Challenge Everything?
Abstract:This article deals with the popular simulation game SIMCITY by Will Wright. The main question of this article is whether or not the popular notion of SIMCITY as an endless and borderless playground is more than a contaminating marketing strategy. To analyze this question about SIMCITY as a borderless playground, the article will draw historical parallels with construction toys from yesteryear and differentiate between internal and external levels of playing and intended and unintended practices of play. The article claims that unintended practices of play, player “anarchy” through appropriation of the game, are difficult in a game like SIMCITY, thus frustrating the claims and the idea of SIMCITY as a borderless playground.
Key Words: computer games • SimCity • toys • participation culture • player anarchy
Published in 2007 in Games & Culture, Vol. 2, No. 3, 194-212.
Get up and Play!
1.Visible and invisible play
It is easily understood why this type of game – outdoors, involving physical activity, played in groups – is favoured over the playing of computer games – indoors, no physical activity, played alone. But are computer games really so anti-social? Do they not also engage different people who would under other circumstances avoid each other? But even so, if we could convincingly argue that even computer games are a unifying force, bringing together different people and creating social bonds, what about the problem that they are always played indoors, while sitting hunched over a controller or keyboard, only using hands and eyes and that to such extents that it might injure the player?
What we are dealing with here is a clear case of how we perceive and value toys, games and playing and how this perception and valuation relates to how players participate in the games at stake. We tend to favour and value an outdoors ball game because it has a high level of participation, even accidental passers-by might get involved in the game, even they can participate. But it is not so much the degree of participation that is different as the degree in visibility. Computer games are played indoors and therefore the social engagements and forms of participation are not visible to those who are not playing. On top of that, since most parents tend not to understand what children are exactly doing while playing computer games they find it hard to appreciate the games their children are engaged in. When looking over a child’s shoulder you only see the screen and the often very violent things that are going on on that screen. You do not see the whole complex social structure that accompanies these games, the chat rooms, the fan sites, the magazines, the trading cards, the action figures, the fighting teams, the schoolyard talk, and so on…In debates concerning the negative or positive effects of playing computer games one can distinguish three different issues.
First of all there is the learning issue. Adversaries of computer games stress that children and teenagers learn the wrong things from playing computer games; violence is almost always at the core of this argument. Advocates on the other hand underline the positive things one can learn from playing computer games: hand-eye coordination, social interaction, the handling of future work tools.
Second there is the consumption issue. Ever since our consumer culture took shape, people have feared the corrupting influence it has on children. Envy, jealousy, greed are the fuel of our consumer culture but these feelings will not make a nice person. Computer games are often considered the epitome of consumerism; they are advertised through movies, card and board games, action figures, animated movies, and so on. These aggressive publicity campaigns turn children into slavish consumers, wanting the ENTER THE MATRIX game after having seen the movie THE MATRIX RELOADED , the billboards and the advertisement on their favourite cereal box. Those getting rich from these children’s craving do not care whether or not they corrupt the child, the industry has no educational agenda, they just want to sell more. So they cater boys’ love for violence, sex, and speed. Or so the argument goes.
Third there is the physical concern. Children play computer games indoors, hunched over a keyboard or controller, eyes glued to the screen. They over use certain muscles and totally under use others. Computer games are un-put-down-able and while playing, children forget to eat, take a break, go to the toilet, stretch their legs; they just play on and on… Instead of being in the open, getting fresh air and physical exercise, they sit the whole day breathing the stale indoors air. Newspapers report all kinds of physical problems, such as epilepsy, blood cloths, RSI, related to ‘over-playing’.
All three issues have historical roots and outlining them might pacify the heated debates. During the nineteenth and twentieth century industrialization, urbanization, and commercialisation have dramatically changed how we think about children, the place they have in our cities, society and culture, how we think they can and should be educated, the role of toys and playing in this education. During the eighteenth and nineteenth century the education of children became important and soon enough toys and playing were considered an appropriate vehicle for this education. Under the influence of philosophers and educationalists more and more children in the Western world started to live in their own world, with their own education, toys, books, room, clothing, food, soap, doctors, …
But the lives of children also changed through the processes of industrialization, commercialisation and urbanization. These processes did not only bring higher standards of life, they also had some worrisome by effects on the lives of children. People were concerned about the influence of the consumer culture on the child and about the fact that urban children played mainly indoors or dwelled the streets. When urbanization made playing outdoors less evident, this generated concerns regarding the physical development of the urban child and led eventually to the construction of playgrounds in cities. When industrialization made large-scale production of toys possible, people started to agonize about the corrupting forces of this new consumption culture.To illustrate how these broad processes of industrialization, urbanization, and commercialisation influenced ideas concerning children, childhood, toys and playing and how they shaped ideas regarding learning, consumption, and physical health, I have chosen three case studies that I consider key moments in the history of toys, games, and playing, namely: the kindergarten, the department store, and the playground. These case studies are exemplary of how the ideas that playing is learning, that consumption can be corrupting and that a healthy soul can only house in a healthy body – ideas that still shape and dominate the debate on computer games – were formed and put into practice.
