Theory of Games – Mid-term paper: Crack Open This Box to Play

Games and play have been a means for humans to learn about their own capabilities and placement in their family and society, the physical world for hundreds of thousands of years, if not since the split of warm-blooded animals into mammals. All mammals are seen to play, from lions to dolphins to large hairless apes that wear clothing. The types of play often center on a talent needed for survival directly, such as getting away from a predator, or indirectly, such as the achievement of status or access to resources. Games therefore represent a huge area for the development of human capabilities in many mediums, whether they be traditional formats involving physical playing pieces/players or the more modern developments of purely mental abstractions. If games are essentially the structuring or formatting of the more broadly mammalian play, then games of all natures should be investigated for successful formatting in order to transfer this to the digital arena of non-linear structure. If also, the challenge is how to move interface design forward so that the experience the digitalization of interface and gaming has led to so often described of entering the “zone” is reconciled with the “fragmented experience of the world” (Johnson) that “undoubtedly” coincides with “a chronic case of attention deficit disorder” (Johnson) that, perhaps it makes sense to re-examine the role of play and define the state of the gaming interface. I would propose that play is ancient, gaming is learning and the potential for digital games for teaching purposes is huge, but only if we re-evaluate how interface activates play.

So what is play and what is its function? The function of mammalian play according to physical anthropology is experimentation and learning, and in fact is the primary mechanism of primate learning. The portions of the brain that are capable of learning new things, the so-called grey-matter is only seen in any significant quantities in mammals. From a Darwinian perspective grey-matter provides the mechanism for processing types of information that gives mammals a key competitive advantage; the ability to change behavior and adapt. (Hawes) Tit for Tat, the basic computer simulation of behavior within a network (Wright) although reductionary in nature, illustrates this principle very well. Given the ability to adapt for the better, a choice-making mechanism will do so. What we also know from physical anthropology is that when mammals are isolated from their species, mammals will in fact still display behaviors like its genetic wiring requires, a dog will still bark, a dolphin will still swim, which should make Noam Chomsky very happy. So the building blocks for play exist in all incoming mammals.

However, in physical isolation, key behaviors that are considered “learned” fail to develop any sophistication in mammals; the dog will not learn how to hunt properly, for example, an activity that takes place alone or with a group but requires interaction. There is a rough correlation between brain size and social group size among primates. (Hawes) This link between social interaction and mental engagement seems to be an intuitive understanding that not been lost on game designers throughout human history and should not be forgotten going forward. Social interaction of one type or another is the primary means of teaching and learning then – with at its smallest factor one teacher and one student, though not necessarily holding the same position throughout the interaction. Like in any good conversation, the places are interchangeable – something Chris Crawford suggests in his definition of interaction. Crawford asserts that the basic process of “interaction” is a multi-step cyclical process akin to conversation – listen, think, speak and so on in a loop. Educational theorists like Harold Gardner, Carol Gilligan and others might argue that this process so carefully described has a few important aspects in the development of successful interaction abilities. It may be worth it to dissect a few in order to shed light on the types of transactions that takes place, as building blocks for future game-design.

One type of interaction that takes place is a play-type behavior known as “following a script” (Gardner). This type of behavior is seen by developmental psychologists in children as young as 5 and involves re-enacting a recurring event, such as going to school or celebrating a holiday. It is described as an activity that does not depend on but uses and becomes intertwined with linguistic capability. By re-enacting scenes seen more than once, the child perceiving the event has social significance, ties successful performance to social success and therefore survival. A side effect is a kind of indoctrination into collective memory, or a recognition that “part of the emerging mind already exists beyond the skin of the child, in the games, customs and symbols that adults are directing at a growing future member of their community.” (Gardner)

Most role-playing games draw on this primal behavior, from girls playing “dress-up” in their bedrooms to Cowboys and Indians to Diplomacy to character-based 3-D games like Vampire Hunter; the Dark Prophesy. (mentioned in class by Michael Chiaramonte). This element of game interaction has been worked into the design from the beginnings of digital game design, as discussed in class. By cloaking the identity in archetypal trappings, such as in Zelda, the player can use the identity to play out what both behavioral psychologists and zoologists describe as “acting out behavior similar to adult forms” (Hawes). The digitized context provides a freedom of identity as described by Sherry Turkle, to create and alternate version of the self, even, or a version deemed more valuable or preferable in some way. This identification process may or may not be useful ultimately depending on the alignment of motivation of player and character, but the script-playing behavior exists in subtle forms in digital formats throughout.

A second type of interaction takes place is purely symbolic notational interaction, mediated through literate forms of symbols of shape, color, alphabetic or numeric form. The subsector of games that holds videogames, I propose, has been almost exclusively in the arena of notational or abstract symbolic play – a simple symbol standing in for something much more complex but which can be assigned a symbol. Whether playng Zelda, Vampire Spayer, Pac-Man, Tetris, or Sims, everything seen is mediated through the abstract symbolic. Everythign is reduced to metaphor and heavily relies on symbolic space, symbolic logic and verbal & logical intelligences. The use of symbolism is actually key for the digital medium to work at all, since all information is reduced to abstraction and in fact for successful interface to work, the interface creates “the sense of a disordered universe made orderly again by the power of metaphor.” (Johnson)

However, uses of abstract symbolic logic have almost exclusively been tied to one sense so far (the eye) and uses of intelligence rely heavily on those tied to notation (the verbal and math/logical). Spatial and bodily intelligence especially is only called upon via or through the mediation of these other abstractions. This seems to me a false hierarchy of senses, interaction types and intelligence types, limiting the effectiveness and integration of games to those who prefer or have a natural or cultivated talent for it. Spatial and bodily intelligences have been relegated to secondary tools. Other types of mammalian play include predatory and locomotor play, seemingly more fundamental in nature, or of a lower order as tied to an animal past. (Hawes) are relegated to a lesser function, as they are not facilitated by flat glass and there is little space for their use.

