6 Why play games?

Why play games?

Dear Lily,

When you were small you particularly enjoyed treasure hunts and dressing up. Almost all the time you were playing elaborate games of ‘make believe’ with your younger sister. You lived for much of the time in a fantasy world.

Watching you, I was reminded that humans have been defined as homo ludens, Latin for ‘playful humans’. For while this playful characteristic does not distinguish us from all other species, it has been particularly developed in humans. The enormous consequences you can see all around you in the mania for competitive games, gambling and sports. It also shows itself in behaviour in many parts of our life which we do not normally think of as ‘games’ or ‘sport’.

There are games of skill and those of chance, of single combatants against each other or of teams, involving different artefacts and different rules (balls, cards, dice). Each tends to work in a slightly different way and to appeal to a different part of our psychology.

Why play?

Humans are strongly motivated by curiosity and by a basic playfulness, a desire to compete, fantasize, imagine, struggle. This playfulness is very marked in children, but continues throughout life. The bundle of characteristics involved, the desire to win, to dominate, to outstrip the opponent, the delight in good performance, the satisfaction in co ordinated muscular or social movements, the pleasure in the calculation of risk. All sorts of different elements are involved.

A game is a sort of experiment outside time and space. In a game individuals or teams who start almost exactly equal, play according to the same rules, end up with one temporarily vanquishing the other. It creates difference out of uniformity. It is dynamic and progressive, creating variability out of similarity, artificially creating conflict. It divides and separates people who were previously joined and equal. One person has the top hat in ‘Monopoly’, buys up Park Lane and Mayfair and becomes a rapacious landlord for as long as the game lasts, while another person gets the boot and Old Kent Road.

Much of this is opposed to what happens in many civilizations in India, Africa or China where people attempt to control and downplay open competition in social life. Rituals, that is orderly, standardized repetitive behaviour, are dedicated to reducing confrontation and variations. Thus rituals tend to create a temporary phase of equality and closeness in unequal civilizations, they join people and create unity.

We see a games-like process at work in many of the central institutions of a modern society, the Stock Exchange, Houses of Parliament, the Law Courts as well as on the actual games field. All of these take the form of bounded games, worked out in an arena which allows regulated conflict. This helps change to occur without disrupting the wider society.

Within the particular 'field' of the game, during a limited time span, people can behave in odd and often irresponsible ways. They can wear odd clothes (huge helmets, white trousers), they often hit each other (boxing) or tackle each other (rugby) or throw things at each other (cricket). Or they may shout at each other in an aggressive way across the floor of the House of Commons, or be very rude to each other in a court of law, or run around madly gesticulating as in the Stock Exchange. Yet such behaviour is limited. At the end people should shake hands and become friends again, for it is ‘only a game’.

Who plays?

From at least the sixteenth century, the English became the leading inventors of competitive team games. If we think of the present games of the world, almost all were invented or modified in England; cricket, football, rugby are the most famous.

As well as games, England became a great country for sports, horse racing, dog racing, mountaineering, hunting, fishing and shooting. Likewise the English were and still are great hobby-mongers. George Orwell noted that ‘we are a nation of flower-lovers, but also a nation of stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, cross-word puzzle fans.’ Yet the English were only part of a European pattern, for the French, Italians, Dutch also form part of a 'playful' civilization.

We might assume that this kind of enthusiasm for games is universal. Yet my first impression is that until a few years ago it was limited. I have been told that there were until recently no competitive team games in Japan. There were instead a number of activities which it is very difficult to classify. They are not exactly games, for they seem to have a solemn and ritual component. Hence they are often described with a term such as ‘martial art’. Even the famous tea ceremony is neither a game, a hobby, an entertainment nor a ritual, but a little of each.

These activities lie at an intersection between art, ritual and game in a way which makes them feel strange. They include a number which have the ending ‘do’ (ken-do, ju-do) which means ‘the path’ or ‘way’ and implies a semi-religious aspect, and others such as su-mo wrestling or pachin-ko (a kind of bagatelle) which do not feel quite like a game. There were no ball games in which teams ‘fought’ each other.

It is only in the last hundred years or so that the competitive team games of the west have bounced, kicked and batted their way round the world, creating an universal addiction. So everyone is mad about football and many other people are crazy about cricket. The recentness of this change suggests that games only work under certain political, economic and social conditions. A degree of political and social equality are both a cause and consequence of the development of team games. They can be suppressed as leading to disorder and they can soon become a form of political activity. The Indians took up cricket with added zest when they realized that they could beat their white masters at it, and also legitimately stand around in a field for hours without being told they were being lazy.

When they spread they can also be radically altered. When the Trobriand islanders of the Pacific took up cricket, they changed almost all the rules so that each side had dozens of players, dressed in war dress, and hurled objects at each other. In another part of New Guinea they have learnt to play football, but they go on playing as many matches as are necessary for both sides to reach the same score.

Is science a game?