2. The Kindergarten: toys, games, and playing as a socializing instrument
One of the main reasons why computer games are subject to controversy is the fact that people fear their dubious influence on children and teenagers. This idea stems from a much more deeply rooted idea that playing games is a socializing activity that helps young children and teenagers to comprehend rules, morale and ethics of the society they live in. Because we think of games as necessary example structures, we fear the examples set by violent, sexist, and simplistic computer games. As Janet Murray puts it in Hamlet on the Holodeck games are traditionally regarded as “rehearsals for life” . The belief that children do and should learn through playing is firmly rooted in our ideas of and opinions on toys, games, and playing.
The history of what could be called the ‘learning-trough-playing’-doctrine is intertwined with political, social, economical, and religious changes that took place over the last two hundred years and this doctrine had a tremendous effect on the lives of children.Both the Enlightenment English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) and the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778 ) are key figures in the changes that took place in the lives of children, the way society thought about children, and especially the ideas concerning the need for education. John Locke was one of the founders of the idea of the child as a tabula rasa (a blank slate) that should be educated and separated from the adult working world in order to be raised correctly. Locke’s empiricist philosophy stressed that every human being is at birth a tabula rasa on which knowledge is imprinted through experience, thus stressing the importance of schooling and education. In Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693) we read:“[O]f all the men we meet with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or evil, useful or not, by their education. (…) If (…) the difference to be found in the manners and abilities of men is owing more to their education than to anything else, we have reason to conclude that great care is to be had of the forming children’s minds (…).”When Locke’s ideas found their way into governmental and legislative decision-making, the world of the child began to take form and children became increasingly separated from adults and the working world. Nevertheless, it was as late as 1833 that the law against child labour was formulated. In 1881 the law on school attendance followed and in 1889 the cruelty acts “which for the first time extended to children the same protection from abuse granted to animals”.
Both Locke and Rousseau stressed that infancy is an important period in the child’s life. In Émile ou de l’éducation (1762) Rousseau unswervingly writes: “We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment. Everything we do not have at our birth and which we need when we are grown is given us by education. This education comes to us from nature or from men or from things. (…) We begin to instruct ourselves when we begin to live. Our education begins with us.”Locke and Rousseau’s ideas, and the whole Enlightenment view on humanity, were of tremendous impact on the ‘learning-trough-playing’-doctrine. It was in this nineteenth century atmosphere that the attitude towards the child changed from “dominating the child’s will” to “protecting children and guiding them in the proper paths”. It was also during this period that the child as an innocent being “in need of formation and learning, to be protected from the harsher realities of industrial society” became a prevalent vision. Learning and education became thus important in the lives of children. Toys, games, and playing soon became suitable means for this learning and education.
As the American psychologist and educationalist Brian Sutton-Smith in The Future of Play Theory states:“There has been an obsession in this century [twentieth century] amongst life-science scholars with demonstrating that children learn something useful from their play, a latter-day outcome, apparently, of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment view of humanity as susceptible to scientific study and therefore as capable of progress.”It was then during the Enlightenment that the basis was laid out for the idea of the child as a malleable subject that is in need of ‘good’ toys and ‘correct’ games that will form the child’s character and personality appropriately. This eighteenth century ideas and concerns related to education and the role of toys in this education were put into practice in the nineteenth century educational movements. “[T]he social and educational purposes of toys were clearly articulated in educational movements based on the theories of John Locke”. The educational philosophies of for example Friedrich Fröbel (Germany, 1782-1852), and later Rudolf Steiner (Germany, 1861-1925) and Maria Montessori (Italy, 1870-1952), pleaded for learning through free and uninterrupted play. These Romantic educationalists were convinced that due to industrialization and urbanization children were increasingly limited in their play freedom. The cities did not provide the space or healthy environment for children to play.One of the most influential of these educational movements was the one initiated by the German pedagogic Fröbel who developed the idea, system, and concept of the kindergarten, the pre-school educational institution were children would learn trough playing with the gifts Fröbel designed. Fröbel established his first kindergarten in Blankenburg, Germany in 1837 and documented his ideas about the kindergarten – based on his system of gifts and occupations – in his most famous publication Die Menschenerziehung, die Erziehung – Unterrichts – und Lehrkunst , translated as The Education of Man.
