Veblenesque Dorodango?

This summer I've been busy writing an article that argues copyright law should be reformed to take greater account of authorial reputation as a motivator of creative production.  The current draft is posted on SSRN here.  While it might seem obvious to some readers that many artists create for love rather than money, our intellectual property laws (at least in the United States) tend to conceive of artistic production (protected by copyright law) as being motivated almost entirely by the pursuit of market profits.  At least, the law of intellectual property conceives of copyright-protected works as simply valuable financial assets and investments of authorial labor that are made in pursuit of financial rewards.

I'd be interested in feedback on the article (here or by email) from Terra Nova readers -- while it isn't about virtual worlds, it does touch on many issues we have talked about here, such as Creative Commons, user-generated content, the Memex, advertising vs. content, etc.  But this post is about one of the topics I didn't get a chance to explore in the article (it shows up in footnote 73 cryptically), namely, how factors other than the pursuit of reputation and money motivate creative production.

In particular, I think there is a strong claim that perhaps the leading motivator for creative production is "play."  Much creativity, thoughout history, has been non-instrumental and non-utilitarian in the modern sense of those words.  Rather creativity can be and has been, like Roger Caillois has said of play, an "occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often of money."

But what I'm wondering about now is how much the motivation of "play" actually draws upon the motivation that I focused on in the paper: the pursuit of social reputation.  Perhaps some aspect of what we call "play" is largely about the pursuit of status?  As exhibit A, I'd like to point to Dave Elfving's recent post about the similarities between the phenomenon of dorodango (explained here) and the joy(lessness) of the WoW grind.

According to Dave's take on dorodango: "It’s not the process that’s fun, it’s the end product and the potential for recognition that has the kids getting their hands dirty."  And Dave ties this to the WoW grind, saying: "Players of MMORPG games are ultimately driven by a desire to improve their characters. It’s not about winning so much as it is about obtaining a massive, glowing, meat cleaver of a sword. A sword visible to everyone else playing the game."

So play in MMORPGs, at least in one player's view, becomes again a matter of seeking social recognition and enhanced reputation. Huizinga's magic circle is  attractive to the player because it provides an opportunity for enhanced social status that is not afforded elsewhere. If this is true, then the real-money trade in virtual property should explicable (at least in part) as a Veblenesque instance of conspicuous consumption -- money is being transmuted into status.  The reaction against the real-money trade is explicable in the same status terms -- the trade is an insult to the social status of those who consider themselves the true meritocracy.  (Compare doping at the Tour de France.)

We've discussed Veblen's relevance to MMORPGs before at Terra Nova. But honestly, I'm not sure how much I buy into status-seeking as a primary motivator for play.  It isn't clear to me that either Veblen or Caillois had a clear picture of the pleasures of play.  Today, the economist Veblen is often criticized for basing his critique of conspicuous consumption upon what reads like a quasi-Puritanical faith in the virtue of material productivity.  (As Brian Sutton-Smith points out in Chapter 11 of The Ambiguity of Play, this kind of approach doesn't bode well for play.) 

And Caillois' statement about "pure waste" seems to reflect very similar sentiments -- the statement is made under the heading noting that in play "no goods are produced." Additionally, Caillois has been criticized for over-emphasizing the importance of agonistic modes of play, which lead inevitable to winners, losers, and status distinctions.  For Caillois, even solo games such as crossword puzzles and flying kites are socially competitive. We always seem to play, according to Caillois, for an audience or against similar players elsewhere (see the beginning of Chapter III of Man, Play, and Games).

So I guess my question is this: Is Dave right that the primary motivator for the play of grind-intensive MMORPGs like WoW (and the making of dorodango) is the pursuit of social reputation?  More generally, how much of the pleasure of "play" can be traced to the pleasure of social status that is found in "success" at play?

Photo credit: Eamonn Sullivan, who used a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license for the above picture of his first dorodango.

Comments

[monkeysan]

1.