Playfulness often consists of trying out moves, making wild guesses, following intuition and hunches, leaving the logical path, taking risks, not becoming too solemn or wedded to a particular idea or strategy, innovating and experimenting. Successful science often requires a good deal of playful, exaggerated, humorous, outrageous, speculation and testing. By definition, the major advance will occur in unexpected areas and these are often reached by leaps of the mind. The overly serious, logical, thorough, highly disciplined mind often misses the significant, strange, clue that gives a new insight.

A trained Confucian scholar or Buddhist monk may be less likely to make the break through than an overgrown undergraduate full of fun, games and pranks. Francis Crick’s book about the discovery of DNA is significantly called What Mad Pursuit. The ideas were so far-fetched and incredible that most people would have dismissed them as a joke.

One of the great problems in the pursuit of knowledge in most societies is that it threatens too many vested interests. Probing the mysteries of nature may bring power, a threat to the rulers; it may undermine previous knowledge, a threat to priests; it will alter status positions, a threat to the elders and higher social groups. When Galileo pointed out that the earth revolved round the sun rather than the other way round, he was forced to publicly retract his statements under threat of torture.

The boundedness which we find as a central aspect of games, and which we also find essential in law, politics and the economy, is equally important for science. Very often those engaged in strange pursuits are hounded out as magicians or sorcerers. But, particularly in the less controlled areas of Protestant Europe and America, scientists could engage in their particular part hobbies, part-games, without fear of angry mobs. They could pursue them in the hope that their skill and ingenuity in this particular 'game' against the greatest opponent (a cunning Creator who had concealed the clues in Nature) would be recognized by others for its virtuosity.

Why do children play?

Playing games is usually strongly encouraged in schools. This is partly to strengthen the muscles and to use up surplus physical energy. Yet team games are also believed to improve social skills. The essence of a team game is to balance selfishness, the desire to shine and triumph, with sociality, the desire to make one’s team win. This balance is also one of the most difficult things to achieve in much of social life. When to keep the ball and when to pass it to another is an art which stretches out into many of our activities. The balance between co-operation and self-assertiveness is well taught within the structured environment of the rules of a game.

It is also believed that games enable people to learn how to demarcate their lives. While the game is on we abide by certain rules. Then the whistle blows and we no longer have to. Learning how to handle defeat (it took me some years not to weep bitterly after losing a game) and feel relaxed with someone who has outwitted or outplayed you is an important art.

Likewise the subtle art of playing within the rules, but using as much scope and skill within them as possible, is one which is handy in almost every branch of later life. You have to learn the rules of your trade or occupation, but if you just stick to these without creative thought then you will end up as nothing special. If you break them and are caught the result is even worse. How can you keep to the rules yet excel? Skill, personal tricks, long training and perceptive observation of others are among the things needed. The concept of ‘spin’, which makes the ball behave in odd ways in cricket and disguises the real motives of politicians when they deal with the public, is one example of this.

What is the fascination of games?

People enjoy playing games because they are animals who like to compete and dominate; to play, strive, outwit, win, are all important survival tools. But there is more to games than this, particularly team games. Members of a cricket, football or bowls team play together, often socialize together and either create or express their friendship in this way. Friendly rivalry over a game of chess or in the squash court may also cement friendship. Matching minds and bodies or depending and sharing with other members of the team, both give great satisfaction.

Friends play together and the stress on learning games at school is also meant to be a lesson in friendship. Like friendship, play is not directed to a practical goal. It is ‘just a game’, but to refuse to play is a rejection.

Equally intriguing is why people watch games and sport. The extraordinary growth of spectator sports, undoubtedly deeply influenced by television and by the way in which sport, alongside sex, is the main way of selling goods, is one of the marks of our world.

The historian of technology Lewis Mumford suggests that modern sports may be defined as ‘those forms of organized play in which the spectator is more important than the player’. It is a spectacle, in many ways closer to drama or ritual than to playing a game.

The crowd become part of a chorus, emotionally and psychologically bending together, taken for a moment out of their ordinary lives and worries. Like spectators at the contests of gladiators and wild animals in Rome, or its modern equivalent, the bull fight, or even the circus, the crowd cheers and boos. Even in the privacy of their home, people dress up in their team’s colours, drink lager and pretend that they are part of the crowd, as they watch the television.

Being in a crowd makes us brave. We can shout and say things we would normally be too timid to express. It is often the time when we can make our prejudices and passions known, whether for our country, our political opinions, or our hatreds, in a way which as single individuals we find impossible. It is not surprising that all dictatorships love assembling partisan crowds and setting them marching and singing and shouting.

Mass sport and private play are forms of conspicuous consumption. Many modern societies have a great deal of leisure and people fill up their spare time, and often demonstrate their new found affluence, through games. Often they do this publicly. But equally often privately, in the world of computer games and internet rivalries.

The increasing leisure time often created by machines must be filled. Playing in various ways is what humans like to do in their spare time. So if anything is the new ‘religion’ of the world, it is football. More money, emotion and activity is now generated by sport, games and hobbies than anything else on earth, except war. Indeed war, to some of its proponents, is the sublimest form of game. It adds the spice of the risk of death to the usual thrills of other contests. On the other hand, for many people it is better to fight in the world cup than in the trenches.