We Didn't Playtest this at all and Chaos versus Strategy

 

Something that pops into my mind every so often was a conversation that happened in a pub a few years ago. It’s niggled me ever since. I’ve never really pinned down why I didn’t just instantly forget it, but it still lives in my brain rent free.

We were playing a relatively lightweight game of some sort and drinking a few beers. It was a  bunch of people interesting in play and games in learning, but still, it was social time and we were enjoying ourselves. Someone started to argue that they didn’t really count the lightweight games (fun, easy to learn, large elements of luck) that we were playing as “proper” games. The only “proper” games were the fairly hardcore “euro” type games (lots of planning / strategy, minimal chance / luck) and the less that chance or luck was involved the better. Their ideal game involved no luck at all, but was purely a test of skill and strategy from the players.

I was playing “We didn’t playtest this at all” with my children the other day, using the “chaos pack” expansion, when I realised why this has niggled me so much. We were working our way through the chaos pack parks and I said something along the lines of “this makes it too complicated and structured – it’s more chaotic without the chaos cards”, which is when the realisation struck. "Playtest" is very chaotic, almost completely luck, very silly, and very fun to to play. It would have been as far away from being a good game as it's possible to be (from that conversation above). But it's the sort of game I really enjoy playing (particularly with my children).

So that person in the pub was defining "proper" games as more like competitive sport than free play - if you've practiced (trained?), are the "best" player, you should always win. It's no fun if anyone could win just through luck. "Playtest" is the opposite - it doesn't matter how much you practice it, you are unlikely to increase your chances of winning (unless you keep hold of a banana - apparantly zombies HATE bananas). So the "structured" game itself isn't particularly important - it just acts as a vehicle for silliness and the comedy of the text and activities on the cards. So it's really just acting as a nudge, a prompt, a permission slip to be more playful. The game isn't important, it's the way it facilitates play that is the point of it.

So, I suppose that's a long rambling way of reflecting that some people see the structures of games and becoming skilled at them as really important - like becoming competitive at a sport. Some of us see the way games give us a structure to hide behind as more important, so it gives us permission to play. Most people are probably somewhere in between the two extremes. But there is no real right answer to how games (including learning games) should work - whether they depend on us building skills, or just enabling different behaviours. What matters is what the players want to get out of it, and for learning games, what the instructor wants to enable.

Aalborg workshop

I had a lovely (though brief) visit to Aalborg to deliver a workshop for FLIP'D today (not in the lovely looking building in the image, but in the very impressive NordKraft). I'm glad I managed a couple of hours wandering around too - I love an "explore" of somewhere new to me :)

I talked a little about play, games, library teaching, permission to play, and we carried out a few activities too - thank you to everyone for taking part! I used more slides, with more text, than normal mainly so I could upload them somewhere for reference - they are now on Slideshare (plus the organisers will share them with attendees directly).

I mentioned the Journal of Play in Adulthood at the start, as someone asked me about it, I'll share a link to that! It's an Open Access peer-reviewed journal (no charges to read or publish in), I'd love anyone using play with adults to consider publishing their work in it :) https://www.journalofplayinadulthood.org.uk/  My article on "Permission to Play" in this journal goes into much more detail around the issues we used the "chatterbox" (flip / flop?) to discuss. 

I also mentioned the fantasic Counterplay Conference / Festival organised by Mathias Poulsen - hopefully he's now organising these every 2 years at Dokk1 in Aarhus. I tend to feel that the short video I tried to share at the end sums it up nicely - the giant cardboard rabbit that hops up to the clown (watch the vid!) is responsible for the most surreal experience I've ever had at a conference. A room full of people sat watching a cardboard rabbit hop to the front to deliver a plenary session and everyone accepted it as a perfectly normal thing to happen :)

Apparantly some of the links in my book for librarians using play are broken, I'll try and check through it over the next few days and add links below if I can find and fix any. The one that was specifically mentioned to me was SEEK! (A simple card game for search skills) - that should be on my institutional repository to download / adapt / print for free.


(Note - I might edit this later to add a few more links.)

First few zines

Chatterbox for Zine #3

I've now sent out the first 3 zines covering some definitions of games and play, plus one on giving "permission to play". They've all had extra materials in the envelopes such as the chatterbox shown in the image above.

I'm putting them on the OneHE website, which is only accessible for members of that organisation, so I'll pop them somewhere else too at some point (and link to them from this blog) as it'll be nice to have them more widely available too. Not sure where it makes sense to stick a bunch of PDFs though!

Next one will go out at some point in October (not sure exactly when) and will probably be on the "benefits of play in HE"... though I may get distracted and do a different topic entirely :)

Permission to play article

I've just had my latest article published in the Journal of Play in Adulthood - "Giving permission for adults to play".

It is (of course!) free to read, hope some of you enjoy it and perhaps find it useful.

https://www.journalofplayinadulthood.org.uk/article/id/565/

Abstract

Play is often seen as inappropriate in adult settings, with social expectations causing adults to frame situations in such a way that we often lack permission to play. Semi-structured interviews with fourteen people who use playful approaches with adults were carried out to explore how they gave this “permission to play” in their contexts. It was seen that they used a range of different ways consistent with the idea of needing to signal a shift in frame, and this range of approaches to giving “permission to play” are grouped and summarized in the article.


More from the journal at: https://www.journalofplayinadulthood.org.uk

Permission to play research interviews

I've been thinking about the idea of "permission to play" a lot recently, putting some of those early thoughts into a paper for the HEaD conference.

More recently I've been interviewing people who use play with adults about how they use play, trying to dig a little into how they enable people to play, or help to give "permission to play" to them. I've talked to a series of fascination people (15 of them?) and it's been brilliant hearing the amazing range of things happening and the different approaches that people take. It's also wonderful how generous they've been in offering up their time to talk about these things - the play community is full of great people.

As soon as possible I'll be transcribing, analysing, and generally puzzling over all the stuff that people told me about and trying to work it into a journal article (or a short book if I think I can justify it).  I'm sure I'll present it to at least one conference as well, though not 100% sure where (except perhaps Counterplay).

So thank you to everyone I interviewed and watch out for outputs at some point in 2019!

Permission to play and the HEAd conference

I went to the HEAd conference in Valencia last week and talked about "Permission to play in Higher Education". It's something I've been thinking about a lot recently, so I'll be doing more on this over the next year or so!

I did a run through beforehand, so if you want to know (roughly) what I said (minus the pass the parcel activity!), watch the video below. I've not done subtitles yet, but the slides are also available including notes, plus the full /formal written paper too.