I strongly disagree with the premise that creative production is primarily motivated by "play". In fact, I think that in the struggle to lend their field legitimacy, videogame researchers have nearly stretched the concept of "play" into the fundamental drive of human behavior. Like the deconstructionist insistence on viewing the world as 'text', we are now seeing the movement toward world as 'game'.

As a result, I think it's hard to answer your question. the fact that "play" is constantly in need of scare quotes illustrates that the term is ill-defined and vague. This makes it very hard to evalutate how much of the pleasure of play is derived from the pleasure of social status that accrues with success at play. For one thing, the word 'play' (unlike 'games') seems to be incorrigible with respect to the concept of success. Play has no criteria for success, which is something that distinguishes it from most creative products.

The more narrow question about WOW and dorodango is much easier to handle. In those cases, I think the answer to your question is no. MMORPGs that invoke grinding as a game mechanic do not primarily motivate players to seek social status. I suspect the same is true of dorodango and school kids. Just because in many cases one of primary outcomes of play is improved/degraded social status does not entail that social status is a primary motivator. Indeed, I think that once social status becomes the primary motivator for play, it simply ceases to be play.

[Lisa Galarneau]

2.

Monkeysan said:

I strongly disagree with the premise that creative production is primarily motivated by "play". In fact, I think that in the struggle to lend their field legitimacy, videogame researchers have nearly stretched the concept of "play" into the fundamental drive of human behavior. Like the deconstructionist insistence on viewing the world as 'text', we are now seeing the movement toward world as 'game'.

While I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment and sense of unease (particularly the world as text/world as game bit) behind this assertion, I do think that play (preferably minus scare quotes) is the best word we have in English for engagement in an activity that is motivated by something other than external responsibility. The definition of play is 'to occupy oneself in amusement, sport, or other recreation' - to say that one plays means that one is engaged in an activity, possibly productive but possibly not (at least not obviously so), that one finds enjoyable.

But it's the etymology of the word play that I find most telling. Since 1377, play has had the antonym work. And since 1653, it has been associated with 'free or unimpeded movement' which metaphorically is exactly what we're talking about here.

Here's the thing... I think it's important to recognize that while social status may be one motivator, it's likely part of a cornucopia of motivations, some of which might be external. I'm starting to think we need a mash-up word, something that's pidgin-like in its simplicty (like BabyDaddy), but describes these specifically modern phenomena more accurately. In e-learning circles we talk about hard fun - is there some equivalent here? Play-work? Work-play? Is this still about getting past the idea that play is natively unproductive? 'Cause I think play is about chaotic, messy, unstructured approaches to production, entangled in all sorts of peripheral factors like confidence, practice, and yes, status.

Finally, play's criteria for success is the process itself, not the end result. And that's what makes it ideally suited to creative endeavor; every artist throws out a zillion canvases. Practice is play and playfulness in that 'free or unimpeded movement' sense is a pre-requisite to innovation and creativity. That's the whole point, I think.

As for Greg's actual question... I don't know, really, but status is definitely one of the pleasures of play. But to limit it to status eliminates the immediacy of the various Skinnerian pleasures... dinging affects dopamine at a basic level, no question there, I'd say. Still, I don't find it all that interesting to reduce people to such basic reptilian responses, so let's keep talking.

[Raph]

3.

"Do you want to be someone who writes, or someone who has written?"

This question is a classic dividing line between those who get somewhere in creative endeavors and someone who doesn't. The latter seems to me to be the status-seeking, and the former is what typically results in actual creative output.

People engage in creative output because they *need* to. It isn't always "fun" by most definitions (though it might be by mine...)

[greglas]

4.

Thanks -- taking these in reverse order:

@ Raph: Yes, that's my gut feeling too--that we create in order to create, not to achieve any benefits from having created. Still, perhaps that's just our own story, and not true for others. Also, perhaps to speak about creativity as non-instrumental is to cast it in a flattering light, which is something that authors would prefer.

(I was thinking as I wrote the post, btw, that you'd tell me play was really about pattern-recognition.)