The kindergarten was a place especially designed for urban children, where they could play and develop themselves in homely, cosy surroundings. The idea and formula of the kindergarten erupted from Fröbel’s belief that children start learning from the moment they become conscious and therefore education must start at an early stage. Fröbel’s kindergarten proved a highly successful formula, after Fröbel’s death it was transplanted to most European countries, their colonies, the United States, and even the Far East.Fröbel considered play “the highest phase of child-development” and stressed the fact that “play at this time is not trivial, it is highly serious and of deep significance”. According to Fröbel playing is an extremely important tool for learning. Fröbel wanted children to acquire unity, unity with God. His abstract, holistic, and above all religious world-view was to be communicated to the child through his system of Gaben or gifts – considered gifts of God – and Beschäftigungen or occupations – divine occupations. Brosterman states that the early kindergarten existed of a “radical and highly spiritual system of abstract-design activities intended to teach the recognition and appreciation of natural harmony”.
These gifts and occupations had to instil in children an understanding of the mathematically generated logic underlying the ebb and flow of creation. Since playing was regarded such an important tool for learning, Fröbel designed the gifts/toys and the occupations/activities himself and he described in painstaking detail how the toys should be used, when they should be presented to the child and how the teachers had to introduce the toys. There are in total twenty kindergarten gifts that start with balls and blocks and evolve to more complex gifts and occupations such as paper cutting, weaving and folding and modelling clay.The first gift, a ball, symbolized the “concept of divine, all-inclusive unity”, the second gift, consisting of a sphere, cube, and cylinder had to “move the child toward the reconciliation of opposites”. The next four gifts were made of wooden blocks, “from these blocks children were directed to build “life forms” (a house or a church), “forms of knowledge” (geometric shapes), and “forms of beauty” (designs for aesthetic appreciation)”. Fröbel described in his Pedagogics of the Kindergarten (1897) how these gifts should be used. As an example, these are the directions concerning the fifth gift:“Before beginning his play with this gift the child must apprehend it as a symmetrical whole, complete in itself. (…) In conformity with this demand the bottom of the box must be occupied by one row of undivided cubes, one row of halved cubes, and one row of quartered cubes. The eighteen remaining undivided cubes fill the rest of the box. If the cubes be thus arranged in the box and covered with the lid, it is only necessary to place the box on the table with the cover downward, then to draw out the cover and raise the box with a steady hand. When the box is withdrawn the whole cube, with its parts well arranged, stands before the child.”Fröbel continues for another few pages describing the benefits of this way of presenting the gift to the child. And it is exactly on this point that Fröbel has met the most resistance. His rigid system does not leave much room for the child’s creativity, improvisation, and inventiveness.
Nowadays, most Kindergartens have changed one or more things in Fröbel’s system but the gifts he designed remain very popular and can still be bought in toys stores or on the Internet. Under the influence of Enlightenment thinking on education and the role of toys and playing in this education, the idea took root in our Western societies that to play is to learn. Was it once the case that some toys or games were especially designed in order to teach children certain things, nowadays we look upon every toy and game as a tool for learning, even the ones that are not especially designed in order to convey information to the player. This has led to fierce concern. Because, as we recognize the educational and socializing potential of toys, games, and playing, then what is it children learn from playing computer games? Do they learn to effectively kill or do they learn valuable things such as working with computers, their future work tools? Or both? Evidently, opinions vary on what children, and adults for that matter, learn through the playing of computer games. The presupposed causality between playing violent computer games and committing violent acts outside the world of the game however is still a disputed one.