I would make the argument that to embrace the future of not just a digitally-mediated interface, but to activate the human potential of learning via play, we must incorporate the play elements of a broader group of intelligences to include spatial, bodily/kinesthetic, emotional, interpersonal, intrapersonal, musical, and perhaps pattern recognition. Spatial and bodily/kinesthetic intelligences seem to have the most potential for immediate growth in the digital medium, as we break digital computing power out of the box and onto our bodies. How the body moves through space gives us enormous amounts of information within game scenarios and outside of it. Confining the interface to a two-dimensional abstract representation beamed straight at our eyeballs through a flat glass will get limited results due to the nature of the types of senses and intelligences it taps into. The results of the interaction are sound, but can only be seen as limited in a wider experience of game-playing throughout human history that taps into many types of play humans have used to learn, adapt and flourish. For humans to continue “playing” we must embrace our many aspects of learning.

In Tetris, for example, a much-discussed game in our class, the brain is stimulated to recognize the logic of the game through color-coded interlocking shapes which reward the player by successful construction of solid blocks or lines of “solid” shape. Although spatial intelligence here is activated, the entire experience is enabled by a facility with other forms of notational intelligence – ability to use the brain to activate a few digits at most to symbolically redirect the falling blocks. The way the brain is activated in this situation is more akin to that of a monkey in a recent study at Duke University proving that a primate can activate a robotic arm through the thought process which somehow activated a microprocessor. It seems we have found shortcuts to stimulate in isolation a specific sub-routine of intelligent/play behavior.

This reductionist approach to defining human intelligence, however, seems more akin to the genome-mapping process, whereby abilities and intelligences are treated as isolated factors. Studies of this nature may indeed provide answers to long-standing questions on the uniqueness of human talents and behaviors. By identifying individual sub-routines of intelligence, such as capabilities to manipulate abstract spatial metaphors on the fly under increasingly stressful situations, we may be able to group or couple isolated specific sub-routines in order to train better soldiers, for example. The opportunity to use this power for good or bad is still open.

I would argue that a more holistic or complexity-based understanding of the individual learning powers adding up to more than the sum of their values, with interactions seen as part of a multi-linear system of self-catalytic processes. Each type of play naturally overlaps with the others, and in any given game of more traditional natures, take Capture the Flag, for example, several types of play each with their own set of subroutines, is activated – sensorimotor, predatorial, abstract-symbolic, and social. In each of these types of play, strategy can be re-set on the fly, signaling that meant one thing can be meant to mean another in a change of pace. By recognizing the dynamic nature of interwoven play-types in games, we may see that our human legacy involves not just the limited interfaces we have today, but those that reach back into our past and see our behavior in a more holistic light.

Cracking open the interface that dominates digital gaming requires that play-behavior that been marginalized largely or demoted be promoted. Other intelligences must be brought into mix. I am not suggesting that those intelligences are somewhere “else” – in some other culture , hidden on some island or secret community. In fact quite the opposite, I suggest that most game designers in the digital medium have had to subsume “lesser” intelligences of a body nature (spatial and body) and subsume play of a different nature (locomotor and predatory); especially intelligences and play behaviors that have not been constantly subjected to standardized testing. We do this in order to thrive in the game of life. By examining our “lesser” talents and our capabilities to learn in those areas, we open up the interface dilemma wide open by opening it up to a greater body of gamers.

Von Neumann, with his advanced abilities in the mathematical/logical arena, identified the game-structure structure at its most hard-boiled, in a way; boil down a game and you will find these grains of sand in this row, if you move one grain, the system does this, etc. However, he fails to identify the type of “script” play that is seen in children of all races and cultures and this is symptomatic of the type of game and interface designs created today. With their over-emphasis on mathematical-logical structures, the games created fail to address other form of play and how those behaviors are structured into games.

Humans can handle more, much more. Interfaces that involve invading the real physical space, inhabiting it and adding yet another explicit digital layer to its construction may serve this challenge. Furthermore, more types of game players, if these new interfaces are applied to game design, may be more engaged. According to the report on this topic by the American Association of University Women, the primary reason girls do not interact with high technology and games on aggregate is that girls feel “disembodied” by the medium. While physical aspects of interface may serve to simply build a bridge towards solving this problem, a digital age “horseless carriage,” it is not enough to rest on these tired assumptions for future interface design. Rethinking the interface is like re-thinking the entire environment with all players, which is a big thing, but it can be achieved by viewing types of intelligences and talents as interwoven and dynamically changing. The challenge then is to crack the interface open to activate these intelligences and tap into play in a more broadly varied manner. The flat screen that dominates today is only one metaphor that can be used in symbolic play. To engage the wider range of gamers, that is, all humans, we must incorporate all of our ancient forms of play, shaping them in the medium that translates our understanding of the world today.

Sources:

American Association of University Women, Tech Savvy: Educating Girls in the Computer Age

Chris Crawford, The Art of Interactive Design

Howard Gardner, The Unschooled Mind

Alex Hawes, Jungle Gyms:The Evolution of Animal Play

Steven Johnson, Interface Culture

Sherry Turkle, Life on the Screen

Robert Wright, Non-Zero

John Von Neumann, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior