I’ve been working on my advancement paper and it’s trudging along. Okay, maybe limping, but it’s moving forward nonetheless. Even if it’s at a snail’s pace. I’ve been hesitant to announce, “This is what I’m doing!” (for my dissertation/rest of my PhD) because the last few times I’ve tried that, I ended up changing my mind entirely. I suppose I’m close to the “mid-life crisis” point of my PhD and I finally have something I’m genuinely interested in, but I still have that lingering fear that it’s just an illusion. But what really gets me excited about it is it has valid broader impacts, something that is difficult when I tell people I’m researching video games and the response is like, “Cool! So, you play games all day, right?” (I have a feeling I should do one of those What I do/What others think I do/What I really do memes that was recently credited to one of the guys in our department.)

When I first started, I was interested in the more abstract concept of play and saw video games as a medium for channeling play. I was also interested in game design and that took me on a bit of a tangent where I was really stubborn about studying the trinity in MMOGs but it didn’t have enough of a significance to write a publishable paper on. I tried writing one nonetheless for a class. I have recently made an appearance outside of my hole and trying to reintegrate myself back into society. When colleagues ask what I’m doing, I respond that I’m studying player discipline in video games.

I won’t go into any more detail as it’s a topic for another post, but I do have some thoughts on a potential future paper that I’ll write about here. It’s all notes so far and I wanted to capture what I had in mind. I can already feel time’s effects warping it, so this is my attempt at freezing those ideas so that I can come back to them at a more appropriate time.

First, I want to start off with the idea of cycles. Video games go through cycles with its users. Some types of games are popular certain years, then taper off, then return a few years back down the line but with twists that ultimately draw players back. Multiplayer games are an example. MUDs were popular for those who had access to them, then they become a niche community of gamers, but once MMOGs were released, like EverQuest and then WoW, multiplayer games exploded once again. This time, however, even more people were brought into the fold because the technology of the Internet and computers were more widespread than before.

The cycle of video games is progressive. Developers see something lacking and make a new game that improves whatever was lacking. Interest by users are also progressive with their ever-changing desires and expectations. Video games have always ridden the crest of technology waves, taking advantage of what is available but also pushing at technology to do better so games can evolve and become better themselves. Graphics are a good example, but audio, also, is a prime example (see Game Sound by Karen Collins).

Cycles are not limited to video games or even software development. There is also a cycle that takes place in society and culture. While I’m no particular expert in this area, a quote from Victor Turner’s From Ritual to Theatre (1982) caught my attention and got me thinking: “In the liminal phases and states of tribal and agrarian cultures–in ritual, myth, and legal processes–work and play are hardly distinguishable in many cases” (34). Turner separates tribal and agragrian cultures as pre-Industrial and Western and Westernized Eastern cultures as post-Industrial. Just consider, the day-to-day activity of pre-Industrial culture is largely work as they are focused on essentials for living, but play is interwoven into the rituals of everyday life. Post-Industrial culture has the liberty to separate work from leisure. Work is delimited by time of day (e.g., 8am-5pm) and leisure takes place where work does not. Additionally, play occurs during leisure time, not work.

If Turner’s pre-Industrial societies have successfully meshed work and play together and post-Industrial societies have successfully separated work from play, how might post-Industrial societies recombine work and play into everyday life? The question is not if that is what society wants, because going back to the cycle, it is what society is returning to, although in a progressive form. That is, if ritual was a form in which play and work were meshed together, what is the form in post-Industrial society where play and work can be meshed together?

If you need more proof that society is indeed attempting to recombine work and play together, consider gamification, serious games, and simulations used for training and preparing workers. People have rediscovered an interest in play. Video games, as a popular form of entertainment and leisure activity, is used as a model but it might not be the perfect example that this work-play combination should attempt to emulate. Huizinga in Homo Ludens (1950) said, “First and foremost, then, all play is a voluntary activity. Play to order is no longer play: it could at best be but a forcible imitation of of it” (7). The approach to integrating play back into modern society is going in the wrong direction because we are forcing play into work, rather than letting play coexist with work.

Video games may not be the right medium. It can influence the right medium, whatever it happens to be, simply because of the proliferation of technology and the widespread use of video games now, especially with mobile gaming. The study of play has been focused on over 60 years ago, and I don’t want to say the theoretical understanding of play needs to be modernized, but it does need to be built upon – what is play capable of? It can be serious and taken seriously, both of which are aspects similar with work, but what makes players take play seriously? What makes them return to play? It’s more complex than just “being fun” because, speaking from personal experience, raiding was fun for a while until it got into a grind or full of drama, but I kept playing because of a personal interest in practicing at playing and also because of the people I played with.

This whole discussion is obviously much larger, deeper, and complex than it appears. I’ve only just scratched the surface of the potential of this idea. But, really, the work vs. play has a lot of literature that I am unfamiliar with and I’m just filled with apprehension at considering how much I would need to read and understand before undertaking a project like this. Still, it’s related to my broader focus and I thought it would be handy to put some pre-thought ideas out in writing if I ever get around to this.