Work/Play After the Gold Rush

There has been a sudden surge in folks talking about this whole “Work/Play” thing. I talked about it in my dissertation quite a bit, but mostly felt that it was already kind of overdetermined. Too many people have written about it in a way that I think is neither well rooted in empirical work or well theorized. Thus in my work I dissect “work/play” into distinct “aspects” or “components,” because I doubt there is a unified sense of “work/play.” Of course this hasn’t stopped anyone else from running around yelling the two words in close proximity and hoping that the more difficult empirical and theoretical work gets done for them.

I’ve been trying to find an objective language for the argument that is beginning to emerge from my observations, but it simply hasn’t come to me. So I’ll not sugar coat it. Many people pimping games at work are pimping games that really suck. Points are the lowest common denominator game mechanic. If your “game” can’t push the mechanics further than that, the game may still suck. Now, in the case of “class,” sucking less may be enough to re-engage students. Can players form a guild to raid the test? Can they replay any number of times? What would a class that enacts an innovative game mechanic look like?

But lets think about the workplace for a moment. Ribbon Hero is an interesting attempt to bring game mechanics to that horrific monster that is Microsoft Word. I only wonder if the game rewards “good” formatting (using styles sets) more than the willy-nilly formatting that I so often encountered as a journal editorial assistant. What might a game about Word that wasn’t set in Word look like? What I think the real power of games is the ability to divorce topic from conceptual idea. This is what actually helps us find the core concept and bridge it to new areas. What does this mean? What if I could perform some other task that corresponds to filing my email? Giving me points for filing my email is only a moderate improvement and ultimately when I get tired and realize that I don’t really care about the points, the task returns to what it had previously been, work. What if, instead I could perform an interesting “sorting/filtering” task in a graphically engaging and interesting environment, that actually corresponded to working on my inbox? Now there is some work/play.

But, most game designers are going to have a difficult time convincing anyone that they can make a game about X without making a game about X. Too many clients, funding agencies, etc can only understand a game about X in a game about X. If it is a game about proper fire-fighting technique, it should be a game with fire-fighters. If it is a game about AIDS, it should be about AIDS. But that isn’t the power of games, right? I can make a game about the way AIDS works without making a game about the immune system or anything else. I can make a game about cellular function without making a game about cells. I can make games that isolate the system we’re ultimately hoping people to recognize/critique/learn in some cases more effectively by pulling it outside its native environment.

Ultimately however, funding agencies will fund games about X before they fund anything else and ultimately these games will fail long term. I look at things like this recent grant to Yale and many of the DMLC HASTAC projects that are being funded and can’t help but think they’re helping to dig the grave for innovative serious/educational games that don’t suck. The numerous attempts to fund serious games and educational games may very well implode in on itself as players/students recognize bad game design, and they will. When players/students reject those things that have received so much money, there will likely be a funding backlash against researchers, who may be attempting to actually make games that don’t suck. Of course this isn’t to say that these projects wont all succeed swimmingly. I’ve simply been making games in this space long enough now to recognize the risk.