Serious games

Today I was in a discussion with a group of people who study games from a literary perspective. The question was floated as to why people play games, since they are not useful.

Now, my perspective on things in general is that if something is highly pleasurable, then it is biologically connected to something that has had survival value for our species. We derive great pleasure from the taste of food because eating is essential to our survival. The same goes for sex, and for our feelings about our children. The greater the inherent survival value of a particular behavior, the greater is the associated pleasure.

Of course this can all be subverted. The pleasure principle associated with consuming food, when it runs amok, can kill you, and sexual appetites can become highly self destructive. The point is not that things can’t go wrong, but rather that the feeling of pleasure wouldn’t even exist in the first place, unless there were some underlying biological trait that had been selected for over an evolutionary time scale.

Which is why today’s conversation reminded me of an experience I had in the Seattle Zoo about ten years ago. I was in the part of the zoo where they keep the baby animals. In one enclosed yard were the young of some species of exotic deer. The males of this species have antlers when they are adults, but the males in this particular group just had stubby little knobs, where antlers were yet to grow.

In the middle of the yard was a big rock, about the size of a smallish table. I was surprised to see that the male baby deer had organized themselves to play a game around this rock. Half the deer lined up on one side of the rock, and the other half lined up on the other side. All of a sudden the two deer at the front of their respective queues would run up, leap onto the rock, and butt heads with each other. Then these two deer would each jump off the rock, circle back around, and get in the back of their respective lines.

For as long as I watched, the male baby deer continued to play this game. They never seemed to tire of it, and they were all clearly having a great time.

In that moment I realized that “fun” for the young of a species (including humans) comes from activities that exercise and develop skills that will become not only useful, but deadly serious, once the individual grows up. Young deer butt heads, and young humans play with dolls, play fireman, and play soldiers.

I am fairly confident that we are drawn to games (not only as children but also as adults) because they exercise and develop skills that allow us to function better. We can’t always recognize or identify what those specific skills are, but if the game is fun, that’s a very good indicator that important skill building is taking place.

In this very fundamental sense, all games are serious games.