The only way to truly interact and engage with a game is to play it. Before this past week, I have honestly never really given much thought to the action of playing itself, since it seems so fundamental. The act of playing is pleasant and is the very thing that keeps people interested. The feeling of playing a game can be something that transcends space and time. It can create vivid memories of the past, or open people up to revelations about themselves. Within Homo Ludens it states, “Once played, it endures as a new-found creation of the mind, a treasure to be retained by the memory. It is transmitted, it becomes tradition. I can be repeated at any time… in this faculty of repetition lies one of the most essential qualities of play” (Huizinga, 9 – 10). This repetitive nature of playing connects to how repetitive certain games can be in our lives. There are many games that throughout the years I will always cherish and even go back to them for another play through. Over time as I go back to old games, I realize how much I’ve grown and changed throughout my life. In a way, as I replay a game, I am being shown evidence of my growth as a person. Although the old games I play have this sense of familiarity, it is also mixed in with a slightly new experience. An example would be this game I use to play when I was young called Kameo. Within this game there are enemies called Shadow Trolls and when I was young, I use to be so terrified to fight them that I would sometimes have to have my mom help me. I recently replayed this game and when coming up against those same enemies, they weren’t that scary at all! There are even some puzzles in that game that I use to struggle with figuring out. Now I breeze through them with little challenge. It is a bittersweet experience but one that shows me evidence of my growth. I believe that the more we play in our lives, or the more games we go back to, the more apparent our personal growth becomes to us.
Works Cited
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: a Study of the Play Element in Culture. Angelico Press, 2016.
Hello Sarah! I really like your blog post. I remember when I first played Pokémon Sapphire when it came. It took me about half a year to finish the game because I was so bad at it. I recently did a play through of that same game and it only took me about a few days to beat it. During the Blockbuster days I asked my parents to rent me a Sonic game for my GameCube. Later that day they went to Blockbuster and rented Sonic Adventure DX: Director’s Cut. I was super happy I was playing until Sonic was against an enemy named Chaos. At that time I thought Chaos was the scariest characters that I’ve ever seen. I remember telling my parents to return it because I was too sacred. I look back at it now and I find it funny how I was scared that character.
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I think it’s interesting to think about the the connection between play and growth. I also realize that, as we grow, we react differently to games we played before. I also experience this when I play video games from my past. In games such as Mass Effect, I made different and better decisions that led to different story lines. In games such as Resident Evil, they become easier to complete since I have more skills and less fear. The growth that we experience can happen inside or outside the game we play
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