience. We normally think of WORK as the most important thing that humans do, but Huizinga asks, instead: what if we prioritize and think carefully about PLAY? What is play, and how does it influence culture and society? Huizinga argues that play has 5 essential aspects: 

1. Play is free, is in fact freedom.

2. Play is not “ordinary” or “real” life.

3. Play is distinct from “ordinary” life both as to locality and duration. In other words, play has a distinct space or place (imagine what it’s like when you start a game and hear the opening music) and a distinct time (play is NOT the time of work or the average day). 

4. Play creates order, is order.

5. Play is connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained from it. 

Because of these factors, Huizinga will say that play is a key factor in understanding different cultures and societies. In other words, how a culture plays says a lot about what cultures value and how they operate. For our purposes: how do the (video) games we play help us understand our cultures and societies? Feel free to reread our course theme in light of these ideas. 

Caillois is important because he applies Huizinga’s work to games specifically. Play is a broad category, but games are more specific. To help us understand how people play and game, Caillois first proposes a distinction between games that are more rule-based, which he calls ludus, and games that are more freeform, which he calls paideia. Once he makes this basic distinction between heavily rule-based games (think chess) and more open playing (think kids playing make-believe), he then proposes 4 categories of play that help us make sense of how games work. 

Alea, or chance: Games often use chance or randomness. Poker is an example of chance because you don’t know what cards you will be dealt, for example. In video games, it might be that different monsters drop different weapons or treasure randomly. 

Agon, or competition: Games are often about competition, whether that’s between players themselves, like in a fighting game, or with the player fighting against the conditions of a game, like in Tetris. 

Ilinx, or vertigo: Games often make us feel excited (or over-excited). A jump scare in a horror game that makes your heart race is a good example of vertigo. Another example outside of video games is a rollercoaster; the feeling you have at the top of the first hill and the feeling you have as it starts to scream down the hill is a perfect example of vertigo. 

Mimicry, or role-playing: Games make us play as different characters who are not ourselves. When we play as Mario or Sonic or guide a team of characters in Final Fantasy, we are partaking of role-playing. 

Again, I had you read these two because they are often considered to be the first people who thought seriously about play and games as distinct human activities. As you play the assigned games for our course, think about how these two might categorize them according to their ideas. And remember, games might be a combination of several terms! Dr. Langesov, for example, might be an example of mimicry and vertigo. Try to apply the concepts to our first few games and see what you come up with! 



Notes on Sotamaa + Schweizer
Sotamaa, “Artifact”

Sotamaa asks us to consider video games as ARTIFACTS, as human creations made by skill, in three senses. They argue that video games, understood as artifacts, “shed light on the forms and nature of play” in a particular society; we can use video games, in other words, to “read” our culture and society.

“The products of the modern video game industry,” Sotamaa argues, “have the potential to capture, archive, and communicate the cultural, social, and economic ideas and behaviors typical of particular periods and societies.” Here are the three senses of artifacts that are used in the article:

Games are MATERIAL ARTIFACTS. They are created objects, as are the consoles, cartridges, discs, boxes, and accessories that make up the video game considered as a whole. This is the basic sense of artifact we probably have in mind when we hear the word “artifact”: the world of video games are made up of THINGS, from consoles to discs to Steam Decks.
Games are SOFTWARE (or PROCEDURAL) ARTIFACTS. Video games are fundamentally collections of code, while consoles or computers are a collection of hardware and software that read and “perform” that code. “Digital games are always intimately tied to the ways in which computers operate,” and “the shapes of computational processes are distinctive—and connected to histories, economies, and schools of thought.” The code of a game – the way in which a game can be understood as a software artifact – determines how a game works; the way a physics engine is programmed, for example, the code for the physics of a game, will determine how Link can (or can’t) move in Breath of the Wild.
Games are CULTURAL ARTIFACTS. If our goal is to “read” a video like a text – to understand what a particular game is trying to SAY or how it is related to culture and society – we need to pay attention to the previous two senses and also try to understand how games make MEANING. Sotamaa argues that the “actual meanings attached to playing video games are largely dependent on the socio-cultural context” of the world in which the game and the player exist: “modern video games acquire their meaning through a complex collection of social interactions.” A society like ours, for example, that values strength, violence, and the military will be more inclined to create first-person shooters like Call of Duty, than, say, games that value pacifism or altruism.
Our goal in the class, then, is to play different games and use them as lenses with which to see our own cultural and social values and meanings. Why was a particular game made by a particular company at a particular time, and what does that game say about the society in which it was created?

 

Schweizer, “Platforms”

To understand how video games work, we have to understand the hardware on which they run and the codes that make them up. Platforms are “standardized sets of things that enable games.” The hardware of the PS5 is a standardized collection of things that plays particular kinds of games: the Unreal 5 engine is a particular arrangement of code that enables certain types of designs and physics engines. A microprocessor is a platform, and so, in this example, is a 3-D graphics engine. Platforms, then, “refer to the whole ecosystem in which an artifact exists.” Studying platforms enables us to investigate the “underlying computing systems” that go into and a game and get a better handle on “how they enable, constrain, shape, and support the creative work that is done on them”; they “help us understand the choices made during the development of an artifact.” If Breath of the Wild was made on an original Nintendo (the 8-bit NES), for example, it would be a totally different game; the fact that BOTW uses a 3-D engine means that certain choices and actions are possible within the game. Schweizer sums it up this way: “there are realistic material limitations that inform the kinds of decisions designers, programmers, artists, and others are able to make in the creation of a game.” By analyzing the platforms that different games us – and seeing these platforms as both enabling AND constraining – we can start to connect Sotamaa’s three senses of games as material, software, and cultural artifacts together, allowing us a richer analysis of video games and how they work.





GAME JOURNAL 1 (POST BY 9/9, RESPOND TO GROUP MEMBERS BY 9/11) - GAME JOURNAL 1 4
This assignment asks you, in a low-stakes environment, to reflect on and analyze a game we have played. I would like you, in at least 2 paragraphs, to pick a game and outline/discuss/describe (A) its formal characteristics and (B) its connection to our class readings.

For (A), talk about the game's formal characteristics: you can talk about, for example, level design, aesthetics or art style, sound design, narrative, characters, etc. 

For (B), try to connect the game to our class readings and concepts; you can use a single concept, like Caillois' concept of "competition," or talk about the platform of the game, for example. 

Your game journals are an opportunity to discuss our games with your colleagues and share impressions and insights into your game experiences. These are INFORMAL assignments! You don't need to write them like proper essays. 

I would like you to write your initial response to this prompt by Monday, September 9th, and respond to at least 2 of your group members by Wednesday, September 11th. 

And please write about DR. LANGESKOV!