@ Lisa: I guess I scare-quote "play" because I agree with Aaron that it's hard to pin down exactly what we mean by the term, but, like you note, there doesn't seem a much better term out there to capture non-work (non-economic) motivations for creative production. Play seems to be a short-hand for saying "all that is not work" but also "all that is not instrumental."

I'm glad that you say status is an important part of play. But I agree with you that another important part is the intrinsic sensual aspect. In many active competitive sports, for me the kinesthetic pleasure of the competition is as much fun as winning. (But then again, maybe that's just me and I'm not "playing to win")

@ Aaron: Yep -- play is a very mushy word, and has become a very trendy word lately. But I think it's what we're stuck with for the reasons stated above. Regarding play as a motivator for production, it is worth noting that the acquisition status and money also lack clear criteria for success, so I'm not sure how play as motivator differs in that respect.

Re this: "MMORPGs that invoke grinding as a game mechanic do not primarily motivate players to seek social status." -- are you saying Dave doesn't know what he's doing? :-)

---

One other thing I just realized. Per the 4 old (non-revised) Bartle types, I think there is an argument that all four suits (socializer/explorer/achiever/killer) are playing status games. (The explorer perhaps least so, but an argument could be made.)

[monkeysan]

5.

@Lisa:

"...Play's criteria for success is the process itself, not the end result. And that's what makes it ideally suited to creative endeavor; every artist throws out a zillion canvases. Practice is play and playfulness in that 'free or unimpeded movement' sense is a pre-requisite to innovation and creativity."

I think there's wisdom in your observation, but I'd push back by asking a few questions:

1. What does it mean to say that the "criterion for success [of play] is the process [of play] itself"? I'm having a hard time not construing this statement as circular.

2. Are artists really typically engaged in a process of play when they create? Clearly the product of their creativity often invites, instantiates or provides the illusion of play, but is the process of creative production itself necessarily one of play?

3. I like the "free and unimpeded movement" connotation you attach to the word 'play', and it is obviously important to drawing the connection between creative production and more traditional notions of play. However, I'm not sure how the metaphor works. I'm not sure, for example, that creative production is really free and unimpeded, except insofar as creative endeavors are about exploring possibilities. Nevertheless, in my own experience I've never felt as though creative production is truly free and unimpeded in the same sense as I think about play as being such.

@Raph:

Great quote, and once again, you prove your mastery at posting a large idea with a very simple metaphor. Even when your metaphors are weak, one still feels as though they understand your point.

I'm assuming when you refer to definitions of 'fun,' your referring to the quasi-evolutionary, pattern-recognizing definition you arrive at in your book. While I think that you were onto something with that book, particularly in the realm of games (not necessarily videogames), it seems unable to capture many activities we consider fun but that have little to do with pattern-recognition. That's one reason I eschew fun as the defining feature of games.

In any event, here's a question for your theory: Most people think sex is fun, for example, but I can assure you that very few people think that the reason it's fun is that it involves pattern recognition. Is your notion of fun, then, circumscribed within the domain of games? And if so, is it really 'fun' that your defining?

[Lisa Galarneau]

6.

Cool! Let me tackle these one at a time:

1. What does it mean to say that the "criterion for success [of play] is the process [of play] itself"? I'm having a hard time not construing this statement as circular.

Yeah, I can see why it seems circular - the problem is that we started with a discussion of results. But I think play is precisely about a lack of expectation of results. The beauty is that from that chaos often emerges something structured... that's the point at which I suppose we usually decide that it's productive. Except I think it's very productive to be unproductive (i.e. the success of play is play itself), which is totally circular, but leads me to my other responses...

2. Are artists really typically engaged in a process of play when they create? Clearly the product of their creativity often invites, instantiates or provides the illusion of play, but is the process of creative production itself necessarily one of play?