3. The department store: The child as consumer
It has not always been the case that parents can get lost in gigantic Toys ‘R Us stores in search for the appropriate toy that is their children’s favourite that season. It is a rather recent phenomenon that children have their own rooms to sleep and play in, that they have their own clothing style, their own furniture, food, medicine, therapists, education, entertainment, and toys. What has changed since the Industrial Revolution are on the one hand the way toys are produced and consumed and the scale and variety of this production and consumption, and on the other hand the way in which society looks upon children and the function of toys in the lives of these children. The relatively new child culture with the child as a consumer has worried many a moralist, educationalist, and politician ever since it took shape.
Computer games are often considered the embodiment of consumerism, they are advertised through various media and children can not but want them after having seen the movie, the animated movie, the billboards, the magazines, the figures on their favourite cereal box. The aggressive consumption strategies applied by gaming industries is another reason why computer games are often considered immoral, they make children into slavish consumers at an age when they should still be free from these pressures.With the work of various pedagogues and child-rearing experts, the nineteenth century saw a dramatic change in the image of and thinking about the child and its childhood. The new-formed ideas about children and the child’s culture found their way into various nineteenth century representations of children, such as the famous soap add Bubbles painted by the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais in 1886. The child depicted in the advertisement is a kind of cherub child, a beautiful, innocent, vulnerable dreamer that needs to be taken care of, washed, dressed, fed and cured. Millais’ painting represents the sentiments of the time and it characterizes the new vision on children, childhood and the child’s culture. The nineteenth century has been famously phrased the Age of the Child by Swedish pedagogue Ellen Key in her educational treatise The Age of the Child. In this century “[l]ife expectancy and the quality of life improved. Developmental milestones were marked and celebrated, specialized shops for children – toys stores, clothing stores – proliferated, a literature written specifically for children emerged”.
Kline states that the “Victorian awakening to the preciousness of childhood helped ensure that children’s goods would expand along with other markets” and that it was “upon these formative foundations of the nineteenth century that toys, sporting and play equipment, uniforms, and other accoutrements have been added as a now common part of so many children’s lives”. These processes of commercialization and specialization have continued since the nineteenth century and today “children are celebrated in the market economies as Very Important Consumers”. The child as consumer is here to stay.As said, it was also in this crucial nineteenth century, this Age of the Child, that play became to be regarded as an important activity, as “‘the work of childhood’ – the moral equivalent of labour”. Out of the belief that play was an important activity and out of the new possibilities of production and distribution, upshot a whole new field of consumer goods targeted at the child. During this era toys changed dramatically under the sway of the new clockwork technology, the steam engine technology and the industrialized manufacture methods. This resulted in novelties such as riding trains and whistling boats, talking dolls and running horses. All these toys were imitations, reproductions of the new technological inventions that dominated that era. Fathers and sons were both fascinated by what the steam engine and clockwork technology could produce and were delighted with the fact that most inventions were also made in toy formats. Moreover, these new kind of toys could be produced on previously unknown large scales due to the industrialized manufacture methods and therefore they were affordable for a larger part of society. Besides the changes in technology and industry, the nineteenth century saw the up rise of the advertisement and the department store.
The new toys were advertised in magazines and displayed in the windows of the new and luxurious department stores. The industries targeting children flourished.Shopping transformed from a duty to something to enjoy. People went out to see the new goods instead of waiting until a vendor passed through their street or neighbourhood. Broader sidewalks, beautiful shops and luxury novelties attracted people from different social standing and sex. Buying new products had long been a privilege of the rich. Most people used to have a set of basic goods that they had produced themselves, traded or bought at a fair or market. Working class people rarely went into shops and money was not a thing most people daily used. As Rosalind Williams states in Dream Worlds “the activity of consumption was closely linked with that of production”. Moreover, buying had been linked with necessity for a very long time. Now the industry created new desires so that people would buy for the sake of buying. It was during the nineteenth century that ‘impulse buying’ became a force that the industry could and would manipulate.This new development was at first condemned and criticized because the new shops sold goods that the middle classes and even the lower classes could buy. Many feared the unsettling effects of this development on the social structure and hierarchy.
