Cultural Impact of Play and Games

To understand the impact that games have on us today as both society and individuals, I believe we actually need to redirect our attention to two terms that Johan Huizinga brought into his book Homo Ludens which are παιδιά (paidia) or childlike play and αγών (agon) or competitions. My argument is that the farther away you get from a game being childlike, the more competitive it gets and the more that there is at risk and to lose, and because of this the more influence it has on culture (in either good or bad ways). On the other hand, the more childlike a game gets, the less competitive it gets with less at stake, the less influential it becomes, but also the more desirable.

I will be using Johan Huizinga’s book Homo Ludens and Roger Caillois’ book Man, Play, and Games (as well as a little of my own previously learned knowledge of history) to discuss this and to argue my point. The games I will be discussing to illustrate my point will be children’s fantasy roleplaying such as when they play house, professional American football, and finally the boardgame my group and I created that we titled Random.

I think it is important to first discuss the differences between both play and competition and to understand both of them as individuals. An example of why would actually be one account in which I actually disagree with Huizinga and his argument that play can be deadly. Instead, I think it is competitions that can be deadly. In addition to this, I would also like to first make clear that I believe that the term “game” is relative and therefore in this paper not important. For games are always made up of either play or competition. And sometimes even a mixture of both. But I do not believe that every example of play is necessarily a game and neither is a competition required to be either.

First off I will start by discussing play. As children, one of the first games we learn to play is the game of make believe. We desire to be transported into a world of imagination. This falls in line with Huizinga’s definition of what play is “Play is a voluntary activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy and the consciousness that it is “different” from “ordinary life”” (Huizinga).

When children play games of make believe such as playing house, they are doing so voluntarily. They make their own rules, deciding who should play who. And they find joy in this. Their games are built simply and purely out of the “spiritually irrational” as Huizinga would put it. “If a serious statement is defined as one that may be made in terms of waking life, poetry will never rise to the level of seriousness. It lies beyond seriousness, on that more primitive and original level where the child, the animal, the savage, and the seer belong, in the region of dream, enchantment, ecstasy, laughter. To understand poetry we must be capable of donning the child's soul like a magic cloak and of forsaking man's wisdom for the child's” (Huizinga). But something that I believe is more important to note is that a vast majority children’s make believe games originate from culture and what they see in the world around them. When children play house they chose roles such a mother, father, daughter, son, and sometimes even choosing to play the pet dog. When they play games such as cops and robbers or superhero and villains they take inspiration from what they see in movies, television, and books. They take what they see in the world, then chose the parts that they wish were real, and make that their reality for the duration of their play time. It is here that we see culture so deeply rooted in the play of even those too young to understand what culture is. A child does not want to be a superhero because they played as one, they play as a superhero because they saw one in a movie. However, in the long run, these games have no lasting effect on people and therefore do not in return affect the culture that they mimic.

Games based purely in (or at least mainly in) competition however do have lasting effects on culture. And this is one area of topic where I do actually have to nitpickingly argue with Caillois who wrote: “Games discipline instincts and institutionalize them. For the time that they afford formal and limited satisfaction, they educate, enrich, and immunize the mind against their virulence. At the same time, they are made for to contribute usefully to the enrichment and the establishment of various patterns of culture“ (Caillois). I would like to argue with the very first word in that quote as I believe that it is not all games that influence culture, but specifically the ones that are based in competition. There is absolutely no doubt that competition based games do in fact have a larger number of spectators, interest, and role in society. We see the proof of that both in our modern day society just by looking at football, Game of Thrones, and politics, as well as in the past by looking at examples such a gladiator fights in Ancient Rome. On the other hand, you take away the childlike aspects of play, while it technically can still be defined as a form of play, you get a more incomplete and sometimes even unhealthy form of play. This can be seen anywhere from gambling to football. If you take a look at NFL football, you see a competition of two teams. For each player on each team, that is their life. Their job. For each game they play, they have so much to lose. Because of this, while it does still remain a game, I argue that it has ceased to be play. Caillois agreed with this as he states: ““It is certainly much more difficult to establish the cultural functions of games of chance than of competitive games. However, the influence of games of chance is no less considerable, even if deemed unfortunate, and not to consider them leads to a definition of play which affirms or implies the absence of economic interest” (Caillois). However, while Caillois does only focus on money involved in games makes them no longer play, I would like to explains that as I believe that there are other things that can be at stake too such as pride or honor. Which is why football can only be considered play when one lowers the stakes and plays just for fun. If there is still a competition between two teams, (instead of just someone kicking a ball around for fun or on the other hand a high stake competition such as playing in the NFL) we are still able to see play in this only because of the lower level of competition. People can still get competitive in games like this which does raise the level of competition to a small extent, but so long as everyone keeps their egos and competitive nature in check, at the end of the day they can be just there and playing for fun.

To expand on this and how competition influences culture, we can even just look at history. If you look back to Ancient Greece when colonies in Asia Minor, Sicily, Southern Italy started being able to gather because traveling by sea became more of a thing, not only were goods able to be more easily traded but so were ideas. People from Greece, Egypt, Italy, and probably other countries as well were finally starting to come together. However because of this, if you about it, the countries were probably bound to clash and butt heads as everything about their ideology and cultures were different. Just think of Greek vs Egyptian religions/mythologies back then. These different cultures running into each other for the first time definitely sparked debate (or in other words intellectual competition *wink wink*). This is not only an example of a type of competition that does not necessarily fit into the category of necessarily being considered a game, but this is also an example of how competition can evolve into culture. In summary, it was likely to this rise in intellectual competition that sparked enough discourse to later create what we now know as Greek philosophy.

