What is play? Why do I care? Why should you?
The way we see play matters for how we see ourselves, and others.
Take a look at the images at the top of this post. Which of them would you say represent a form of play? For something to count as play, some of you might require some kind of thing to play with, others will focus on rules. In the view of many play researchers, only 3 of these are images of play (we'll come to which three later). But I'd like to argue that they all embody, in different ways and to different extents, important aspects of play that I'd like to explore on this stack. And yes, the last one is flirting. I’ll explain.
Without pretending to offer any kind of theory of play, here are three important aspects, as I see them.
Exploration: in my reading around play, one of the most intriguing definitions suggests that play is any activity which assigns meaning, not in the real world but in a kind of mental play space. This is most obvious in imaginative play and pretty easy to grasp in games- part of the power of video games is that they make this play space literally exist in visual and auditory terms. It's less obvious in some Of my other examples, but it might help to think of the play space as a ‘what if’ space. I peek a boo, the ‘what if’ is whether and when mum will reappear. In drinking games it's ‘what if we had to only speak in a needlessly complicated code while progressively incapacitating ourselves?’ I'll let you fill in the gaps around flirting. I'm not in the business of excluding activities from the category of play, but the idea of a mental play space, distinct from real world interactions, explains why actual exploration, or reading, or having a drink, are not in themselves play.
A word on sport before I move on: it could be objected that sport’s ‘play space’ is physical, not mental- after all, a goal is a goal. If you take that view, all I would suggest is that you watch some sport that you do not know anything about: check out some Kabbadi then tell me sport isn't played in a mental space!
Structure. For some of our forms of play the structures and rules are explicit- although frequently for board games they are also frequently opaque! Video games don't spell out a rules set, typically, but they constrain the player's options in ways that are highly structured, even in open world games. Similarly, play with toys structures the actions of a child in ways that are subtle but powerful. It's less obvious that flirting or chase play have structure, because the structure is implicit, negotiated and ever changing, but anyone who has ever transgressed the rules of flirt can assure you they exist. The tendency to miss or ignore these unwritten rules of play are also one of the main reasons that children on the autistic spectrum, even if socially motivated, struggle to sustain social play, and thereby friendship.
Interaction. Do you play crosswords? I think probably crosswords aren't play, and I suspect the reason is a lack of interaction. Again, in some forms of play, interaction is an obvious feature, but play conducted alone is less obviously interactive. But you are interacting with a system, which will respond to your actions in a way that is on some way deterministic, but not completely predictable, at least to you. Static puzzles like crosswords do not interact in this way, and it does seem as if this kind of interaction is a necessary, but obviously not sufficient, condition of an activity counting as play.
What about fun? Isn't that a necessary condition? Well, play doesn't have to be fun. I've played Monopoly junior, so believe me, I've learned that the hard way. It doesn't even have to be potentially fun to count as play- let's say you're playing a video game that you hate because you're being paid to review it. There will be the grim satisfaction of composing scathing appraisals of its qualities, but no part of the experience can be described as fun. For me, fun, connection and joy are the reasons for play, but they don't define its nature.
So play is an activity that consists in structured, interactive exploration of a mental space. Why does this matter?
There are 3 ways that play interfaces with my life and career that make it matter to me:
I’m a developmental paediatrician by trade, and in the course of assessing children I talk about play a lot with parents and young people. The way that people view and make judgments about children’s play is an endless source of, well, mild irritation if I’m honest. For instance, yes, play in autistic people is different, that’s why we talk about it in assessment. But it’s still play, and trying to force autistic kids (or indeed adults) to play in a ‘normal’ way is one of the worse things neurotypicals routinely do to them.
I also served a 5 year term as the RCPCH health improvement officer. One of the things I was most proud of was our screen time advice, which I spent a lot of my time defending. Part of this was a near constant struggle to get people of, frankly, my age to acknowledge that video gaming is play. Yes, building a city with your mates on Minecraft isn’t the same as building a den in the woods, but it’s still play and has its own value. Resisting the wider tendency among adults to look back at a nostalgic ‘proper childhood’ became, by the end, my main job at the college.
Finally, I am a gamer. I love board games, and also dabble in RPG and video gaming. These spaces are comforting, exciting and enriching to me in ways that few other cultural products can come close to. I think play is fundamental to us as humans (a point that Marcus De Sautoy is currently making), and I am loving its resurgence as a perfectly respectable thing for a 49 year old man to spend time doing, and writing about.
And why should you care? If you’ve go this far you probably care a bit, but a few points: gaming is a billion-pound industry. Games are among the most vibrant cultural forms we have. And play in many ways defines us as humans.
That’s worth talking about, right?
Next post is on what is good and bad play. If this post has stirred any thoughts let me know and I will see what comes of them…