A game by any other name would be... Who knows? But in recent months, I've been challenged - through work and my own occasional dips into deep thought - to consider what exactly I should cover when it comes to games. There are thinkers greater than I engaged in some interesting (but often navel-gazing) debates on the subject (for example, the ongoing discussions between narratologists and ludologists), but I'd like to expand the notion beyond the restrictive boundaries of the traditional electronic computer game genre to include "games" which occur without the spoon of formal structure. In other words, I'd like to explore the much more fluid notion of playful activity which emerges from computer-mediated or technologically-enhanced interactivity in general, rather than gameplay in particular.
On Monday, someone asked me to explain what it was about the social virtual world Second Life which compelled me. Many of the comments complained that the application wasn't a game, that it wasn't (as CommanderKeen said), "more entertaining than commiting (sic) horrendous acts of thermonuclear mass murder that I've been doing for the last hour in Defcon". I'll explain it here, within the context of this entry. (And thanks Ace for stepping in my absence!)
Second Life is not a game, and therefore there can be no comparison with electronic spaces which feature high-action and/or designer-led objectives. It's a social virtual world (as explained by the eminent Betsy Book). Like, as has oft been said, the web in 3D.
While you can't play it, you can play within it. Like Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman explain in Rules of Play (and blackbelt jones explained to me), and I tried to explain in an earlier post, interactivity can be compelling because it offers a playful space in which to do some neat things. In GTA, you can do the formal activities implemented by the development team, or you can play around in their world. If this informal play was in another application - a piece of social software, for example - would it be inappropriate to cover it here?
In Second Life, to continue with the example, once you come to grips with the GUI it becomes a tool with which to develop user-generated content, to collaborate and to network. In many ways, this makes it more difficult to enjoy in a traditional entertainment sense because the onus is on the user to generate the fun (if appropriate). Playfulness is not the primary objective, but it emerges from the social interaction. For that matter, social networking sites like MySpace, Bebo and others are playful in the same way collecting Pokemon and baseball cards are - the game is in collecting friends. Perhaps that's why there are proportionately more women involved in Second Life and social networking than there are, as a general rule, in other (formal) gameplay activities. (To pre-empt the inevitable gender-based comments, The Sims is a game, yes, but that's ONE game in the thousands that have been released over time. A new Sims game would still be very different from the experience of using Second Life because it is A Game - it has objectives, goals, things you NEED to do. There's none of that in Second Life. You don't NEED to do anything, except maybe stay in touch with your friends if that's what you're using it for.)
Another reason Second Life is a compelling playful experience is because it is all about personalisation - from the moment you generate your avatar to the day you build your in-world opus. I have a social science research library in there (next door to Ace's recreation of a 1930's era house) which is open to the public. It's like a 3D webpage of my interests. I created it and I own it. While it's not the world's greatest building, I'm still proud of it and I feel it serves a purpose in the virtual world. I played around with the tools provided and exercised my playful muscles in designing it. People have wandered by to see it and have played around with what's inside. I have not provided any goals, but people have explored, spent time and mucked about. I also have a Flickr account, a del.icio.us page and a MySpace presence. Similar things happen there. That kind of play is as interesting as that found in a formal game, and thus such activities - regardless of whether they're in a formal game or not - have a home here.
Other Second Life Residents create items to sell (the oft-reported business applications of the space), toys to play with, experiences and simulations (the UCDavis Virtual Hallucinations building, for example). There are games in this virtual world which you can play, but they're user-generated because the users have decided that they want to create them, and so they have.
It's also a great platform for social interaction, learning and experimentation. Which are all about play.
Perhaps including Second Life, MySpace, the blogosphere, Alternate Reality Games, social networking apps, music generators, peer-to-peer networks and other non-game applications on a gamesblog (within the limited definition that we have chosen thus far of what a "game" is) could cause some confusion, and might frame them incorrectly for potential users. But if you go into them and play around until you find something you like or think of the possibilities they could be used for, you'll probably have a good time. I'm not guaranteeing it, but you might.
For me, social software often fits the bill more so than goal-directed environments in which I have to shoot things (badly), solve puzzles (incorrectly) or collect items I don't care about (slowly). Yet in these environments there is play. Even if the play is not formal, there are playful experiences. And so I think they deserve as much time on here as the latest chart toppers.
Any thoughts?
