The Existential Power of Games

The purpose of this essay is to showcase games in the context and conformity of the existentialist principle of man’s ability to create meaning in their lives.

In game design, there is the concept of a “magic circle” in which the game takes place and follows its rules. In such a context, one might consider this circle “magic” in the sense that it changes the meaning of the objects within it. A chess piece is merely an object without the context of the game of chess, so that an alien species might be confused as its purposes without that context. But if one were to create a new game for that single chess piece, that would change the context of how it is used.

Think of it like this, when one finds a brand new game that one has never come into contact with, the game is filled with all sorts of strange pieces that appear to us, at first, confusing and complex. This is because we lack the understanding of how they work in the game, so they seem like random objects, but in learning the rules of the game, we begin to see how they work thus transforming how we see them. Consider a stick lying on the ground that we’ve passed by many times that we decide to use to write in the dirt a game of tic tac toe. Suddenly the stick changes from an object in the background to a tool for the game, but the transformation is so subtle we might not have noticed it. No longer is the stick a stick, but a writing instrument necessary to enact our will on the game, therefore it could also be seen as an extension of ourselves. All of this points to the ability of games to subjectively transform the meaning and purpose of things for the game.

Then there are those who violate this “magic”: notably cheaters and spoilsports, player types introduced in the book Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. In a sense, one could think of the cheater as a wizard who is able to use the reality of the objects of the game in order to manipulate the magic of the game in their favor. It is an assumption in a card game that the drawn cards are random, but a cheater is able to use the physical fact of the cards being able to be hid or stacked so that they can more easily win. There is nothing in reality that prevents them from doing this, but it violates the same rules that define the game and provide the purpose of the cards in it. To the mind of the cheater, winning is worth more than the game itself. The cheater brings with them a level of arbitrariness to the game, for if I can win by cheating, what does winning even mean? But this violation also brings into question everything the game stands for. If the rules don’t matter, then how can the game be defined? Why shouldn’t a card with three diamonds printed on it be considered a four of diamonds? This arbitrariness and chaos is best exemplified by the spoilsport who goes beyond cheating in that they don’t care for anything in the game. These are the players who knock pieces off the board, throw cards into the air and tilt the table over. To them the game doesn’t exist, rather their actions point out the objects used by the game as they are in reality, outside of the magic circle, those objects that were only given meaning by the game. They destroy the game by making the rules seem utterly meaningless. Pieces are objects that can be moved and thrown outside of the rules of the game, and when one is so engrossed in the game we might forget that. That is part of why the spoilsport is so shocking to us, whereas the cheater is merely despised. For the cheater, we can in some ways understand especially if we are very caught up in the game, and despite their actions they care very much about one aspect of the game, namely winning even if the means they use to win take make the victory arbitrary. The spoilsport is a different beast with views antithetical to the players, and they exist primarily to disrupt the workings of the game. In order for the magic circle to work, its meaning must be agreed upon and followed regardless of how simple or complex or big or small these might be. The cheater and the spoilsport are of incompatible views to that of the game as they violate the shared meaning the game provides.

This ability of games to create and alter the meanings of things is important in the context of existentialism, and how human beings create meaning. Often times we learn static meanings of things, a knife is for cutting, a bag is for carrying things, a door is for opening. But games represent how one can change these meanings if they fit the context of the game. Objects such as cards or pieces made only for the game or many games lose their purpose when the game is not being played, and as such lie dormant in their boxes and containers. I can always pick up a knife to cut something, put things in bags or open an unlocked door, but I need certain prerequisites for a game to be played. We must find enough people and set it up all the while if I lose a valuable piece I cannot play. A knife can grow dull, but it requires nothing outside of itself to cut something. In this sense, a game could almost be thought of as a sort of ritual which requires certain actions and conditions in order to be fulfilled. If anything goes wrong, the game ceases to properly work just as a religious ritual would be considered a failure if improperly conducted. Similarly, it could also be said that certain beliefs change the way one sees things as when two people are walking through a forest, but if one believes the forest to be inhabited by spirits then they would see this same forest differently than the other. But what makes games special is the temporary nature of the meaning they impose, as one can have a belief for a lifetime and religious rituals endow the necessary objects of the ritual with special significance as even dormant they remain important. In games this is sometimes the case, but for a game played with simple everyday objects, the significance lasts only as long as the game. Not to mention games are more artificial meaning that they don’t require strong beliefs in their power to be created. A new religious ritual requires justification of its power as ritual whereas any child can invent a new game. Therefore games are an excellent example of how people can create and change meanings due to the greater artificiality and temporary nature of the game.

References

Tekinbaş, Katie Salen, and Eric Zimmerman. 2003. Rules of play: game

design fundamentals. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.