week 3

In week 3 we looked at how games are a subset of play. Basically we looked at how games involve play, in the way that games have characteristics such as they are competitive, they are rule based and there is some skill involved. A good example of this in the way of digital games would be pro evolution soccer, which is a football simulation game. The game much like a real game of football is very competitive especially when there are two or more players, there are is a set list of rules and the game takes practice to master the skill of it.
. We looked at how play and games can for fill a desire to compete and win. Everyone likes to be good at something and win, know one likes to lose. We looked at why this is by looking at the aesthetics of play and try to deceiver why we like to play, why is it fun, why do we enjoy it so much. In my own opinion, I believe that play calls out to a basic instinct within all of us just like the instinct to gather food. Play is needed to take a break from ordinary life, it something that is not essential to survival as a species but this is what I think makes it fun. We looked at how play is outside ordinary life and how it promotes social groups. Although we do not gain anything physical or material from play it helps us to step outside of normal life and help stimulate are minds and helps to strengthen social bonds. digital games of sports are very good examples for this, such as smash court tennis , a game I rented out to try. The game is voluntary, I can play whenever I want, its outside ordinary life, in real life I would never be playing the worlds best tennis players at Wimbledon, it has fixed boundaries which are basically the rules of tennis, and when playing it with my flat mates it helped to promote the social group, with people cheering each other on and becoming competitive about it.
we also looked at the lusory attitude theory which basically states that games, are insufficient and a waste of energy as we get no material benefit but we must accept this in order to enjoy games. In doing this we enter what is referred to as the magic circle, a place we enter in the game were special rule apply in appliance with the game were we can do things we cant do in real life safely like killing enemies, for example, when I am playing pro evolution soccer I enter the magic circle in which I can compete in the world cup and control the worlds top football players to win the cup but there is no material object I get for winning, this is what I have to accept to enjoy the game