Many a critic labelled the new forms of consumption as démocratisation du luxe because the luxury goods were displayed, could be looked at and even bought by tout le monde. With the new policy of entré libre anyone could now enter the shops without the obligation to buy while at the same time they were stimulated to impulse buying. But they also disapproved of the fact that women (and men, but to a lesser extent) were seduced to buy more and more, that shopping was stimulated instead of rejected as a sinful activity. When the first annual sales were introduced, many eyed the excited shoppers (who would even sleep in front of the big shops in order to ensure an early entrance) and the hysterical way in which buying was promoted, with disgust and dismay. But consumption became gradually accepted as something that was besides inevitable, also positive, because it stimulated the capitalistic economy and enabled even the poor to rise out of their formerly hopeless situation.From buying what one needed in specialized shops to buying what one desired in big department stores: “the department store was (…) the most visible symbol of how that world was changing”. These changes took also place in the world of toys. Up till the 1850s most children used to play with toys that were not bought but made from leftover materials by craftsman, parents or children themselves. The choice of toys was limited to that which one could make by hand: a ball, a doll, a rattle, a sword … but now the department stores had a dazzling choice of different toys available. Children could (and often would) have a room full of different, new and technologically advanced toys: electrical trains, talking dolls, and building sets. And since toys had become a tool for learning, choosing became a delicate business.
One of England’s biggest and oldest department stores, Harrod’s in London, started as a small grocery store and grew between 1835 and 1911 into the biggest department store London knew at that time. It sold a wide variety of goods, from lobster to lion cubs, from perfume to Paddington bears. In December Harrod’s held a Christmas Toy Fair that attracted thousands of children and their parents year after year. In December, the department stores decorated their windows in the most appealing fashions to exhibit all they had in store for the shoppers. Toys from all over the world were imported and displayed alongside other curiosities and luxury goods.Another famous department store, Macy’s in New York, started in 1858 as a dry goods store and grew in the short time span of about two years into a full-fledged department store, starting with approximately twelve different departments. Business historian Ralph Hower marks the annual display of dolls and toys in December 1860 as the marking point when Macy’s actually became a department store. From the very beginning, Macy’s devoted a department to dolls and toys and that department was one of the top five best selling departments Macy’s knew. In the years that followed other departments that were devoted to children came into being, such as boys’ clothing and kid gloves in 1877, children’s muslin underwear, children’s shoes, suits, and cloaks in 1887.
After World War Two, the nineteenth century department store changed into the twentieth century shopping mall and from then onwards the stores began to organize their different departments not in relation to the products (e.g. clothes, china, silverware, toys, etc…) but in floors or sections addressed to a certain group of clientele, namely women, men, or children. Almost every big store or mall we know today will have a whole floor or a floor section dedicated to children’s things, such as clothes, school material, and toys. Children’s products were and still are not only targeted at children but also at their parents (mostly mothers) because they will have to approve of the things bought.
With the dazzling success of the department store and later the supermarket, with the growing prosperity of the masses and the rise of the middle class, mass consumption and shopping became an intrinsic part of Western societies. Today, children are still the subjects of aggressive consumption strategies. As a solution to this never-ending consumption, experts advise parents to buy the right toys for their children. Buy, but buy wise. As we have seen, not every toy qualifies for the important task of educating and socializing the child. Ethel Kawin, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, wrote a child rearing book called The Wise Choice of Toys (1934) in which she states: “Play is an essential of childhood, and toys are the tools of play. (…) Parents should know the principles which serve as guides in the selection, use, and care of desirable play materials, so that they make a wise choice in selecting toys”. Since the 1850s educational toys have become popular, they seem to be the perfect solution to combine consumption and learning.
4. The Playground: the child in the urban environment
As said, computer games are a contested genre of games; among the many reasons for which they are considered reprehensible is the fact that they can have a negative effect on the player’s health. Computer games are mostly played indoors, they do not require bodily movement, and they tend to absorb the player to such an extent that he or she ignores signals from the body that it is time to stop. We prefer children to play outdoors, in the fresh air, moving their bodies and strengthening their muscles. Between the 1850s and the 1920s the concern for the urban child grew into an anxiety that could be felt all over Europe and America. The lack of safe places to play, the lack of bodily movement and fresh air, of education and tutoring, stood at the centre of attention of many a philanthropist, parent, and reformist. Since the idea had taken firm root that children could and should be educated people started to worry about this education. Educational worries manifested themselves not only on the level of mental schooling but also on the level of physical growth.
