The importance of 'play equity'
On our project, we have a regular Wednesday 'reading group' in which a different part of the project shares some literature and runs a little discussion on it. Here, I share some of my learnings from running one of these sessions from the perspective of play.
The theme, I suppose, was about play being a way to experience something in a different way, and needing to be open-minded about how we approach seemingly familiar territory; in effect, it was about playfulness. It was also about doing these things together, and how we create "magic circles of play"* together, spaces where we are all playing, and we're playing together. For the 'reading' I suggested we consider Bocce Drift, a game of Bocce played across the city of Utrecht by David Jimison and colleagues, effectively turning the city into a playspace, and finding new ways of both exploring and playing bocce. Really, I wanted to get across that it's not just that we do something, it how we do it that matters - so, in more formal reading weeks, what can we do to invite playfulness in our fellow players?
To do so, I suggested we do a pebble drawing exercise where you push pebbles around with pens and allow chaos to unfurl. In the room, this drawing was a communal affair, taking place on a single large piece of paper with multiple 'artists' at the same time. We also have some colleagues dialing in, who obviously couldn't take part in the collaborative large piece. This was acknowledged in advance, and I specifically planned for them to do a similar exercise on their own sheets of paper. Everyone was asked to go and find their own pebble in advance, which was supposed to invite playfulness about the session before the session had even started; not only did people have to make a conscious effort to go and find a pebble, when they arrived they naturally started discussing and comparing the pebbles they had found.
In 'briefing' the play, it was mentioned that people could participate for as long or as little as theye wanted; they could take breaks, take steps back, reengage or stop entirely; when everyone had felt the play had come to an end, we would stop and discuss both the experience and the reading.
In the room, the exercise worked well; people drew, invented their own rules, their own games, became physically involved and intertwined with each other and the game. Choice of pebble and medium were discussed; pebbles were stolen from others, creating elements of challenge and competition. There was a lot of laughter, a clear sign that the experience was pleasurable for most people.
The hybrid participants had a different experience. Some left immediately, and some stayed. Those that left noted that the experience seemed fun in the room, but they felt as though they weren't able to participate in the group play, which they felt was the whole point. The sensory overload from listening to lots of voices over the mic became an irritating barrier, rather than a way of taking part. This echoed the feeling of some participants in the room, who felt disengaged by the overwhelming nature of the exercise - the space was fairly small, there were lots of bodies moving around, a reasonable amount of noise. They disengaged, and although they were happy to watch, couldn't take part in the same way.
The session sparked much discussion about the accessibility and design of play activities; not just trying to find ways of making remote people play in the same way, but finding different ways of bringing them into the play. The example given was perhaps the remote people had a different role in the play - perhaps they were directing the other players, rather than doing exactly the same thing themselves. Instead of play equality (where we all play the same), what we need to design for is play equity, in which individual needs are catered for to support everyone's ability to play. (Ideally, of course, there would be minimal barriers to play in the first place, but in my example there is a very real barrier between having everyone in the room and not).
As ever, play is an opportunity to test, and to learn. There's a lot to think about here in terms of how we use play and playfulness in interdisciplinary, hybrid teams. Even without play activities, there's less room for incidental 'water cooler chats', for discussions in what Jane Calvert (2023) considers "the coffee room". Without this physical space - or even with it, but considering that some people might not consider it a comfortable or safe space - we need to purposefully, consciously design ways to develop the colleageiate relationships and friendships that allow us to become, as she would describe it, "epistemic partners" (ibid.) - partners who play together in the field of research.
*The magic circle of play is a slightly contentious issue, something which I do intend to write about elsewhere. Long story short, it's a metphor to describe the physical or liminal space that we create when we play. Critics of the magic circle (e.g. Consalvo, 2009; Larsen and Carstensdottir, 2024) complain that as a metaphor, it sets unneecessary boundaries, limits the potential of play, and comes with all sorts of underlying politics attached. Some of the critiques, I feel, are more valid than others.
References
CALVERT, J. 2023. A Place for Science and Technology Studies. Inaugural Lectures. The University of Edinburgh.
CONSALVO, M. 2009. There is No Magic Circle. Games and culture, 4.
JIMISON, D. & CROUSE, J. 2010. Bocce Drift.
LARSEN, B. A. & CARSTENSDOTTIR, E. 2024. The Masquerade of Play: A Reappraisal of the Magic Circle. Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. Worcester, MA, USA: Association for Computing Machinery.