The Aesthetic Of Play

A game designer considers the experience of play, why games have rules, and the relationship of play and narrative. The impulse toward play is very ancient, not only pre-cultural but pre-human; zoologists have identified play behaviors in turtles and in chimpanzees. Games have existed since antiquity; 5,000-year-old board games have been recovered from Egyptian tombs. And yet we still lack a critical language for thinking about play. Game designers are better at answering small questions ("Why is this battle boring?") than big ones ("What does this game mean?"). In this book, the game designer Brian Upton analyzes the experience of play--how playful activities unfold from moment to moment and how the rules we adopt constrain that unfolding. Drawing on games that range from Monopoly to Dungeons & Dragons to Guitar Hero, Upton develops a framework for understanding play, introducing a set of critical tools that can help us analyze games and game designs and identify ways in which they succeed or fail.

A game designer considers the experience of play, why games have rules, and the relationship of play and narrative. The impulse toward play is very ancient, not only pre-cultural but pre-human; zoologists have identified play behaviors in turtles and in chimpanzees. Games have existed since antiquity; 5,000-year-old board games have been recovered from Egyptian tombs. And yet we still lack a critical language for thinking about play. Game designers are better at answering small questions (“Why is this battle boring?”) than big ones (“What does this game mean?”). In this book, the game designer Brian Upton analyzes the experience of play—how playful activities unfold from moment to moment and how the rules we adopt constrain that unfolding. Drawing on games that range from Monopoly to Dungeons & Dragons to Guitar Hero, Upton develops a framework for understanding play, introducing a set of critical tools that can help us analyze games and game designs and identify ways in which they succeed or fail. Upton also examines the broader epistemological implications of such a framework, exploring the role of play in the construction of meaning and what the existence of play says about the relationship between our thoughts and external reality. He considers the making of meaning in play and in every aspect of human culture, and he draws on findings in pragmatic epistemology, neuroscience, and semiotics to describe how meaning emerges from playful engagement. Upton argues that play can also explain particular aspects of narrative; a play-based interpretive stance, he proposes, can help us understand the structure of books, of music, of theater, of art, and even of the process of critical engagement itself.

This book reveals the nature, possibilities, and power of aesthetic play in teaching, learning, and researching at a middle school (Creative Arts Centre, Milton Williams School, Calgary, Alberta, Canada), which chooses to value the creating process across the entire school curriculum. Questions surface recursively throughout the book: What does it mean for teachers and students to experience and learn aesthetically? How is the aesthetic embodied in teachers' discourses and discursive patterns as well as in students' approaches to learning and in their work? What are the effects of learning through integration of the aesthetic into the school curriculum as a whole? The artistic form of collage acts as a literary device to address these questions from multiple perspectives.

Based on Vygotsky's theory amongst others that play reflects different aspects of children's development and culture, this thesis explores in depth how aesthetic activities can influence children's play and the nature of the connections between play and culture, primarily in the aesthetic forms of drama and literature. The thesis also presents ideas on testing and developing models for an aesthetic pedagogy of play in preschool. Part 1 of the thesis presents the background and theoretical starting points of this didactic study, and includes discussions of the role of play in Swedish Preschools, the Froebel pedagogy, developmental theories of psychology and play pedagogy, as well as the different traditions of research into play and the need for an aesthetic approach. Part 2 discusses interpretations and analysis of different types of pedagogy, ideas in creating a play world for children, and examples of games that can reinforce children's sensitivity to role, dramatization, and aesthetics. Part 3, the conclusion, discusses the meaning of dramatic action in play, the roles of adults, play development in classes, and the linkage between play and children's culture. Results of a survey of child care workers in one Swedish municipality are appended. Contains 250 references. (MOK).

This book draws on aesthetic theory, including ideas from the history of painting, music and dance, to offer a fresh perspective on the video game as a popular cultural form. It argues that games like Grand Theft Auto and Elektroplankton are aesthetic objects that appeal to players because they offer an experience of form, as this idea was understood by philosophers like Immanuel Kant and Theodor Adorno. Video games are awkward objects that have defied efforts to categorize them within established academic disciplines and intellectual frameworks. Yet no one can deny their importance in re-configuring contemporary culture and their influence can be seen in contemporary film, television, literature, music, dance and advertising. This book argues that their very awkwardness should form the starting point for a proper analysis of what games are and the reasons for their popularity. This book will appeal to anyone with a serious interest in the increasingly playful character of contemporary capitalist culture.

