Week 01 - Introduction

The reason I am taking this class is because I am perusing the Video Game Culture and Design certificate. This does not mean that I do not want to enjoy and learn from this class though. I chose to add another year to my degree to get this certificate because I was interested in the courses themselves, not just getting the certificate. Through this course, I hope to learn more about what "play" is and how it is incorporated in what we do during our daily lives. Because of this, one thing that resonated with me during the reading was the phrase: "Games are the finger; play is the moon." (Sicart, 2) My degree is in Economics and my current goal is to create a business where people can come to a building to play games of any kind as well as buy the materials for them. I hope that by taking this course, I can learn more about how to create a workplace the facilitates this. The type of games I tend to enjoy the most are JRPGs. I have been a fan of Square Enix pretty much my whole life and enjoy just about anything that they make. I specifically enjoy playing the Kingdom Hearts, Nier, and Final Fantasy series that they produce. I believe this to be because of what kind of pleasure the games provide. The story, specifically in the Nier series, is not really a happy one, but I still find plesure in playing through it, I believe this to be what Sicart talks about when he says: "Play can be pleasurable when it hurts, offends, challenges us and teases us, and even when we are not playing. Let's not talk about play as fun, but as pleasurable, opening us to the immense variations of pleasure in this world. " (Sicart, 3) Outside of video games, I really like playing Magic: The Gathering, Dungeons and Dragons, and other "normal" card games like Spades and Hearts. Other quotes from the reading that really got to me were: "Play frees us from moral conventions but makes them still present, so we are aware of their weight, presence, and importance. We need play precisely because we need occasional freedom and distance from our conventional understanding of the moral fabric of society. Play is important because we need to see values and practice them and challenge them so they become more than mindless habits." (Sicart, 5) and "But like all other passing pleasures, play can also disruptively reveal our conventions, assumptions, biases, and dislikes." (Sicart, 15) I like both of these sections due to how it addresses how play can force us to be introspective. Play does more than entertain us and can force us to even reconsider what we hold to be true about ourselves.