Well, I think good artists are. And I'd say this is a key difference between art and design, for instance. Design is about results, art about exploration. And open exploration is play... and some of those results are good, some are bad... but to explore the various avenues 'freely and unimpeded' is what allows the unexpected, the truly artistic, to emerge. (I am not an artist, btw, this is just my impression from knowing artists, and having read quite a lot about creativity)

3. I like the "free and unimpeded movement" connotation you attach to the word 'play', and it is obviously important to drawing the connection between creative production and more traditional notions of play. However, I'm not sure how the metaphor works. I'm not sure, for example, that creative production is really free and unimpeded, except insofar as creative endeavors are about exploring possibilities. Nevertheless, in my own experience I've never felt as though creative production is truly free and unimpeded in the same sense as I think about play as being such.

Hmmm... I'm not sure that I have much more to say about this than I already have, but I guess it comes down to what kind of creative production we're talking about, and what definition of creativity we're using. I think true creativity benefits from play: play with ideas on both a conscious and subconscious level, synthesizing, mashing, re-mixing... as you allude, that's all about exploring possibility spaces, which can be done productively, of course, but really needs to be done in an un-fettered, non-specific-results-oriented way, otherwise it's Galatea fully realized from the get-go - but Pygmalion didn't really know what he was making when he set out to carve the statue (Michaelangelo, I think it was, also used to also say that his creations already knew what they were before he began work on them - his job was just to release them, so again, his creative process was exploratory not with a fully-formed sense of the end result). This is also why everyone's best ideas come to them in the shower, often unheeded. Our brains resist being forced to innovate, but happily do it on their own terms. So mixing play into the creative production process might not be mandatory, but it adds the spark, for sure.

[Dave Elfving]

7.

My small observation has made it into a Terranova post and has people far more learned than I engaged in active discussion; my inner dorodango glistening like you wouldn't believe.

There is something pleasurable in the simple act of making. Upon reading of dorodango I felt an urge to go out and start crafting one of my own. Not so much because it's fun but because becoming absorbed in an activity - even an utterly pointless one - feels good. There's a sort of unintentional meditation that kicks in when hands and mind are fully occupied. It's Zen by proxy.

One could argue that this is fun in its own right, without any sort of recognition or fame thrown into the mix. But I believe it's that potential for recognition that keeps gamers affixed to their keyboards. I find driving an enjoyable activity (provided there isn't any traffic and the weather is good) but I can't imagine taking to the road during my free time. But if I could demonstrate to the world that I'm a level 60 driver with a full 300 skill points in lane changing, I might well cruise to Milwaukee for no other reason than to bolster my reputation, even through gridlock and snowstorms.

This combination of mental distraction (WoW is like knitting for the geek set) and social status is what makes MMORPGs and durodango so addictive. Whether either or both activities can be rightly described as "play" I'll leave to the experts; I am this close to dinging my Troll warrior.

[Thomas Malaby]

8.

While I will have a lot more to say about this in a post coming soon to a blog near you, there is little question in my mind that, both empirically and from the point of view of developing robust social science, that "play" as an analytical term is entirely a red herring, a social construction specific to modernity, set against its twin, "work". Play is of no use for the understanding of games as long as it is taken to mean a (1) separable activity, with (2) no stakes, and that is (3) pleasurable/. (It may have some useful mileage if it were instead used to indicate a mode of experience, however). Caillois was wrong, because there is never any moment where there is nothing at stake in human action. Monkeysan has it right; this is a fiction that continues to bedevil our attempts to understand what is important about games. It is irredeemably

[Thomas Malaby]

9.

While I will have a lot more to say about this in a post coming soon to a blog near you, there is little question that, both empirically and from the point of view of developing robust social science, that "play" as an analytical term is entirely a red herring, a social construction specific to modernity, set against its twin, "work". Play is of no use for the understanding of games as long as it is taken to mean a (1) separable activity, with (2) no stakes, and that is (3) pleasurable/. (It may have some useful mileage if it were instead used to indicate a mode of experience, however). Caillois was wrong, because there is never any moment where there is nothing at stake in human action. Monkeysan has it right; this is a fiction that continues to bedevil our attempts to understand what is important about games. It is irredeemably exceptionalist.

[Thomas Malaby]

10.

(Sorry for the double-post -- internet hiccup FTL.)