This concern for the bodily health of children in urban environments was driven by the idea that a healthy soul can only house in a healthy body. This age-old idea that stems from Roman and Greek civilizations had taken firm route through the writing of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) on the connection between bodily health and moral development. The idea that a healthy body is something desirable, that it is indeed even necessary in order to house a healthy soul, became a key concept in relation to children and child rearing during the nineteenth century under the influence of biological and environmental assumptions based on Darwinism. This brought about a whole new image of the child in which the child was not morally predisposed (born sinful) but could grow and change morally. This moral growth however was dependant of physical growth. This is argued by Dominick Cavallo in Muscles and Morals when he states: “post-Darwinian theories of psychology presented the child as an organism whose physiological qualities were as important as his spiritual and psychological ones”. The main reasons for this interest and concern regarding the child’s physical health were the lamentable health condition of urban children and the high infant mortality rate. Health and living conditions were so poor that the average body size of a person living in the nineteenth century industrial cities was less than that of a person living in the Middle Ages.
Hendricks further argues that the concern for the urban child grew when it was discovered that boys growing up in the nineteenth century industrial cities did not meet the basic physical tests for entering the military. With Europe fast moving towards military confrontation, the “quality of the nation’s heirs acquired a political significance”. Since there was an urgent need for soldiers the wars at the beginning of the nineteenth century did a lot to encourage the child saving initiatives.The industrialization and urbanization had brought forward another set of problems, problems related to living spaces, hygiene, lack of fresh air and exercise. Increasingly, children grew up in crowded, polluted, and dirty cities. These industrial cities did not have a space for children. Anxieties and worries concerning the effects of the cities on children were especially addressed at lower class children who lacked the supervision and had only the streets to turn to. The “child-saving” movements at the end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth century were “aimed at rescuing city children – especially working-class, ethnic children – from a cluster of social and economic hazards” such as economic exploitation, moral chaos and alienation, threats to law and order.
But there were other problems too; children needed not only protection and rescuing on the socially and economically level. There were the burning questions of health and hygiene, the threat of the newfound free time that children would possibly spend misbehaving. Many initiatives addressed these problems, children were encouraged to engage in group activities (such as sports and scouts) and outdoors play (on playgrounds for example), doctors were stationed in schools or visited schools to check on the health and hygiene situation of children, new laws were adopted that had to regulate the physical and mental growth of the industrial child. Although opinions might have varied on almost any issue concerning the new urban life at the turn of the century, almost every one agreed that children needed playgrounds: safe places where they could play in groups, under the supervision of teachers or parents, in the open air.
The playground was then one of the initiatives addressed at rescuing the child. Public playgrounds had to keep children form the streets, provide them with the opportunity to play safely outdoors, getting the much needed fresh air and bodily exercise, and educate them with regard of the ever more complex social interaction of the industrial city. In parks, next to the schoolyard, or on pieces of wasteland special places were created where children could play. The playground served different purposes. On the one hand it was a safe place for children to play and playing was thought important both on the cognitive, social, and physical level. Playing had become a socializing tool and a tool for learning, both on the cognitive and physical level. Playgrounds were thus a solution to this need for ‘moral and muscular development’. On the other hand, playgrounds served as a means to regulate the newfound free time, they were a means to ensure that children and youths would not spend their leisure time in mischief. The industrialization had created leisure time and “[b]y the late 1800s, America had more time to play. New workplace technologies had appeared that shortened the workweek. And all those new household technologies (…) made work there much easier”.
Educationalist worried about this development because idleness could easily lead to mischief… As a solution to this concern of what teenagers and adults would do with their leisure time, the playground movement organised many activities on the playgrounds, in clubhouses or in the parks and there erupted a gulf of youth movements, such as the Scouts and other forms of organized, location-based play. Most playgrounds had at the beginning of the twentieth century a library and a clubhouse and they organized evening and weekend activities, sport events and contest. This was not meant for children only but for youths and adults as well. Especially people from the lower social classes were thought to be in need of this social education, these organized group activities.Under the influence of the Enlightenment philosophers and the new problems set by industrialization and urbanization, children became not only beings that could and should be educated but also beings that needed physical exercise and fresh air, needed social, mental, moral, and physical training and development. The playground was a means to fulfil these needs. Children were, while playing on the public playground, at once safe from cars and motorcycles, out in the fresh air getting exercise, away from the corrupting influences of the streets and the theatres, and learning about social interaction.
While we prefer children to engage in outdoors, active group play, we do not like them to dwell the streets unsupervised. Since most parents do not have the time to accompany their children to playgrounds and parks, they are happy that there is something children love to do indoors: namely playing computer games. Computer games may not be the parent’s favoured form of playing, they do come in very handy! Computer games are then a contemporary means to keep children safe and occupied indoors. But, the notion that a healthy soul can only live in a healthy body has raised serious concerns in relation to computer games. Ever since computer games became widely popular people have claimed that different diseases are caused by the playing of computer games, such as RSI (Repetitive Strength Injure), concentration lapse, involuntary peeing, blood cloths , epilepsy, and even death . All these diseases and bodily malfunctions are attributed to the frequent playing of computer games. As it is with every compulsive habit, it is bound to be unhealthy to play hours on end. However, bodily movement seems to be increasingly on the mind of game designers as well.
