OneZero: You have studied play extensively. What makes it so valuable?
Eric Zimmerman: I see playing as a fundamentally social, creative, and cultural activity. For me, any game and play are like image-making, story-telling, or playing music. It’s a fundamental human activity, something that’s almost biological and definitely cultural. It’s about meaning and signification, about personal expression, and it’s culturally and historically specific.
It’s true that playing is good for brain and social development, but as a designer, I want people to appreciate the intrinsic beauty of play. If we say that something is only valuable because it facilitates something else — a vehicle for cognitive development or for learning how to win or lose — it cheapens that thing. Gamification or instrumentalizing games can leave the soul of the activity behind. Playing is meaningful in itself. It doesn’t need a justification.
Interacting with systems is part of being literate in an industrialized country, which allows us to create meaning.
What’s happening in games?
There is a big range of things we may call games, from the narrative video games to poker or fighting games. There are games that are more about expression as well as deep games like chess. And then there are games like Minecraft or tabletop role-playing games that are much more about inventing worlds and inhabiting characters. With some, you get to practice more systemic skills, while others are more about creation. It’s exciting that people are still inventing new ways to play.
I’m also excited about a game I just released with a team, called Dear Reader on Apple Arcade. It’s a series of word puzzles that let you play with literature, using the actual texts of [classic] books like Alice in Wonderland or Moby Dick or the poetry of Emily Dickinson.
There has been a big rise in independent and experimental games. Most people now download their games, which means indie game creators can now distribute their games directly to players and make a living from it. There are now healthy margins in the game industry and lots of festivals and strange niches and corners in the underground gaming world, which is what a cultural medium needs to be healthy.
Can computer games help us grow as individuals and evolve?
When I hear the word “game,” I hear the word “image.” Do images have the potential to help us grow? Do words have the potential to make us grow? In the right context, yes, absolutely — from studying a text to having a meaningful conversation or reading a newspaper article that gives us a new perspective.
People often wonder if you could design games so that they have this effect, but culture and media often work in ways we don’t expect. Maybe what helps a student find a sense of identity and community is joining an esports team, where they find that camaraderie and sense of focus. The same way opening a boxing gym and letting neighborhood kids learning that discipline can have the opposite of what we think is happening in boxing — it’s a violent sport that’s about beating somebody up.
No game is a silver bullet that can make you better all at once. I am not sure that books are like that. The reality check is always to think about games as they relate to other media. Films, books, and games usually work in a similar way.
What is the interplay between computer games and society?
In some ways, games embody the best and the worst of contemporary industrialized society. I believe digital games might be a model of literacy for today’s entertainment and culture.
So many aspects of our lives are about interacting with a system. The way we communicate, flirt and romance, conduct our finances, and connect with our government. The way that we work. So interacting with systems is part of being literate in an industrialized country, which allows us to create meaning.
Playing games is an interesting training for that kind of literacy. We can push and pull at the inputs and outputs of a system, and look at the relationship of parts and see how they add up as a whole. We need to understand complex systems to solve the massive, dynamic problems of today, such as climate change, global poverty, or the movement of migrant workers.
The simple binary narratives of the 20th century — good versus bad, the people I know versus the outsider — aren’t sufficient to grapple with the complexity of the problems of today.
However, the kind of systemic thinking that goes hand in hand with digital technology can also make problems worse, like gerrymandering electoral districts in the United States. In gaming, we call this a positive feedback loop. They’re using gamelike thinking, and, from a hardcore game player perspective, you can’t blame them, because they’re playing this game to win. But that’s not in the spirit it was meant to be played, which is the idea of a representative democracy.
How is the perception of computer games changing?
When I started as a game designer 25 years ago, people thought games were violent, addictive, and kids’ stuff. Video games are a little bit less in that place, and interviews like this are evidence that opinions are shifting. What we consider a cultural good changes over time.
There is always going to be some form of media — one day it was Dungeons & Dragons or rock ‘n’ roll, or comic books, or television — which is seen as negatively addictive or harmful. In the future people are going to consume some other form of media that sounds really harmful to you and I, while playing video games will be the generally accepted good that nobody questions.
The deeper you play a game, the more you want to retro-engineer, modify and hack into it, so you can customize it and make it your own.
How can we stem the more problematic uses of computer games, such as addiction, social isolation, and gambling, and steer people towards more constructive ways of playing?
That’s an important question. I think about games like images. There are images we would recognize as harmful, like child pornography or Nazi propaganda, and there are images that we may say are more beneficial and culturally meaningful. Many activities, including games, are problematic if done in excess, but virtually anything that’s positive can also become addictive. Like eating disorders, the question is, how do we help people with otherwise important activities for human existence?
Media creators need to think about the kind of content and patterns they are designing for. There can be revenue models that can be exploitative to get people hooked or enticing them to pay more.
Do you worry about people, particularly children, spending a lot of time interacting with highly commercial and potentially exploitative computer games?
That’s an important concern, but a problem with our culture in general. One hundred years ago, children had a much less corporatized playing experience, roaming around the neighborhood and having adventures. Now they’re much more moderated by parents and the media environment they inhabit. Pokemon, Minecraft, Barb, and Disney princesses are now an indelible part of childhood.
But there are also seeds of hope in games. The deeper you play a game, the more you want to retro-engineer, modify, and hack into it, so you can customize it and make it your own. Many games blur the line between producers and consumers — Minecraft is a good example of that.
So games can provide new models for the way we engage with media that are not just centralized media broadcast messages to an audience, but a much more modular and participatory way of interacting, like social media.
What does the future hold?
What’s exciting for me is that gaming is a cultural form which is reinventing itself every several years. But the watchword of our time is not forgetting the human element, so that games don’t become overrun by the interest of contemporary hypercapitalism. At the NYU Game Center, we try to embed these human values and responsibility, saying to our students, that they’re inventing the culture for the next 100 years.