[monkeysan]

11.

Dave said: There is something pleasurable in the simple act of making. Upon reading of dorodango I felt an urge to go out and start crafting one of my own. Not so much because it's fun but because becoming absorbed in an activity - even an utterly pointless one - feels good. There's a sort of unintentional meditation that kicks in when hands and mind are fully occupied. It's Zen by proxy.

I think this is the crux of it all, and whether one considers this 'making' a fundamentally play-driven process depends on how one firms up the mushy term 'play'. I tend to think play is involved but not fundamental. But at that point, I may just be on the unpopular side of a semantic argument. Of course, I may also just be flat out wrong.

@Lisa: Thanks for the clarifications. I'm not sure I would go as broadly as you do to capture the concept of play, but it's obviously an articulate and sound position. And I certainly agree that creativity benefits from play. But, as Raph pointed out, often creative production arises from an emotion that seems very close to *need*. Is that impulse a need to play or a need to make. My personal view is that it is primarily a need to make rather than a need to play.

@Greg: "Regarding play as a motivator for production, it is worth noting that the acquisition [of] status and money also lack clear criteria for success, so I'm not sure how play as motivator differs in that respect."

Is it really true that the acquisition of money and status lack criteria for success, or is it just that they aren't readily quantifiable and are subjective? I tend to think that play, unlike the acquisition of money and status, play doesn't seek production as an end; the productivity that arises out of MMORPG play--like building community sites, accruing social status, getting Tier 3 armor, becoming a holocron Jedi--are instruments of play (i.e., means) rather than ends.

"MMORPGs that invoke grinding as a game mechanic do not primarily motivate players to seek social status." -- are you saying Dave doesn't know what he's doing?"

Given that he's now aware of this post, I'm wary of having a dorodingumajiggy of whatever quality being hurled at me or set on fire in a bag on my virtual doorstep, so I'll say this:

I don't think that people who see the accrual of social status as really being involved primarily in play. Rather they recognize that virtual worlds like WoW, despite being ostensibly designed to facilitate play give rise to very real communities. They recognize that they can use the game as a means for accruing social status in these communities. For them, MMORPG participation exists to service their desire for social status (nothing wrong with that) rather than the other way round.

I think this is illustrated in the divide that every grind-like MMORPG experiences in its customer base. There are those who consider play the end and the rest as means. Then there are those who reverse the equation. The latter are often disdained by the former. That's what's being expressed, I think, by terms like 'e-peen'.

I disagree with the idea that the four Bartle types all revolve around acquiring status. Instead, I think that each type can be a mode of pure play or a mode of simple status acquisition. Much of the time, player behavior is an amalgam of both. Still, they are distinct motivations, imo.

Also, we should try to distinguish between status games (e.g., Diplomacy, grinding Exalted faction reputation), where the acquisition of fictive-status is a part of a game, and true social status, which transcends the perimeter of the magic circle.

The beautiful and often problematic thing about MMORPGs is that they interpose both play-as-end and production-as-end. Often it's very hard to disentangle the two, and it's even more difficult to say which mode is correct. That's why RMTs are such a divisive subject, even here at TN.

It's all what makes up the wonderful, terrible duality of virtual worlds.

(Sorry for the length of this post.)

[Thomas Malaby]

12.

I find it interesting to read through these many articulate posts and watch the connotations of the term "play" move around, as we seek to capture something at the heart of human action, and which we strongly associate with games. One moment it's normatively-charged, the next it is not. It is sometimes an activity, at others a subjectivity. Monkeysan hit the nail on the head by pointing to its murkiness, and that's why I'm skeptical that it can be rehabilitated. But the exciting thing to see here is the tacking around of what it is we *want* the word to mean.

