Game, Play and Culture

    During the week of Jan 27, the lecture for Intro for Game Studies, we discussed the definition of game, play and culture. Game, like most enjoyable activities, there are multiple definitions. Ranging from the complex, “proceeds according to rules that limit players”, to the simple, “voluntary”, “uncertain” and “inefficient”. The one definition I would have to disagree with is “inefficient”. Most games you have to be inefficient because of the rules, such as playing basketball. It would be more efficient to just hold the ball then dribble. The one example that contradicts this is speedruns. The point of speedruns is to complete the game as fast as possible. The easiest way to do this is to be as efficient as the game will let you. These techniques sometimes include glitches, skips and cheats. One could make the case that they are playing the game unlike he creator developed. Technically the are still playing the game.

     Play can either be a part of game or game can be a part of play. It depends what way you look at it. Play can be unorganized shenanigans like two dogs chases after each other or play can be a subset of game because one plays a game.

     The culture of a game is how people understand the game. I believe that is what my teacher was saying. I was too busy talking about Kingdom Hearts and how it was an average RPG with Disney characters. Apparently everybody knew what I was talking about because of the culture that we live in.

     The cards games we played were “Gloom” and “Zombie Fluxx”. “Gloom” was supposed to be a fun game where you make your family miserable before killing them. Every sadist would love this game but I didn't enjoy it maybe because nobody knew how to play and the one person to read the instructions still didn't know how to play. So we called it a tie and decided to play “Zombie Fluxx”. This is the simplest game, pick a card play a card. You win when you reach a goal. Lets just say it was too easy for me to grasp the game but it was fun to play.