The Aesthetic of Play

by Brian Upton

A game designer considers the experience of play, why games have rules, and the relationship of play and narrative. The impulse toward play is very ancient, not only pre-cultural but pre-human; zoologists have identified play behaviors in turtles and in chimpanzees. Games have existed since antiquity; 5,000-year-old board games have been recovered from Egyptian tombs. And yet we still lack a critical language for thinking about play. Game designers are better at answering small questions (“Why is this battle boring?”) than big ones (“What does this game mean?”). In this book, the game designer Brian Upton analyzes the experience of play—how playful activities unfold from moment to moment and how the rules we adopt constrain that unfolding. Drawing on games that range from Monopoly to Dungeons & Dragons to Guitar Hero, Upton develops a framework for understanding play, introducing a set of critical tools that can help us analyze games and game designs and identify ways in which they succeed or fail. Upton also examines the broader epistemological implications of such a framework, exploring the role of play in the construction of meaning and what the existence of play says about the relationship between our thoughts and external reality. He considers the making of meaning in play and in every aspect of human culture, and he draws on findings in pragmatic epistemology, neuroscience, and semiotics to describe how meaning emerges from playful engagement. Upton argues that play can also explain particular aspects of narrative; a play-based interpretive stance, he proposes, can help us understand the structure of books, of music, of theater, of art, and even of the process of critical engagement itself.

Genres: Game Design, Games, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Video Games, Academic, Design

336 pages, Hardcover

First published March 13, 2015

Reviews

[Shahriar Shahrabi · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was not expecting a proper well researched literary work, providing a well constructed frame work that is applicable to stories, plays, games and symphonies. Overall, it is the best game design book I have read so far. It has the right degree of abstraction, while still providing a useful perspective for someone who actually makes games. Also it might as well be the best book I have read about narrative, but I am not that well read there.

[Roger K. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my absolute favorite kind of book. It provides a new way of looking at the familiar, and creates insights that keep my mind racing for weeks.

Upton demolishes the thinking that games cannot be art. The framework that he describes not only gives game designers a lens to create great play experiences, it enables new insights into what makes for great art. For instance, he identifies six factors that contribute to a player's thinking about a game - choice, variety, consequence, predictability, uncertainty, and satisfaction. There are at least a dozen great books that could be written just by applying this way of thinking to a variety of domains - fashion, film, and painting all came to mind while I was reading.

The writing is crisp and clear, and the gaming examples used are a wonderful mix of classics and less well-known games. The result is a superb book that is an absolute must for anyone who designs or creates for a living - and nowadays, that's just about everyone!

[Thom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Argues for the elimination of the distinction between video games (interactive) and novels / plays / music (passive). Each represents a type of "play", an interaction between the media and the consumer. Touches on Ron Edwards' GNS theories of role playing games and critical analysis as a further form of play.

The author is a video game designer, and the ideas he collects here tie closely into why a video game "works" or doesn't, including when cut-scenes make sense and when the player will be annoyed by them. These same ideas tie into the expectations of the reader of a book, and are revealed in many of the "rules of writing". This book provided a very interesting discourse, with a decent bibliography to match.

[Alan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is full of insights for game players, as well as creators of games and even those interested in producing works of literature. Get a new perspective on how an audience explores and experiences a landscape of possibilities, in games, drama, cinema, and fiction. I will definitely read it again.

[Agential Arts Workshop · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I appreciate that Upton tries to approach games from what he perceives as a novel, or at least unconventional perspective, this very well written and concise book more often puts forth propositions that represent the most heavily tread paths in the world of game design and development.

For structure and the clear crafting of ideas, the book gets three stars from me (though many typos have gone unedited). As far as the premise, in my subjective opinion, the ideas framed in Upton’s propositions are of the sort that prevent games from moving forward as an art medium unto themselves, with their own strengths and purpose.

Granted, “game design” is traditionally a type of product design, more about entertainment than exploring the medium as an independent and uniquely expressive art form, and from that specific perspective this book presents several interesting and insightful ways to approach thinking about interactivity and traditional media. However, if one already has experience in an interactive field or reading other books about game design, I just don’t think one would find the perspectives or propositions terribly unique once they’re broken down into essential meaning.