Lisa was on the right track, in my opinion, by using the term "practice." If we think about it, what we're interested in capturing is not something that is antithetical to the constraints of the world in which we act -- as monkeysan pointed out in reference to Lisa's "free and unimpeded movement" phrasing. Instead, we want to capture the open-endedness of social process, the way that our actions (not only in obviously "creative" endeavors, but in anything we do) carry the potential to innovate, to reach a new accomodation between the affordances of the world around us, and our own efforts within them. This is always true of human practice, at least potentially, and this is what the pragmatists recognized (and Arendt, too, in her vis activa) as at the heart of social action. I think that what we find fascinating about activities labeled "games" is precisely how they make this contingency of our day-to-day experience available to us, but within semi-bounded (never fully separable) spaces.

The fascination in pattern that human beings have is always about a mix of the expected and the unexpected, the regular and the contingent; we should not be surprised that it's compelling (to put it in a normatively neutral fashion). I suppose, then, that the only connotation of "play" that would capture this is the "play" in a rope, the extent to which there is "give" or "wiggle-room" in the world around us as we act, and the way that it can become so deeply engaging to find that play and work with it.

[Lisa Galarneau]

13.

Okay, this is a half-formed thought, but when we start talking about play as a mode of experience, it starts to sound an awful lot like flow, minus perhaps the clear goals.

And yeah, the idea of play as antithetical to work is where we tend to go wrong... that's sort of what I was trying to say, though not nearly so eloquently as Thomas. But that's what I love about Julian Dibbell's 'play is to the 21st century what steam was to the 19th century' premise... that play and work are necessarily intertwined... that play can (and does) provide energy to fuel production, and is a potentially harnessable component of psyches that aren't motivated by traditional ideas about the value of work.

But then I start to think that all we're really talking about is engagement, which seems to me should be a basic human right at this point.

[monkeysan]

14.

Thomas, I think the last part of your last post, about how games make the contingency of our day-to-day experience available to us.

I suppose that I see play most usefully thought of as an intentional thing. If I consider myself to be engaged in play, that counts as strong evidence that I am indeed playing. I think the 'mode of experience' frame also picks up on what I'm getting at from a slightly different angle. In fact, I started writing my long post using the term 'mode' precisely to get at what you posted more eloquently in the interim between my writing and hitting 'Post'.

Granted, that apparently took 45 minutes. But such is the nature of modern multi-tasking. :)

Well put, Thomas.

[Samsara]

15.

I agree that reputation is a strong motivator for creators. That was part of the logic of allowing terrestrial radio to play music without paying the artists performing it -- they were already getting a form of payment through their enhanced reputation. It's a moot point when it comes to current IP law however, which isn't even motivated by protecting the creator's right to earn from her creations. Rather it's about protecting certain monopolies. Whether or not the original artist wants to be famous or rich is irrelevant hen the corporation he is contracted to controls his copyright. I haven't read your article yet so I may have more comments once I do. These are just my initial musings.

[monkeysan]

16.

Oops. I meant to say I think the last part of your post was excellent.

BTW, in defense of the indefensible, the antonymical use of the word 'play' has a reasonable intuition at its base. The intuition is that play is essentially linked to an opportunity to experiment with strategies/actions in an environment where the consequences of our choices have less material impact than they would in another environment. We've tended to call these more circumscribed environments 'games' and the less forgiving environments 'work'.

I think the intuition has some value even if the labels are crap.

[Thomas Malaby]

17.

Agreed, Monkeysan. As soon as these are no longer *relative* distinctions (about stakes, separability, or normative valences) then we have a problem, not least the fact that it shuts down a whole range of empirical research questions that we should be asking about each interesting case in its cultural/historical specificity.

I just can't help wondering if it is impossible to recuperate these terms to be useful in this way. Frankly, I think it's possible for games, but not for play.

[Andy Havens]

18.

I started drawing a Venn Diagram because of this post... sometimes they help me think. I know, I know... I'm just that big a goober. But I was wondering about how I felt about the overlaps/intersections/avoidances of work, play, fun, games and art.

What I ended up with, in the end, was that they can all overlap and intersect in any combination, except the following: play must be fun. The rest of them can combine any-which-way.

Art? Not always fun. Trust me. I write. Not always work... though I do it for a living. A game? Sure. There are many writing games I play; some are fun, some aren't.

