This week, we talked about the nature of play and I think this is an interesting topic to dive in more. I never have thought much about play as much as I have about culture and games. In his book, Brian Upton starts describing play as something that transcends culture. He uses game as an example of play, not to mention that game is not the totality of play. In short, He argues that a person can learn a game and its rules from another culture different to his/her own; furthermore claiming that play is more fundamental than culture.
After putting some thoughts about this, I realized that a person does not have to understand the meaning behind the rules or the cultural context of the game itself to participate in the game. This leads to me thinking that play is not defined by what we feel or how much we feel. It’s defined based on the fact that we participate in the play and we feel something to a certain degree. Later in his book, he mentions “Contained within this definition are four elements that Huizinga believes are fundamental to play: movement, freedom, rules, and boundaries. Play is a process, not a static state of affairs” (Upton, 14). I want to focus on rules and boundaries. I think rules and boundaries are made to define the context in which we feel. For example, in a game of chess, we can capture an opponent’s piece or reach checkmate. Capturing an opponent’s piece creates the feeling of progress and, on the other hand, reaching checkmate creates the feeling of winning or achieving something. We like and enjoy these feelings. Without those rules, we do not get to feel those in a chess game because the players can’t understand the meaning behind a move or an action. Culture seems to emphasize those feelings in game. Even I have experienced this when I moved to the US. My friends invited me to play football and I learnt all the rules of the game. However, I did not enjoy the game as much as they did because I couldn’t relate to the “culture” behind it. I don’t relate to Super Bowl as much as they did. Nevertheless, it is still a good game to play because I can still win and feel good about it, but the degree of how much I feel is defined by the culture behind it.
