pat kane's presentation to bbc digital futures, 2006, on 'the ambiguity of play
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On play and its light and dark side, how public service institutions should respond to the diversity of the web. Delivered by Pat Kane of The Play Ethic ([email protected])TRANSCRIPT
The value of play
The ambiguity of play
- It’s our primary adaptive response as advanced mammals-It’s our most appropriate way of operating in the network society- It’s a display of ‘soft power’, both domestically and globally
-It is essentially amoral/multi-moral-It is an energy to be contained, as much as expressed -Play is not ethical, but requires an ethics
‘Pokemon Theme Song’, Anthony Pedilla & Ian Hecox, 28.11.05
Second most viewed ever on YouTube: 19,836,641
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Circle Circle Dot Dot - Jamie Kennedy and Stu Stone (2006)
Views on YouTube: 2,562,563 (No.2 December 2006)
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‘Dirty Kuffar’ Sheikh Terra and the Soul Salah Crew (2004)
YouTube viewers: 8,896 (uploaded November 2006)
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Bluetoothed to Pat Kane’s phone, 21.12.06, Princes Square, Glasgow
YouTube (and the Net in general) is a ‘playground’, a ‘ground of play’What sustains a playground? Law? Custom? Culture? Its design and affordances? Rules of each game?
What kind of playground, or ‘ground of play’, should the BBC be?
Given the essential ambiguity and potentiality of play…
A recent history of play: John Thackra's 1998 Doors of Perception
- play as a kind of active learning, a spirit of experimentation
- Danny Hillis saying that play and efficiency are opposed – but that a creative business needs to have long-term playfulness
- Lovely cosmic and spiritual stuff from Dutch poets, Indian designers
http://museum.doorsofperception.com/doors5/doors5index.html
Nearly ten years on
- 9/11, Iraq, 6/6 and the Stern report – the world has gotten much more playful in some ways, and much less playful in others
More playful- The acceleration of network society (M.
Castells, R. Sennett) - which requires ‘players’ to survive and thrive in it.
- Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 to Web… the ‘innovation commons’ (Lessig) just keeps on growing, through participation and creativity
- Maturing of the ‘Greystation’ generation - games now as formative as television was to Boomers and early X-ers
- For the first time ever in 2005, recreation was the biggest component of household expenditure
- Much organisational work inherently playful - or requiring energy, enterprise, and investment of imagination and emotion. Rise of the ‘Soulitarians’ (But can you keep their heads and hearts in line?)
Less playful‘Liberal semiocrats’ don’t have it all their own way
The illimitability and excess of play becomes directly questioned by a growing society of limits and asceticism, caused by
• environmental considerations (will all design now have to be sustainable design?)
• the relegitimation of the sacred and iconoclasm (can all signs be equally promiscuous?)
Need to revise that … ‘Jihad via YouTube’
Benjamin Barber … ‘Jihad versus McWorld’
We could as easily have… ‘Itijihad via YouTube’ (answer video, comments)
How can such an obvious play-form as ‘Dirty Kuffar’ preach iconoclasm and Western image decadence? It is another form of play - but how to recognise it?
We are on a common global ground of play, as players - but we need better theories of play than just ‘free play against authority and order’
Brian Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play (Harvard 1997)
Best grounded theory of play I can find….
For complex mammals, humans most of all, play is ‘adaptive potentiation’
It keeps us flexible and full of possibilities, in the face of our struggles to survive and prosper in our social and natural worlds
“Play, as a model of evolutionary selection, engenders variable contingencies (uncertainties and risks) for the purpose of exercising selective control over them in fictive or factual terms. It is a mastery process creatively derived from the the exigencies of the evolutionary predicament” (p.229)“I define play as a virtual simulation characterised by staged contingencies of variation, with opportunites for control engendered by either mastery or further chaos. Clearly the primary motive of players is the stylized performance of existential themes that mimic or mock the uncertainties and risks of survival and, in so doing, engage the propensities of mind, body and cells in exciting forms of arousal…”
“Play is also a lifelong simulation of the key neonatal characteristics of unrealistic optimism, egocentricity and reactivity, all of which are guarantors of persistence in the face of adversity” (p.231)
ModernPlay as progress – we adapt and develop through playPlay as selfhood – play as an expression of voluntary freedomPlay as imaginary – play as symbolic transformation, mental energy
AncientPlay as power – we contest and compete with others – in sports and games, in theatres of powerPlay as identity – the play-forms we use to confirm membership in a community – carnival, ritual, festivalPlay as fate and chaos – the sense that we are played by forces greater than ourselves, not accessible to reasonPlay as frivolity – play as laughter, subversion, tomfoolery
Brian Sutton-Smith - the seven rhetorics of play
But it is a HORIZONTAL model - like Gardner’s ‘multiple intelligences’ - and doesn’t account for the tangled ‘play-forms’ of YouTube (from Pokemon to Jihad), mingling modern and ancient forms almost chaotically
Sutton-Smith’s theories help us to establish the legitimacy, diversity and constitutive reality of the ‘ground of play’ in world society - it encompasses the extremes and subtleties of the human condition
Can we think of play VERTICALLY as well - more developed and expansive forms of play and player? How do we nuture the new ‘lego’ [Danish, ‘play well’]?
