Captured by the Game

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Captured by the Game

Imagine a neighborhood game of Cops and Robbers. Everyone playing the game takes on a role of either a "cop" or a "robber." The cops designate a tree to represent the "jail" in the game.The rules of the game describe what players can do and when: how robbers can be captured by cops, placed into jail, and set free by other robbers. The game contains many representations: cops, robbers, and a jail, as well as actions such as capturing and making a jailbreak. The rules initially establish these representations, but they find their meaning through play.

The act of play is the act of interpretation. As players make their way through the game, representations shift and change: I'm a mean Robber. I'm a helpless prisoner. I'm an escaped convict. To play with representation in this way is to play the game. The meanings that emerge do so through the unique mechanisms of play. These representations refer to crime and punishment in the real world, but they are also artificial, uniquely enacted and interpreted within the magic circle of the game.

The players of Cops and Robbers know that they are playing. A captured robber player, clinging to the trunk of the jail tree and shouting "Set me free!" isn't just making a strategic move in the game. He is also signifying the fact that he is playing. If he really wanted to leave, he could just let go of the trunk and walk away. But he is bound within the chains of meaning that the game makes possible, taking part in the artificial conflict of the game. Being captured in the game signifies being placed inside a real jail, but it also signifies just the opposite: the player is not truly captured, because he is, after all, "just playing." If this all sounds complicated in theory, just remember how easy it is in practice. None of the players in the Cops and Robbers game have to understand the complex mechanisms games use to create meaning. All they know is that they are playing a game and enjoying themselves. The meanings they experience are wonderfully complex, but there is a simplicity with which they enter into the game and experience the effortless pleasure of play.

Game players inhabit that wonderland space where the frame of the game intersects the frame of the real world. Game designers have the supreme pleasure of creating their own rabbit holes, hoping players find their way down inside, in order to create their own meanings. Game designers are the architects, the meaning-makers, the storytellers that make the play of wonderland possible.