Games? Often are fun. Not always, though; worthwhile, intriguing, frustrating, memorable... many positive adjectives, but not necessarily "fun." We're not always looking for "fun," so games that are only and always fun... just aren't that much fun ; )

I would even argue that "play" isn't the opposite of "work," and hasn't really ever been... except in some sterile, outmoded, Victorian ideal of "I work at work" and "I play on the cricket field." Many of us "play" at work, as part of work. It is entwined into the work, into our interactions, activities, etc. It may be especially true in the creative fields... but I also sing while doing dishes. Badly. Loudly. Bawdily. For... fun. I "play" at it. In order to balance the "work."

But play itself? I don't believe it's as complicated as some of us are making out. Understanding how to maximize the rewards of play might be. And figuring out why one person's (my wife's) idea of play (Sudoku) is another's (my) idea of torture.

Then again... some folks idea of play is, specifically and explicitly, torture.

I don't buy for one second that the reason we grind in MMOs is social status. Why? Because we grind just as much in solo play. And we know, inherently, that nobody really gives a rat's ass about what level we are, what weapons we have, etc. except as a "ticket." Status may be "built" on those things initially in an MMO, and it may be impossible without them... but it is in no way kept. Status is ultimately earned by what we do, who we play with, how we behave.

So why is grinding fun? Why is it play? I think the answer lies in the shiny balls of dirt. And I don't think that the main reason the kids like their dorodango has anything to do with status or shininess on a scale of 1-5, either. Shiny balls of dirt are fun, period.

Do some kids, upon being given anything, immediately compare it to other kids' versions of same? Of course. Are some people farming and grinding and RMTing and leveling specifically for status? Sure. But I suggest that these activities have to be worthwhile on their own -- have to be fun, have to be play -- at a base level, or else they will not attract further levels of interest on social, economic or psychological planes.

Part of the appeal, for example, of the dorodango is that they are taking something useless, chaotic and natural (dirt), and rendering it useful (in that it is understood as an object of desire), ordered (spherical) and artful. It goes from being dull and unformed to being shiny and smooth. Shiny! Round! Pretty! Now, while social stacking behaviors can certainly be predicated on ugly... pretty is much easier. It also helps if the activity involves some neat (Freudian) obsessive compulsive behvaior.

Is rolling up dirt balls and shining them "play?" It is if you do it because you think it's fun. If part of the fun ends up being comparing your dirt to other's dirt... OK. But that might actually drive some of the fun *out* of the activity for some kids, eh? "I like my Level 3 dorodango... but everyone else has a Level 4... maybe I should polish it a bit more..."

I, for example, never cared much for leveling in WoW. I liked farting around, meeting people, changing classes, trying new stuff, etc. I tried a guild (I ran a guild for awhil) and seriously tried to level for about 3 months... but gave it up as "too much work." I went back to farting around. Which was, for me, more fun. It involved much less farming/grinding.

Play = fun. Games should be fun... but we get confused about games, I think. We confuse playfullness with license; competitiveness with ruthlessness; leisure with avocation; creation with creativity; socialness with friendship; text with writing; graphics with art.

I love games. And I play the ones that seem, to me, to be the "most fun." When they stop being fun, I stop playing. The idea of playing a game after it stops being fun... well..

Ain't that work? If they paid me, I'd go back to grinding for gold in Wow...

[Thomas Malaby]

19.

Play=fun works fine as a personal or even social commitment; as a policy act, if you will. But it does not hold up as a concept that can do any analytical work across cases. It is too normatively loaded to illuminate what is fundamentally and generally human about the engaged experience of the contingent. But I'm going to shut up now; I'll have a post up soon where we can really let the fur fly on this and related points.

[Michael Chui]

20.

Running off-topic here, but I think the notion of WoW as the new Knitting is wonderful and apt. I think I'm going to wait for Thomas' post before I throw in my thoughts in response, except to add this one piece:

Reading the comments, it appears to me that the difference between play and work requires first that you place play in the context of work, and then it's a question of how one works: loosely and creatively, or rigidly and straight-forward? Play is only this creative, loose thing when you're contrasting it against the term "work". It's only "free and unimpeded" when you're comparing it to something that isn't; play does not seem to be, on its own merit, any more free or unimpeded than any other activity. Except perhaps in feel...

