Playing Software

[droqen]

Regarding Miguel Sicart's
"Playing Software"
as recommended by jwest via ~Paradise ~
following my 2nd read of Games : Agency as Art

[droqen]

Removed: a bad quote-riddled attempt to summarize the first chapter. I'm reading it fully; it is a difficult text.

[droqen]

Actually. Strange enough for me, I'm going to skip the introductory chapter. Sicart attempts here to summarize the book in a multifaceted way, which I applaud in one sense, but it is REALLY not helping me understand any of those facets. I'm ready to just jump in, and take them one facet at a time.

[droqen]

P11

I . . . claim that digital play is different from analog play because digital play is a relational mode of entangling with software agencies in the worlds created by and for software.
    In this sense, digital play is a phenomenon of the information age. . . . the historical time in which computers have become part of the fabric of (developed) societies.

This helps me understand more clearly the nature of play, and the digital material with which Sicart describes playing, but it remains irksome to me that Sicart claims "that digital play is significantly different from nondigital play."

It's not untrue, but it obfuscates — ENCRYPTS — the simpler and more pure idea that the digital world is its own distinct thing, the act of playing with it of course distinct from the act of playing with any distinct other thing!

There is no need to implicate play in this except as the very action which allows us to notice and bring out such difference.

[droqen]

Through playing we can better understand the information age and everything and anything at all.

I plan to disassemble most of what Sicart has to say about 'digital play' from this point onward into two components—how does Sicart play, and what does he think of software and our digital world(s)?

[droqen]

P12

When [a stock investment app] uses game design techniques like virtual confetti to celebrate the users' first investment, it is making a mundane activity feel more like play. . . [by drawing] heavily on the visual and game feel rhetorics of games.

There's so much for me to unpack here. It is almost a question of linguistics. (Linguistic determinism (and Sapir-Whorf), Game Poems; Sicart refers to signifiers rather than deeper human signifieds)

[droqen]

That is, he claims that to appear game-like is to evoke play and playfulness, himself making the error made by others by allowing himself to recognize a temple of play not by the play actually afforded and worshipped there, but instead by its familiar and easily co-opted trappings.

The frustrating part to me is that in making this mistake he is not wrong about how the world works — based off of these types of human errors in perception, this false but human perception centric perspective somewhat accurately predicts the movements of human society.

[droqen]

P13

To play in the information age must not be to conquer others. . . [It] should be to acknowledge others, to thrive in the worlds we can create and travel along them and recognize others in them. We need an understanding . . . that also has an ethos and a politics so we can better understand the ways play can be used as a form of control and manipulation.

As a result of Sicart's imprecision with words (above) I find it so hard to figure out what, exactly, he is saying here. What is play? What does it mean for play to 'be' something? In Sicart's manifesto-like statement he insists what play 'must' and 'must not' be, but does he mean that we should define play to exclude these things? Does he mean that when these behaviours are identified as play we should stamp them out, but only in the context of play?

I suppose I suspect his position is simply that in any age at all, nobody ought to conquer others, through any means whatsoever! But here we are in this age, from the perspective of this one player. It's a real subjective lampshading of what could otherwise be such a simple philosophical ethical statement. "People must not conquer each other."

[droqen]

"People should acknowledge each other, thrive in the spaces we inhabit and travel along them and recognize others in them."

"We need an ethos and a politics so we can better understand the nature of conquering [to better prevent it]."

[droqen]

This is my issue with how much and how often Sicart uses and defines and redefines play: he is using it to almost transparently stand in for his ethics and politics. What I mean is that as a word he makes it an avatar of his perspective. I don't mean to say that he does this with any pretension, only that it seems clear that is the role it plays in his works.

The next section, as soon as I turn the page, is entitled:

Defining Play, Again (This Won't Be the Last Time)

[droqen]

I don't claim any particular ownership over the word play, but I have thought a lot about what it is, its usage, etc. It isn't a cardboard cutout of Goodness, it's an actual concept or collection of concepts. It is real and has a shape (even if that shape is infinite in size and completely intangible).

It rubs me the wrong way, and I suppose I'm not too interested in a lot of the morality or ethics talk either. I have my morals and ethics! I have my hopes for the world. It does bother me to see a more or less clear as day "The world should adhere to my morals and ethics"-like statement. This doesn't give me anything new except a slight irritation that someone is telling the world (and by extension me) what to do.

(Part of the non-newness is that this is stuff I've thought about before, which must be factored in. Fine, he's saying something new to somebody. The irritation, however, remains.)

[droqen]

P14

I want to move beyond games to argue that playing is making sense of software in general.

Why such a half- or even quarter-measure? I suppose that Sicart is using a shorthand, play for digital play, but is play not making sense of anything in general? This returns to my earlier grudge regarding "digital play" vs "analog play".

Here Sicart may be understood to be saying, simply, "I want to move* beyond games to software in general." The presence of play adds nothing to this statement.

*Okay, maybe the presence of play belongs here, but it is not about 'playing games' or 'playing software' or defining 'play' at all. Here, the play is in Sicart. He wants to think about software, not games. The way that he thinks about things, both of these things, perhaps many other things, is through play. That is just fine. Admirable even.

[droqen]

My usual habit of picking things apart is not working out for me, in terms of reading this book. This is a good thing, I'm glad that I'm feeling challenged in this way. Often I will work through a few sorts of structural complaints, get them out of my system, and from then on see the work with clear eyes. In this case, I think there is a larger irritation bothering me that I cannot name or describe, and I need to continue reading without being able to name or describe this thing which is irritating me.

[droqen]

I'm really trying. I can't get over these little things. Is there some beautiful truth in Playing Software? If so it is inaccessible to me, or incompatible with me. Or I already know it and all that's left of novelty is this mild irritation with Sicart's mode of expression.

[droqen]

NO. NONONONO. No. Sicart, no. This is the sentence that ends my time with this book, haha.

P46

What toys and video games do for software agency is eliminate or contain ambiguity. In a well-designed video game, we know what we have to do, and we are given tools to learn to see what the software will do to and with us.

I am done.



I am not done thinking, but I'm done with this book, unless I find I was wrong to react this way.

~ Considering ambiguity in play.