Reading Response #6
to Artful Design • Chapter 6: "Game Design"

Marise Van Zyl.
October 31, 2021
Music 256A / CS476a, Stanford University


Reading Response 6: Work Hard, Play Never

I love playing. I love playing games, playing pranks, playing make-believe, role-playing, anything to do with play. For me, play is most enjoyable when there are rules. Whether I follow them or not is irrelevant. I just want there to be some sort of goal or structure. This goes against a lot of what is said in this chapter, but each individual has their own way of playing. I feel at my most creative when given a very restrictive environment. The fewer resources I get to use, the better. It is then when my mind can wander to all the different possibilities. Things I had never considered before. Ways of being that had never crossed my mind. It is in the rules and structures of a game that I find freedom - as an adult.

As a kid, play was a whole different story. I used to take the marbles that I got from my brother (once they weren’t the cool thing in school anymore) and I’d bring them to the park. At the park, I’d ask my mom to scatter them around and I’d spend hours looking for the marbles between the tall grass. To this day, that is one of my fondest memories of playing. Why? I don’t really know. Honestly, the game seems kind of lame now, but it sure wasn’t back then!

This chapter of Artful Design has me questioning why this game was so enjoyable for me. Was it the fact that my mom was playing with me? She didn’t really help me look for them, so there wasn’t too much of a social aspect to it. I was pretty much alone, walking around, sometimes on all fours, looking for marbles. So what made me want to play it over and over again? I’m still thinking of the answer.

As kids, we are encouraged to play. It is often claimed in newspapers, magazines, websites, mommy-blogs, research articles, everywhere - Play is good for a child’s development. So, why do we stop at a certain age? Why are there no self-help books about playing as an adult? Why is play not a bigger part of our health and wellbeing pyramid? As adults, we are told to eat well, get good sleep, exercise, get some socializing in, but we’re never really told to play. Artful Design says that play is what we do to be free. I think we can only truly play when we feel free. We should be able to feel free to take time out of our busy lives to just play. For a lot of people, that might seem like a waste of precious time. Time that should be spent making money, time to better ourselves. But maybe an important way we can better ourselves is through play. If so, how can we as designers, create games and interactions that make people feel free to play?