Yeah, that's enough. =)

[Andy Havens]

21.

@Thomas: "[Play = fun] does not hold up as a concept that can do any analytical work across cases."

Why not? You can start with a very defined activity and ask participants, "Are you having fun?" Let's assume they say, "Yes." You can then start -- very analytically -- screwing with the activity; adding elements, subtracting elements. Changing time sequences. Removing barriers. All kinds of stuff. And, as you monkey about, ask people, "Are you having more or less fun?"

My contention is that those activities that you find that contribute to the "fun factor" will be those that, more often than not, constitute "play" as opposed to "other stuff." How is that helpful, from an analytical sense? Well, if we want to make a broad distinction between play and work or play and toil, it must be because there is a fundamental reason to play instead of work, I think.

We can (and often do) try to find out the things that make non-play activities (work/toil) more functional, efficient, operationally purposeful, etc. Six Sigma, Total Quality, etc. All kinds of studying on "how to be better at work." We measure that in various business-y units. OK. If we then measure play in fun-y units, perhaps we will find actions/behaviors that are compatible between the two; "play things" we can do at work that will either, A) directly improve productiviy and efficiency, or at least, B) help us feel less like we're working and more like we're playing, thereby giving us a better overall "zing" about our work experience.

I suspect that what I'm going to hear, now, is the complaint that what I've done, then, is simply define "play" as "all activities that are done which are fun."

Nope. I said "play must be fun," but not that "all fun things are play." We have to go further for that. For example, pure passive entertainment -- sitting and watching cartoons -- is fun. But it's not play. Play requires action, I think. Involvement. Some environmental interaction, possibly with other players, though not necessarily. I'd also argue that play involves learning; on intellectual, social, muscular, verbal, spacial or other levels. And learning involves feedback.

So. Play = fun w/ action, learning and feedback.

OK. I guess I have gone further than simply "play = fun."

I think out-loud on this blog sometimes. So sue me ; )

[Thomas Malaby]

22.

@Andy: Why not? You can start with a very defined activity and ask participants, "Are you having fun?"

[Still trying desperately to shut up.] The problem is that this plan fails at the moment of cross-cultural inquiry (if not before). Or do you think that it would be easy to establish a common standard of "fun" for anyone, anywhere in the world? (Not to mention the perils of relying on self-reporting of inner states as the foundation of empirical research; as Malinowksi observed, there is an oceanic gulf between what people do, and what they say they do.) The fact is that people interested in games (including many folks here) have become personally and politically invested in their culturally-constructed, normatively-charged associations, like fun (and why shouldn't they? Cultural constructions are no less powerful or intimate for being constructions), but this is no road to anything but tautological, self-confirming research.

[monkeysan]

23.

The perils of self-reporting about mental states notwithstanding, I think that watching cartoons (and in my case soap operas as well) can also qualify as play. With sopas, for example, I love to predict long-term future arcs with the least amount of explicit information possible. I also love noting the numerous 'high brow' references soap writers (primarily ABC) often subtley slip into their work.

The whole notion of passive/active entertainment is 100% myth, for reasons that go way beyond the simple rhetoric of, say, Stephen Johnson.

But that's another subject.

[monkeysan]

24.

The problem is that this plan fails at the moment of cross-cultural inquiry (if not before).

Sorry for the double, but I vote for WAY before.

[Thomas Malaby]

25.

@monkeysan: The whole notion of passive/active entertainment is 100% myth, for reasons that go way beyond the simple rhetoric of, say, Stephen Johnson.

The work of Eric Michaels on Warlpiri ways of watching television ("Hollywood Iconography: A Warlpiri Reading") is an excellent example that not only exposes the myth of active/passive entertainment, but shows the cultural construction of how media is actively consumed.