Before moving onto my third game that I will be discussing, I would first like to note the distinct culture-reflecting element of people’s desire to spectate which seems to be directly influenced and measurable by the level of competition involved in any game. “In the confused, inextricable universe of real, human relationships, on the other hand, the action of given principles is never isolated, sovereign, or limited in advance. It entails inevitable consequences and possesses a natural propensity for good or evil. In both cases, moreover, the same qualities can be identified: The need to prove one’s superiority.The desire to challenge, make a record, or merely overcome an obstacle. The hope for and the pursuit of the favor of destiny. Pleasure in secrecy, make-believe, or disguise. Fear or inspiring fear. The search for repetition and symmetry, or in contrast, the joy of improvising, inventing, or infinitely varying solutions. Solving a mystery or riddle. The satisfaction procured from all arts involving contrivance. The desire to test one’s strength, skill, speed, endurance, equilibrium, or ingenuity. Conformity to rules or laws, the duty to respect the, and the temptation to circumvent them. And lastly, the intoxication, longing for ecstasy, and desire for voluptuous panic. These attitudes and impulses, often incompatible with each other, are found in the unprotected realm of social life, where acts normally have consequences, no less than in the marginal and abstract world of play. But they are not equally necessary, do not play the same role, and do not have the same influence” (Caillois). The more competitive and the higher the stakes, the more people you will see watching the game. In addition to that, the more life-like the game, which actually goes against the very nature of what game should be, the more appealing it is to spectators. Life itself and to live is so tightly intertwined with survival, whether it be for our own survival or less commonly seen survival of others, whether it be because of critical and physical survival or even superficial survival, every single action we make in our lives is in the grand scheme of things a part of that. Which is why when we look at competitions and at the risks (whether it be financial, physical, or emotional) we are drawn in because of empathy. As spectators we are still safe from the pressure and consequences of those risks themselves, leaving them them to get emotionally invested for the player’s sake. This is something that is seen as well almost universally in other areas of life that can not be defined as games, play, or competitions. It is why people are attracted to gossip. It is why people love to watch crime shows. And an even better example is it is why back when guillotines were a thing for public executions people would crowd around to watch the “show”. This is something you rarely ever see in childlike and non-competitive play which in turn makes that kind of play even more pure but also harder to attain as an adult. People are attracted to the anticipation of (which is not to say by any means that they desire) bad things that happen to other people. People are drawn in by risk. This in part is why we see a lower level of interested spectators and a much lower level of competitiveness in kids: Because kids have so much less to lose and so much less at stake.

A few years ago in one of my college classes, we were assigned to design and make a board game. My group created a game we titled Random that was essentially a mixture of chance, competition, and at some times even mimicry. But overall, the main objective was to reach the finish line before anyone else but with the catch that you may have to act silly in the process to do so. And it is here that we see the true essence of what made the game we created a game. This is why I believe that in this game we saw a medium number of spectators gather around to observe whoever was playing out game at the time. We sought to combine both competition and childlike play. This is something Huizinga actually discusses early on in his book Homo Ludens. “The agon in Greek life, or the contest anywhere else in the world, bears al the formal characteristics of play, and as to its function belongs almost wholly to the sphere of the festival, which is the play- sphere. It is quite impossible to separate the contest as a cultural function from the complex "play-festival-rite". As to why the Greek language makes this remarkable terminological distinction between play and contest, this might, in my opinion, be explained as follows. The conception of a general, all-embracing and logically homogeneous play-concept is, as we have seen, a rather late invention of language. From very early on, however, sacred and profane contests had taken such an enormous place in Greek life and gained so momentous a value that people were no longer aware of their play-character. The contest, in all things and on every occasion, had become so intense a cultural function that the Greeks felt it as quite "ordinary", something existing in its own right” (Huizinga). It is here that Huizinga breaks down the difference between play and contest.

When it comes to the game Random, we have created a healthy mix between childlike play and competition by removing (or at least drastically lowering) the stakes and risks while adding in a tiny bit of the childlike play. This is actually something Huizinga would agree with (the benefit of mixing both the playful and the seriousness): “Our point of departure must be the conception of an almost childlike play-sense expressing itself in various play-forms, some serious, some playful, but all rooted in ritual and productive of culture by allowing the innate human need of rhythm, harmony, change, alternation, contrast and climax, etc., to unfold in full richness” (Huizinga). This in part is why it could be argued that potentially that instead of the two being separate, the lack of risk and reward itself could be what created the childlike level of play. As mentioned before, children have a lot less to lose. And people are driven by survival.

It is the games that are based more on competition and that have a bigger level of risk involved that affect people’s lives and our culture. Huizinga wrote: “For many years the conviction has grown upon me that civilization arises and unfolds in and as play”. But it was actually quite the opposite. Play arises from culture and culture arises from competition. And the bigger the risk gets, the less playful and childlike it become as well as the more spectators are drawn in to want to come and watch.