The Ambiguity of Games: Histories and Discourses of a Gameful World

1 THE AMBIGUITY OF GAMES: HISTORIES AND DISCOURSES OF A GAMEFUL WORLD Sebastian Deterding If there is one catchword for the current moment in Wade 2006 ) sporting playful media practices, mind- the history of media, it is convergence: digital media, sets, and identities. Others have gone so far as to call computing, and networking are decoupling the enti- the twenty-first century a “ ludic century ” where ties formerly known as “ the media ” into their requi- games become the dominant cultural form because site components — content genres and storage media, they match the systemic, computational, participa- distribution networks and end devices, producers tory constitution of our time (Zimmerman, this and audiences — to recombine them into unexpected, volume; see already Minnema 1998 ). fleeting new formations ( Jenkins 2006 ; Storsul and If ludification of culture captures how games and Fagerjord 2008 ). Thus, games can now be played on play increasingly inform other domains of our every- almost any digital device, anytime, anywhere. Game day life, we also can and must speak of its counter- distribution is migrating from off-the-shelf physical part: the cultivation of ludus . As games and play move copies to online streaming and a myriad of app stores from the periphery of playgrounds, living rooms, and across a myriad of platforms, and games are shifting arcade halls toward the center of our cultural, social, from being finished products to interconnected, con- and economic life, so cultural, social, and economic stantly evolving online services where “ produsers ” actors become interested in shaping and harnessing ( Bruns 2008 ) pay in the form of micro-transactions, them for their purposes: other realms of life impress personal data, content creation, and marketing work. their forms on games and play. We see this in the Beyond these immediate forms of digital game professionalization of digital gaming in e-sports convergence, several authors have observed a ( Taylor 2012 ) and the economization of play in “ gold broader “ ludification of culture ” ( Raessens 2006 , farming, ” real-money trading, virtual economies, or 2012 ; Walz 2006 ; Stenros, Montola, and M ä yr ä 2007 , game play as user-generated marketing ( Malaby 32). From 8-bit music to pixel art, thematic, visual, 2007 ; Dibbell 2008 ). We see it in the rationalization auditory, and interactive tropes of games are pervad- of play, as digital gaming takes on more and more ing our pop culture and art with a “ ludic language ” work-like features, such as “ grinding ” in massively (Flanagan, this volume). Some argue that the forma- multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) tive experience of growing up playing digital games ( Yee 2006 ; Grimes and Feenberg 2009 ). We see has nurtured a whole “ gamer generation ” ( Beck and it in the adoption of game technologies such as 24 SEBASTIAN DETERDING three-dimensional rendering engines by non-game gamification itself, it is only one symptom of the industries. And we see it in the rise of serious games broader digital convergence of games, one little and gamification ( Sawyer 2002 ; Deterding et al. 2011 ): current in the double tide of the ludification of games and game design elements are increasingly culture and the cultivation of ludus — something one harnessed to improve everything from productivity may call the rise of a gameful world . Like media con- to marketing, from learning to user experience, from vergence in general, this double tide does show no health, happiness, and creativity to civic engagement signs of ebbing, and it is changing what games and and governance. play are. Among game designers and scholars, gamification In the heat of any debate, one task of the scholar has been met predominantly with skepticism if not is to take a step back and look at the unfolding scene hostility (e.g., Robertson 2010 ; Bogost 2011a ). Many from the outside. Instead of taking a stance in Gami- view it as yet another wave of “ colonizing attempts ” fication: The Rhetoric Wars (Walz and Coulton 2011),1 ( Aarseth 2001 ), only this time from marketers and this chapter tries to bring them into view as just that: startups with often-doubtful ethics and little care for a clashing of rhetorics in Kenneth Burke ’ s (1950) “ games as such. ” Gamification is painted almost as a sense, of different worldviews and moral politics, desecration of a presumed nature of games and play. manifest in different languages. This chapter pro- Says Bogost (2011a) : “ gamification is marketing vides such an outside view through a threefold dis- bullshit, invented by consultants as a means to tancing: first, it offers a theoretical language to capture the wild, coveted beast that is videogames articulate that and how our views of the gameful and to domesticate it for use in the gray, hopeless world are steeped in specific, modernist conceptions wasteland of big business. ” In the same tone, PJ Rey of games and play. Second, it foregrounds the contin- (2012) critiques gamification