The Day the Lawn Was too Long

We both fretted about the length of the grass a bit before we sat down to play. Nothing like having a project that must be attended to! Last night we played Jambo, another in the Kosmos two-player series, a game set in Africa before colonization. Each player takes the role of a trader in central Africa and, with “clever card play,” earns gold by buying and selling goods (silk, hides, salt, trinkets, fruit, tea) from their stall (which is customizable, or at least enlargeable). Other cards expand the basic buying and selling. Animals, other people, and “utilities” extend options in various ways, so expect to do some reading for the first couple of plays.

The heavy use of text, I thought, was going to be a problem for Dana. I had picked up this game at an auction on Board Game Geek (you really should know this site), and I had thought that the wordiness would keep Dana from really engaging with the game. Not that she doesn’t like to read—she’s a literacy scholar—but the sort of gameplay that comes with text-heavy cards…well, it suggests a debt to Magic: The Gathering (still going strong, unbelievably), a game that neither Dana nor I ever embraced. Or even shook hands with. For me, I could nod at it in the halls at conferences or across a crowded cafe—sometimes I’d bump into it at shows or poetry readings—but that was it.

Dana was tired, but the game got her revved. She liked the satisfaction of completing a trade, building an economic engine. Caesar and Cleopatra’s theme still keeps her at bay. Politics doesn’t resonate so deeply.

Yes, Jambo is set in pre-colonial Africa, but the game has Portuguese and Arab merchant cards that offer a little of this a little of that. In a novel or movie, their presence might foreshadow the dark days that were to come. But games don’t seem to build that kind of experience. I mention this because I’ve been part of a discussion about “games as art.” I tend to fall in the “not” camp, but unlike Roger Ebert I believe that games are important to culture and as culture. Games are part of our human capital; we seem to make and play games about as much as we make art—or, as Dissanayake has it, make special. The problem of “games as art” comes from a tangled set of assumptions that people who champion games are trying to hack their way through to claim the importance of games, of paying attention to games, hell, just to make it clear that playing games is OK.

One assumption is that games are a waste of financially fruitful time. Second is that they are as bereft of meaning—and are as ephemeral—as comic books. Or tweets. To claim games as art is essentially to say that games are important. As far as I can tell, the claim is an attempt to place games up at the top of the cultural hierarchy. If it’s art, well, then, it’s worthy of attention and it must have meaning. And at some level, games do allow for narratives to unfold. A lot of work goes into designing the game. Many of these games are very lovely to look at. Yet I start to wonder: which games? I continue to have the feeling that the “games as art” claim sells games short. Art, generally, doesn’t offer a gamespace, doesn’t allow play—except in the interpretive process, perhaps. Games are important, I keep circling around back to this, as games.

Of course, there are outliers in this argument that make the whole discussion messy. Unlike Ebert, I’m willing to acknowledge my own limitations. Oh, and this isn’t about video games, which seem like a place where the Venn diagrams of the categories can really start to develop some intriguing overlaps. Or not. But I’m willing to explore the question a lot more. Hell, exploring that question is one of the reasons we’re here writing this.

And we’ve got to cut the damned grass.

Comments

[Ellen]

I can't remember if I've recommended it to you yet or not, but this turned out to be a great book regarding the nature and importance of play:

_Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul_ by Stuart Brown, M.D.

[James]

You haven't, but that book looks great. Thanks!