Play Matters by Miguel Sicart

Author:Miguel Sicart [Sicart, Miguel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Games, Games Studies, Popular Culture, Social Science
ISBN: 9780262027922
Publisher: The MIT Press
Published: 2014-04-04T04:00:00+00:00

8 Play in the Era of Computing Machinery

What have computers ever done for us? They might have helped develop health care, security, commerce, transportation, and education to an extent that marks an era of prosperity and wealth previously unimaginable. But besides that, what have they ever done for us?

Well, they are the key elements of digital toys and digital games, which keep us, the modern developed world, entertained when we are not working. They have also become machines that can sense, interpret, and communicate with the environment, thus enriching the playful possibilities of toys and work devices. Computers have revolutionized play as much as they have all other domains in society. But what does this mean for our ecology of play? What is the relation between computation and play?

I start by describing what computers can do. Although we tend to give computers magical powers that turn them into cultural actors rather than “mere” technologies, a computer is a relatively simple machine that can do very few things very well. In essence, the computer excels at four things when we think about them for play:

1. A computer can perform calculations quickly and precisely. This capacity is useful in many different contexts, from rocket science to medical care. Its calculating power also allows it to create real-time simulations of complex systems, for instance, making worlds with coherent physics. Fast calculations also allow computers to act on complex input instantaneously. In Johan Sebastian Joust, the different machines involved (a conventional computer plus the embedded computers in the PlayStation Move controllers) calculate at high speed accelerometer data variations, effectively creating the challenges that make the game interesting. While the same play experience can be reproduced with analog resources, the use of computation gives Joust a different aesthetic experience, the magic feeling of having a lighted wand in your hands that reacts to movement and music.1 In Joust, computation enhances the aesthetics of play.

2. A computer can store large amounts of data while accessing them very quickly. This allows computers to act as externalized memory storages and also to create whole worlds with graphics, sounds, and computed behaviors. For those of us who love sports, the data immediacy that modern broadcasting offers has fundamentally changed the experience of watching any sport on television. While nothing beats the ritualistic communion with strangers that happens in an arena, sports broadcasting offers an enhanced, networked understanding of sports that contextualizes, explains, and even predicts actions while we are watching a game. Sports spectatorship has shifted from being essentially an affair in the present tense to a multilayered perspective in time and space, where actions take place now but are seen in the contexts of their past and their future.

3. A computer is equipped with a series of sensors programmed to sense its environment and turn analog input into computable digital data. The computer on which I am writing this chapter has one high-definition camera, one microphone, and an accelerometer. It can see, feel, hear, and gather and process all those data.

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