as producing play labor, gency of the gameful world by delineating its histori- or “ playbor ” : “ Play loses its innocence. It is no longer cal precursors and enablers: the forms of its current an escape from the system, it is just another branch ascendance are neither entirely novel, nor aberrant, of it. Waste is no longer wasted. Playbor is part of nor natural, nor inevitable. Third, the chapter com- capitalism ’ s effort to colonize every last moment in pares and contrasts the various contemporary rheto- the waking day. ” rics of the gameful world. In closing, it asks what Yet the discourse around gamification has also those rhetorics tell us about our contemporary life, managed to widen public interest in games and play what they elide, and how the rise of the gameful rapidly. And whatever the status and longevity of world may change play and games themselves. Liminalities: The Social Place of Play and Games If the current scholarly critique of the “ instrumen- and games are thought to have “ a proper place ” in talization, ” “ colonization, ” or “ domestication ” of society — a designated cultural role, meaning, or func- play and games highlights one thing, it is that play tion. Is play not supposed to be “ outside ‘ ordinary ’ THE AMBIGUITY OF GAMES 25 life ” and “ with no material interest ” ( Huizinga 1955 , of passage through which an individual ’ s orderly 13), “ separate ” and “ unproductive ” ( Caillois 2001 , transition from one social status into another is per- 9 – 10) — a space free from the demands of social norms formed. During these rites of passage, between the and uses? individual ’ s separation from and re-incorporation As the millennia-old use of games for military into the group, one finds a phase of transition, of lim- training and planning demonstrates, such senti- inality (Latin limen , “ threshold ” ), where standing ments overlook the fact that the provision of freedom orders, behaviors, and meanings are temporarily from the instrumental norms and purposes of pro- turned upside down — a space of play : “ the analysis of ductive life through play and games is no brute culture into factors and their free or ‘ ludic ’ recombi- fact of nature, but a contingent state of affairs — nation into any and every possible pattern, however characteristic for modern industrial societies: To us , weird, that is of the essence of liminality ” ( Turner today , games and play function and serve as “ escape 1982 , 28). Maybe the best-known contemporary form attempts ” ( Cohen and Taylor 1992 ). Whether we is the Rumspringa , observed in some Amish communi- praise their value for childhood development or ties, in which adolescents leave their homes for a set artistic creativity, bemoan their unproductive frivol- period of time to explore the modern world around ity, or engage in them as leisurely restoration for them and decide whether to return and become a full work or hobbyist self-realization — even when we adult member of their community. romantically long for them as a utopian “ otherland ” — In other words, play in premodern societies is fully we reproduce very specific, modernist cultivations contained and functionalized in ritual, fully inte- and rhetorics of play and games ( Sutton-Smith 1997 ; grated into social life. There is no distinction between Malaby 2007 ). Celebrating play and games as a space “ work ” and “ leisure ” : play and games are part of the free from order, purpose, norm, and consequence, a total ritual “ work of the Gods ” ( Turner 1982 , 38). All of space “ outside of ” society, we easily forget that this life is “ work ” in the sense that it is bound in a non- “ freedom from ” is itself a social norm and purpose. optional manner to the cosmic rhythms and rules of The spoilsport, the powergamer, and the bully remind nature and culture. It is only in modern Western us that the playground is a place full of rules that are nation-states that we start to find “ work ” itself sepa- continually expected, demanded, and policed by the rated from the rest of life, religious order kept apart play community ( Goodwin 2006 ). from secular existence, social timing freed from the If we want to understand today ’ s transformation of rhythms of nature, the individual uprooted from the the cultivation of ludus, we need a theoria , a distancing collective — such that “ leisure ” as a nonwork, sec - from our own modernist preconceptions of the rela- ular, optional, individual activity becomes possible. tion of play, games, and society. A useful one can be Modern leisure activities like play, games, or art still found in anthropologist Victor Turner ’ s (1982) studies retain the ludic forms of liminality; but they crucially of ritual and liminality. Like Durkheim, Turner argued differ in their social function, meaning, and place. In that in premodern societies, rituals served as the Turner ’ s phrasing, they become liminoid , not liminal. crucial forge and reaffirmation of the bonds and moral Liminal phenomena are collective duties embed- order of a community.

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