Nowadays we see an increase in the development of computer games that can be played at home but need the player to be bodily active. A well-known example is the Eye Toy for the PlayStation2, an “of-the-couch”-game that is promoted for the whole family. The slogan is, tellingly, “Get up and play”. The Eye Toy consists of a small camera placed on top of the TV that is connected to the PlayStation2. The player is thereby seen onscreen. In the mini game “Wishi Washi” one has to use hands, arms, and whatever one likes to wash away soap from windows. That physical activity is on the mind of game designers becomes clear when we look at the dance game “Get down and Groove” for the Eye Toy. Onscreen there is even a calorie counter that keeps track of how energetically the player is moving his or her body.
5. Conclusions
In this article I have focused on certain feelings and emotions that enter the debates concerning the alleged negative or positive effects of playing computer games. Overall, there are more concerns related to playing computer games than there are optimistic views. The concerns, complaints, worries that computer games will corrupt children by learning them the wrong things, that they are a part of the consumer culture that turns children into slavish consumers, and that they are unhealthy are frequently voiced. Through the case studies of the kindergarten, the department store and the playground, we have seen that these fears have historical roots.However, by outlining these historical roots it might seem as if things have stayed the same, as if the situation we are dealing with today did not change over the last two hundred years. Of course, that is not at all the case. While it is true that certain feelings, emotions, fears reoccur throughout the last two hundred years, the context for these fears has changed tremendously. To name only one example, did people in 1900 fear the danger of cars and motorcycles, this is nothing compared to the urban situation we are facing today. Children have never been so marginalized as they are in our present day Western cities. Parents have grown more and more reluctant to let their children play outside unsupervised. As Hendricks puts it “Children in modern western cities are not so free – they are very restricted by traffic and fear of violence to children”.But even if the context for these fears has changed tremendously, outlining their historical roots might soothe these fears and thereby open new directions for this debate that seems to be recycling arguments and going in circles.
Notes:
1. ENTER THE MATRIX, 2003, Atari.2. THE MATRIX RELOADED, USA 2003, A. Wachowski & L. Wachowski.3. Janet Murray: Hamlet on the Holodeck. New York 1997, p. 144.4. John Locke: Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Indianapolis 1996, p. 10 & 25.5. Stephen Kline: Out of the Garden: toys, TV and children’s culture in the age of marketing. London 1993, p.47.6. Jean-Jacques: Émile ou de l’éducation. London 1991, p. 38 & 42.7. Stephen Kline: Out of the Garden, p. 48.8. Stephen Kline: Out of the Garden, p. 48.9. Brian Sutton-Smith: “Conclusion: the Persuasive Rhetorics of Play”. In: A. Pellegrini Ed.): The Future of Play Theory: a multidisciplinary inquiry into the contributions of Brian Sutton-Smith. New York 1995, p. 279.10. Lois Kuznets: When Toys Come Alive: narratives of animation, metamorphosis, and development. New Haven 1994, p. 13.11. Friedrich Fröbel: Die MenschenErziehung: die Erziehungs-, Unterrichts- und Lehrkunst. Keilhau 1826.12. Friedrich Fröbel: The Education of Man. New York 1887.13. Norman Brosterman: Inventing kindergarten. New York 1997, p. 30.14. Norman Brosterman: Inventing kindergarten, p. 12.15. Friedrich Fröbel: The Education of Man, p. 54 & 55.16. Norman Brosterman: Inventing kindergarten, p. 12.17. Norman Brosterman: Inventing kindergarten, p. 12-13.18. Evelyn Weber: “Play Materials in the Curriculum of Early Childhood”. In: K. Hewitt and L. Roomet (Eds.): Educational Toys in America: 1800 to the Present. Burlington 1979, p. 27.19. Evelyn Weber: “Play Materials in the Curriculum of Early Childhood”, p. 28.20. Friedrich Fröbel: Pedagogics of the Kindergarten. London 1897, p. 204-205.21. For example: