Finale: The Last Blog Exercise

Just saw the interesting video posted by Weiwei on his blog which spurred some of my own afterthoughts :) ...

Most of the examples that we've seen in class so far are related to games that played with/spilled over into the boundaries of reality but I wonder if there are any differences when such goes in the opposite direction, i.e. turning reality itself into a game? I remember there are scenes from Lord of the Rings trilogy in which Legolas and Gimli would take score of the number of orcs killed by them whenever they battled against the villains as if such was an unspoken pact/a little game between the two of them. Well, there is one thing that could be said at this point, that is turning reality into a game would bring about serious consequences even when the so-called "game" is over as for Legolas and company, it's a matter of survival :p unlike those that are created in the safe haven provided by the magic circle in the class definition of a game - a voluntary interactive activity in which one or more players follow the rules that contrain their behaviour, enacting an artificial conflict that ends in a quantifiable outcome where in Legolas and Gimli's case, the conflict seems more real than artificial. Now, this links us to the final blog exercise...

Think back to the very start of the semester, when we talked about the concept of meaningful play, which occurs when "the relationships between actions and outcomes in a game are both discernable and integrated into the larger context of the game" (from Salen and Zimmerman, Rules of Play). When the game is an alternate reality game such as The Beast, where the game does not have any explicitly declared actions and outcomes, and in some cases does not even acknowledge its own existence, is it possible for there to be meaningful play? Does this type of "game" require us to rethink our definition of games?

For games that have neither explicit rules, actions nor outcomes and in some instances in which they do not even acknowledge their presence, it may seem that such would hinder the emergence of meaningful play but it is not entirely impossible. However for these alternate reality games, meaningful play is highly dependent on the player/s unlike that of a typical game. For instance, if a player could plan or decipher how his/her actions could affect other players in the game, this could be regarded as a form of discernability and the responses from other players such as cooperation, sabotage, etc would in turn affect the ultimate outcome of the game. In other words, meaningful play from these games is very much built upon social dynamics as in the social interactions between players, just think back on the SMS "game" played in the last lecture on Friday :)

Although alternate reality games such as The Beast, may not fit entirely into our class defintion of a game, it would nice to note that there are a number of similarities such as interactivity, the need for voluntary players and a set of procedures in playing which could be somewhat regarded as a set of rules and most importantly, an artificial conflict. Thus although these so called "games" do not require us to rethink our definition of games entirely, there is perhaps an underlying principle that guides all various forms of games, that is perhaps a game would stand as a game so long as one deems it to be a game.

However, this principle of what constitutes a game brings up another question regarding the relationship between players in the game and non-players outside of the game, particularly for that of alternate reality games, that is... would such "games" be still considered as a game so long as one person regards it to be so or does it require common consensus from everyone involved? Just an extra thought :p ...

P.S. This post was last updated on Sunday, April 16, 2006, 4:33 PM.