Clay Shirky’s post about Gin, Television, and Social Surplus triggered some interesting thoughts about game-playing based on my reading of Rules of Play.
In his discussion of how we’re starting to make use of our cognitive surplus, rather than wasting it on “gin” like TV, Shirky mentions video games. He seems to view video games as a kind of intermediate ground between productive uses of the cognitive surplus, like Wikipedia, and unproductive uses, like watching sit-coms. I disagree; I think video games are an important part of why we’re able to make use of the cognitive surplus, rather than continuing to waste it on gin. In the past, our economy was based almost wholly on physical labour. Games were correspondingly physical, either helping children build up the physical traits they’d need to do their work, like strength and reflexes, or helping them learn rough analogs of the skills they’d be using as adults. For adults, games served a similar role, keeping them in form and practice while letting them relax without the pressures of work.
I think video games serve the same purpose for today’s more intellectually-oriented economy. As Danc is fond of pointing out, one of the more compelling incentives to play video games is the opportunity to explore and understand a dynamic system. In a well-designed game, the player encounters successively more complicated layers of mechanics and interactions between mechanics. One of the challenges posed by the game is untangling these mechanics and building an understanding of how the game works. I view this as a fundamental intellectual skill, one that’s necessary for understanding and working with complex systems. Video games often layer other traits on top of this - situational awareness, teamwork, memorization, quick reactions to rapidly changing circumstances, large- or small-scale organization…
It’s true that not every game player learns to generalize these skills beyond video games, or even between video games. But those that do are better prepared for the requirements of our modern intellectually-focused economy.