http://www.froebelusa.com/, http://froebelgallery.safeshopper.com/, http://www.naturalplay.com/froebel/.22. Ellen Key:The Century of the Child. New york 1909.23. A.R. Colòn and P. A. Colòn: A History of Children. A Socio-Cultural Survey Across Millennia. London, 2001, p. 505.24. Stephen Kline: Out of the Garden, p. 53.25. Stephen Kline: Out of the Garden, p. 51.26. Barbara Hendricks: Designing for Play. Aldershot 2001, p 3.27. Stephen Kline: Out of the Garden, p. 51.28. The broader process of Americanization also influenced this process of children being targeted as consumers.29. Rachel Bowlby: Just Looking. Consumer culture in Dreiser, Gissing and Zola. New York 1985, p. 1.30. Jan Hein Furnée: , “Winkeletalages als Moderne Massamedia. Visuele Cultuur en Sociale Verhoudingen in Den Haag, 1850-1890”. In: De negentiende eeuw: documentatieblad Werkgroep 19e eeuw. Arnhem 2003, Bd. 2, p. 82-90.31. Rosalind Williams: Dream Worlds: mass consumption in late nineteenth-century France. Berkeley 1991, p. 2-3.32. Rachel Bowlby: Just Looking, p. 1-2.33. Anne Friedberg: Window Shopping. Cinema and the Postmodern. California 1993, p. 77.34. Michael B. Miller: The Bon Marché. Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store 1869-1920. Princeton 1981, p. 4.35. Tim Dale: Harrods. The Store and the Legend. London 1981, p 82-83.36. New industrial means enabled toy manufacturers to transport their goods over different countries and continents, thereby replacing the local toy-marked with a more globalised toy market that unified which toys children played with. Even though Fraser argues that certain types of toys have been universal since Egyptians, these balls and dolls were not uniform in how they were manufactured because they were made individually by hand. The electric train (one of the most popular toys of the twentieth century) on the contrary was a unified product that was shipped to many countries and entered numerous households in the same box with the same ingredients inside. The department stores sold these unified toys that were made in America and Germany and shipped all over the world.37. Ralph Merle Hower: History of Macy’s of New York 1858-1919. Chapters in the Evolution of the Department store. Cambridge 1946, p. 106, 136, & 162.38. Ethel Kawin: The Wise Choice of Toys. Chicago 1938, p. 1.39. Between 1854 and 1859 Spencer published four influential essays concerning the importance of science in education. These essays were bundled in 1859 under the title Education: Intellectual, Moral and Physical. In the last of the four essays, Physical Education, he dwells on the neglected issues of food, clothing, play, and sleep. See: Herbert Spencer: Education: Intellectual, Moral and Physical. London 1993.40. Petrus. J. H. Selten, Carlinde Adriaanse & Barbara Becker: Af en toe met pa en moe… : de speeltuinbeweging in Nederland 1900-1995. Utrecht 1996, p. 22.41. Dominick Cavallo: Muscles and Morals. Organized Playgrounds and Urban Reform, 1880-1920. Philadelphia 1981, p. 50.42. Barbara Hendricks: Designing for Play, p 15.43. Barbara Hendricks: Designing for Play, p 16.44. Christina Hardyment: Dream Babies. Child Care from Locke to Spock. Oxford 1984, p. 99.45. Dominick Cavallo: Muscles and Morals, p. 1.46. Andrew McClary: Toys with nine lives: a social history of American toys. North Haven 1997, p. 39.47. Andrew McClary: Toys with nine lives, p. 40.48. “Dominic Patrick, 14, from Merseyside, developed deep vein thrombosis after a rainy day inside with a games console”. BBC News: “Computer game teenager gets DVT”. Online available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/3441237.stm 2004.49. “A 24-year-old South Korean man died after playing computer games nonstop for 86 hours. The jobless man, identified by police only by his last name Kim, was found dead at an Internet cafe in Kwangju”. The Sydney Morning Herald: “Man dies after playing computer games non-stop”. Online available at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/10/10/1034061260831.html 2002.50. Barbara Hendricks: Designing for Play, p 3-4.
Published in 2006 in Britta Neitzel, Rolf F. Nohr (Eds.), Das Spiel mit dem Medium. Partizipation – Immersion – Interaktion Zur Teilhabe an den Medien von Kunst bis Computerspiel. Schüren Presseverlag, ISBN: 3894724412, pp. 48-63.
leave a comment