Playing to Win
We are heading into the final day of what has been a rich week of discussion around the idea of power, play, and participation. So much has been covered that I hesitate to try and summarize; instead, I thought I add something new to the mix, which might seem to be something of a radical departure from most of the posts to date, but I will do my best to connect it back to some of the things that have been discussed. I have been reading a book called Play to Win, by David Sirlin. Sirlin is a professional videogame player (Street Fighter is his game of choice), and while he is not against “playing a game for fun,” he thinks that if one is to play to win, fun is beside the point. He writes “In pursuing the path of winning, you are likely to learn that concentrating merely on beating the opponent is not enough. In the long run, you will have to improve yourself always, or you will be surpassed. The actual conflict appears to be between you and the opponents, but the best way to win is to bring to the table a mastery of playing to win and a mastery of the game at hand.”
Within educational circles, a lot of lip service is given to the concept of mastery, of becoming fluent in a set of key skills. Mastery is certainly a form of power, and in order to gain mastery of a game a tremendous amount of time must be spent studying the game, practicing skills, and employing those skills against experts. When mastery is achieved, either in a game as simple as Warioware or as complex as Starcraft, players feel a tremendous sense of accomplishment.
Games invite mastery because they are made up of sets of discrete challenges, knowable rules, and repeatable choices. Beating a game is only one measure of mastery; I know many gamers who care not about beating the game but only mastering the skills to play well, and to perform at the highest possible level. The emotions expressed in the blog entry from the former WoW player were in part connected to the fact that the open-ended structure of MMOs fails to reward mastery of a known system. In WoW, the system is always changing as bugs are found and fixed, as new challenges are released—players enter into a Sisyphusian contract whereby one may never attain the kind of mastery games like Street Fighter, Warcraft, or Madden Football afford. And this can be incredibly disempowering.
Several of the posts over the last few days have touched on this idea of players being played by games, and the need to acknowledge the power structures inherent in games, be they embedded in rules or in the underlying technology. But I would argue that when a player gains mastery over the game, they acknowledge the artificiality of its construct, learning to speak the system so well that they make it their own. Sirlin is instructive on this point:
“A competitive game is…a debate. You argue your points with your opponent, and he argues his. “I think this series of moves is optimal,” you say, and he retorts, “Not when you take this into account.” Debates in real life are highly subjective, but in games we can be absolutely sure who the winner is.
The conflict is between the players; the game itself if merely the medium—the language—of the debate. The game must be expressive enough to allow the debaters to articulate complex thoughts. A skilled debater knows the nuances of the language and common tricks and traps of language he can use against untested opponents, but the language is only his tool. Once he learns the theory of debate, he can apply it to any language. It is common to focus entirely on learning nuances of a language at the expense of gaining a real understanding of how debate should be conducted. Expert debate involves gaining an understanding of the opponent and what he will say, and knowing immediately what you will say back. It involves deception and boldness, risk-taking and conservatism. If you learn to debate (play to win), then learning particular languages (games) become simple in comparison.
Is it useful then, to think about the value of playing to win in the context of power and participation? I think so, and I worry that in looking for forms of empowerment within games and gaming practices, we often overlook competition and playing to win as viable models. Part of the appeal of games is that they allow you to become something that you might not really be—for many kids winning while playing might provide them a rare moment of success in a life where those moments are few and far between. Empowering a child is often about giving them a challenge you know they can take on, but which requires them to invest in mastering the skills to fulfill that challenge. Games are natural systems for such a pursuit of mastery, and playing to win a strategy we should be more willing to take on when we ask how kids might be better empowered through their play.