I’m giving a talk at the SCA Biennial Meeting in Detroit on May 10, 2014. Originally I was going be talking about “epistemic care,” but for a variety of reasons I’ve switched to this new talk. Yes, I usually make fun of people for doing this, but I couldn’t help it. It was time for me to begin adapting the concept of Meaningful Play to how I’ve come to think about it.
Here is a nice line from the conclusion:
Games, whether being made or being played, for better or worse, remain meaning making systems. Increasingly, I would argue that they are important systems of meaning making because they respond to the player. It is precisely the oscillation between objectification and subjective sense-making that lend them their interpretive and deconstructive demeanor. The systems of the world around us, just as opaque as those of a game seem nonsensical. Games, on the other hand, must have discrete systems that can be teased out. Yet, the fact that they are clearly constructed systems make them open to criticism and refactoring in a way that the systems of the world around do not.