Center of
Identity
Play Selves Style of Play
Examples Worldview/ Cook-Greuter /Piaget
Pneuma-centric
Unitive Player Play as lila
Spontaneous, witnessing, highly creative, original, and open.
Identification with the play of the world. Improvisation at psycho-spiritual levels - Crazy wisdom, tantra, and playing with luminosity. Unites deterministic and free, structured and open, chaos and order.
Trans- Personal Ego- & Const.-aware
Kosmo-centric
Dynamic Player Play as transformative
Multimodal and multi-dimensionsal
Improvisation with transformation. Meditation, holotropic breathwork, inqury
Post-post- Personal Integrated
World-centric
Complex Player Play as chaos
Fast and unpredictable
Improvisation with the world, improvisational movement and theater, multidimensional simulations, virtual reality
Post- Personal Autonomous
World-centric
Sensitive Player Play as cooperation
Connecting and sharing
Name games, ropes courses, New Games, team building exercises,
Post- personal Individualistic
Socio-centric
Status Player Play as competition
Winning and losing
Video games, gambling, poker, competitive sports, games at fairs and carnivals, Ropes courses (transitional)
Personal Conscientious Piaget: Form- Op
Ethno-centric
Ordered Player Play as structure
Following the rules
Board games, collecting things, hobbies, card games, intellectual games. Mensa.
Personal Conformist Piaget: Con-Op
Ego-centric Aggressive Player Play as conquest
Acts of heroism
Survivor, war games, chicken, drinking games, boxing/fights
Pre-personal Self-protective Piaget: Pre-op
Ego-centric Magical Player Play as connection to cosmos
Balancing good and evil
Dungeons and Dragons , Fantasy games, Divination: Runes, Tarot, magic tricks, Charms, rituals
Pre-personal Impulsive Piaget: Sensorimotor
Figure 5: The Eight Play Selves
Unitive player
Dynamic player
Sensitive player
Complex player
Status player
Ordered player
Aggressive player Magical player
From ‘Are We Having Fun Yet? An integral investigation of the transformative power of play’, Gwen Gordon and Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, Play and Culture Studies Vol. 8.
Developmental stage
Play Rhetoric Play Self
Transpersonal Play as frivolity
Unitive Player Dynamic Player
Post-personal Play as Self Play as imagination
Complex Player Sensitive Player
Personal Play as self & Play as progress Play as identity
Status Player Ordered Player
Pre-personal Play as power Play as fate
Aggressive Player Magical Player
Figure 6: Play Rhetorics in the Developmental Model
From ‘Are We Having Fun Yet? An integral investigation of the transformative power of play’, Gwen Gordon and Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, Play and Culture Studies Vol. 8.
A ‘play ethic’ is not just a euphoric celebration of play……but an approach to the composition of a meaningful life, faced by a society of play and players Robert Kagan talks of being ‘In Over Our Heads’ - incredibly evolved (and evolving) tools and technologies, but with our values, ethics and consciousness struggling to catch up
This is mostly where we are with digital games - incredible synthetic words dramatising school bullies, LA pimps or trivial celebrity narratives… But can interaction design at the BBC be more/better?
Q1: Who takes responsibility for the development and growth of players (rather than workers)?
Q2: What are the means and techniques that enable development-through-play?
A1: The BBC (or maybe the BIC)?
A2: Interaction design?
The day my technophilia finally evaporated: Steve Jobs pranking Starbucks with his I-Phone, Jan 2007
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Always the possibility of new secondary markets though…
Role for the BBC in this digital, playful, global future?
‘Gorgeous Librarians’ the most attractive (and accessible) audio-
visual-textual archive in the world. A true ‘ground of play/playground’ ….But will “share”, “find” and “play” allow
“rip”, “mix” and “burn”?
‘Serious Players, Serious Games’ BBC should not be transfixed by notion of
‘correcting market failure’. So much of the ‘wealth of networks’ is based
on commons/civic/academic values - economy of sharing (Y.Benkler).
Use your non-market position to think of advanced technique and advanced content simultaneously - move players’ “up the spiral”
BBC => BIC: British Integral/Innovation Commons