In the early going, Upton mistakenly misrepresents Caillois’s concept of the type of play Caillois called “ilinx.” While usually simplified as “vertigo,” Caillois’s own examples and explanations present ilinx as including types of consensual and deliberate altered states of mind and perception. Upton dismisses the concept as more or less the sensation of being dizzy and excludes it from his thinking moving forward. This is somewhat interesting given that concepts adjacently related to altered states of mind and perception, including real-time firsthand “immersion” and projecting into an avatar-as-agent, are some of the core concepts that make true reciprocal interactivity unique as a consumption method for any art form, including video games. Upton’s primary premise is that the experience of playing games isn’t genuinely unique when compared to the internal interpretive experience one has consuming other, more traditional forms of media, which ultimately denies a distinction between any firsthand and secondhand perceptual experiences with said media.

Definitely worth reading if you’ve got an interest in games or game development. Probably not particularly useful as any sort of guide or framework through which to approach your own interactivity work.

[Rohan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intriguing treatise on the design of games, drawing heavily on the author's experience in video game development and grounded in philosophy, neuroscience and psychology.

One comes away trying to model a lot of real life activities as games.

A key takeaway was Upton's description of the ineffable pleasure of team sports where he contends that the act of anticipating the movement of team members simulates a kind of a transcendental experience.

Anticipating movement of team members simulates a kind of a transcendental experience
Their actions are comprehensible and their motivations are clear in a way that is rare in day-to-day life. As we grow accustomed to playing with them, we become better and better at anticipating how they will respond in any particular situation. Often we find ourselves imagining a particular sequence of events playing out, and then, almost as if by magic, what we imagined actually happens. The receiver cuts across the field just in time to catch our pass, the priest heals us just at the moment when our health is about to give out, the sniper picks off the grunt as he charges our base.

In the heat of the moment, our anticipation of the actions of our teammates can easily be misinterpreted as agency. It is as though, by simply thinking about someone doing something, we are able to cause them to do it. We become, for a time, more than a mere individual: we expand to encompass a team. We collectively act with a unity of vision and purpose that transcends our normal, solitary existence.

The author's characterization of the differences between narrativist(make-believe type games, RPGs, playing house etc) and gamist(structured, explicit victory conditions, points etc) play is also notable -

The goal of an aesthetic experience isn't for the audience to converge as quickly as possible on an intended meaning. The goal of an aesthetic experience is to make the process of convergence toward meaning interesting in and of itself.

i.e. the goal in a narrativist game is to play in a manner that re-inforces the fantasy that has been established.

[Mattschratz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book begins with some good definitions/working through different modes of gameplay and how games are made. Then it takes some productively unusual turns into both neurons (gamelike) and narrative (also gamelike). It also has a bit responding to Roger Ebert's anti-video game essay, which reminded me of that essay (helpful for various purposes).

[oldb1rd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despites the fact of working in a game design field for more than a decade, I’ve never studied it as a course in the university.

This monography at the same time covers this gap for me a little. Great structure, cross-coverage of the subject via various disciplines. Would be not honest to call it an easy, idle read but definitely interesting and worth it.

[Béres · Rating 2 out of 5]

Something kept me reading at a slow pace until I eventually finished it but it is far too technical for me. I was looking for some kind of payoff towards the end but I didn't get it.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, especially how game heuristics apply to literature.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this at the request of a game-designer friend, otherwise I wouldn't have picked it out myself. It's... exhaustive. Which is a good thing, but something to be prepared for. The author draws a circle around his topic, and breaks down everything within that circle, all the way down to brain chemistry. It's wide-ranging, and very careful in its wording and in its trains of logic. At times it almost seems trivial, but I think that's only because he breaks things down so meticulously that the end result seems obvious -- but that's the point, and the benefit of doing things that way. If you agree with that small concept, then you agree with the ones built on it (though of course, clever proofs can lead to 1=2 by appearing solidly logical but ignoring certain things that are easy to miss). I'm glad this book exists, even if it was a slow read. I think the author did a great job of critically analyzing his topic and presenting it in its entirety.

[Lucas · Rating 5 out of 5]

This surprised me. I was looking for a way to view video games as literature and also got a way to view literature as video games. Upton has such a cool way of looking at art and the world, and some of the most approachable semi-academic writing I've encountered (including really good meta-conversation on the nature of definition and theory). He maybe relies a bit too much on diagrams for my taste, but you can skip those.