Structural Coping

Learning about post-structuralism theorists in class opened up a way of thinking of the world in a mindset of seeing the invisible structures that are in place around us. This is a similar thing that Bogost also does in Play Anything, particularly in the first chapter where he starts to establish the idea of play existing as a way for us to maneuver and appreciate being inside a structure. It feels like it can be interpreted that play is like a coping mechanism, a response to the structures that encompass us.

In the first chapter, Bogost writes, “Games aren’t magic and the most special thing about them isn’t unique to them anyway-their artificial deliberately limited structures teach us how to appreciate everything else that has a specific, limited structure.” The reason why he says that nothing is unique to games is because they are mimicking a limited structure that is identical to the ones we consistently encounter in our real lives. This may dismiss some idealist gamers view of games, we often tend to see games as escape, yet these games aren’t much of total escape when they are closely mimicking our lives. The structure of a games that he is talking about could be like the path and rules of a board game, we need the path on the board and the rules of the game to even begin engaging in play. I find it also interesting how structures of video games can replicate the structures of our lives, for example a game like GTA is like living a second virtual life. The barriers that are faced in that game are the police and also the problem of making money, so it’s a very literal replication of our real world systems.

In chapter four, Bogost restates the idea of structure in games in saying, “When designing a game, the point is not to make it taste sweet, but to fashion structure. And when playing a game, the question is not how to overcome that structure but how to subject oneself to it.” (94) So not only is he pointing out the viewpoint from a game developer, but the viewpoint of the gamer that engages in play. As someone wanting to engage in play, we are subjecting ourselves to that game’s structure. It’s similar to how we subject ourselves to structures outside of games, like subjecting ourselves to consumerism every time we view an ad on our phones. The difference though is play is actually teaching us how to have fun inside the structure, it’s not rejecting it, but finding a way to positively embrace aspects of it. Play truly is our coping mechanism.

One thought on “Structural Coping”

  1. You raise a provocative question at the end that might be developed more fully. If an essential part of “play” is its separateness from “real life” (and this is what pioneering play theorists like Huizenga and Callois laid out in the early 20thC and folks like Bogost largely build upon), then what is that relationship between “gamespace” and other social spaces? You make the gamespace sound a bit like real life as Althusser describes it: a space dominated by structure, a structure that subjects us to its protocols.

    If I’m following you, the value of games is that they make us aware of our subjection in other areas and allow us to “play out” our existential subjection. But does this liberate us or inscribe us more deeply? What kinds of ideological messages are encoded in, let’s say, GTA or Call of Duty? What’s the balance of freedom and subjection when we play those games? Are there indie games that work according to radically different logics?

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