Reclaiming fun as a meaningful concept for understanding games and play. “Fun” is somewhat ambiguous. If something is fun, is it pleasant? Entertaining? Silly? A way to trick students into learning? Fun also has baggage—it seems inconsequential, embarrassing, child's play. In Fun, Taste, & Games, John Sharp and David Thomas reclaim fun as a productive and meaningful tool for understanding and appreciating play and games. They position fun at the heart of the aesthetics of games. As beauty was to art, they argue, fun is to play and games—the aesthetic goal that we measure our experiences and interpretations against. Sharp and Thomas use this fun-centered aesthetic framework to explore a range of games and game issues—from workplace bingo to Meow Wolf, from basketball to Myst, from the consumer marketplace to Marcel Duchamp. They begin by outlining three elements for understanding the drive, creation, and experience of fun: set-outsideness, ludic forms, and ambiguity. Moving from theory to practice and back again, they explore the complicated relationships among the titular fun, taste, and games. They consider, among other things, the dismissal of fun by game journalists and designers; the seminal but underinfluential game Myst, and how tastes change over time; the shattering of the gamer community in Gamergate; and an aesthetics of play that goes beyond games.

Mihai Spariosu here explores the significance of the closely linked concepts of play and aestheticism in philosophical and scientific discourse since the end of the eighteenth century. Spariosu points out that since its birth in archaic and classical Hellenic thought the concept of play has always been subject to the influences of various rational and prerational sets of values. Spariosu maintains that there have been not one but two major modern concepts of aestheticism: artistic aestheticism, related to a prerational mentality and introduced in modern thought by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche; and philosophicalscientific aestheticism, initiated by Kant and Schiller and shaped by rationalism. According to Spariosu, the first has often arisen in response to the attempts of philosophy and science to impose their standards on art, and the second has often been called on to deal with the epistemological crises that periodically shake these disciplines. Spariosu also looks closely at some of the play concepts that surface in modern science in connection with the Darwinian theory of evolution and the play of scientific discourse itself, as exemplified by the new physics and the contemporary philosophy of science. A penetrating and cogently argued book, Dionysus Reborn will be welcomed by readers interested in Continental philosophy, scientific discourse, and the aesthetics of play, including literary theorists, comparatists, philosophers, intellectual historians, and social scientists.

An exploration of the relationship between games and art that examines the ways that both gamemakers and artists create game-based artworks. Games and art have intersected at least since the early twentieth century, as can be seen in the Surrealists' use of Exquisite Corpse and other games, Duchamp's obsession with Chess, and Fluxus event scores and boxes—to name just a few examples. Over the past fifteen years, the synthesis of art and games has clouded for both artists and gamemakers. Contemporary art has drawn on the tool set of videogames, but has not considered them a cultural form with its own conceptual, formal, and experiential affordances. For their part, game developers and players focus on the innate properties of games and the experiences they provide, giving little attention to what it means to create and evaluate fine art. In Works of Game, John Sharp bridges this gap, offering a formal aesthetics of games that encompasses the commonalities and the differences between games and art. Sharp describes three communities of practice and offers case studies for each. “Game Art,” which includes such artists as Julian Oliver, Cory Arcangel, and JODI (Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesmans) treats videogames as a form of popular culture from which can be borrowed subject matter, tools, and processes. “Artgames,” created by gamemakers including Jason Rohrer, Brenda Romero, and Jonathan Blow, explore territory usually occupied by poetry, painting, literature, or film. Finally, “Artists' Games”—with artists including Blast Theory, Mary Flanagan, and the collaboration of Nathalie Pozzi and Eric Zimmerman—represents a more synthetic conception of games as an artistic medium. The work of these gamemakers, Sharp suggests, shows that it is possible to create game-based artworks that satisfy the aesthetic and critical values of both the contemporary art and game communities.