The Returns to Fun and Games
Stephen Johnson, the celebrated author and historian of technology, recently wrote: “Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World.” In it, he examines the origins of many aspects of our modern existence and economy, tracing them to the human pursuit of pleasure and delight. “Delight is a word what is rarely invoked as a driver of historical change. History is usually imagined as a battle for survival, for power, for freedom, for wealth…. The guilty pleasures of life often give us a hint of the future of society, whether those pleasures take the form of English Ladies shopping in 1600’s or ancient Roman fests laden with spices from the far corners of the world… or computer programmers at MIT in the 1960’s playing Spacewar.” Johnson recounts how such pleasures led to breakthrough socio-economic changes or technological innovations. So he says, “you will find the future wherever people are having the most fun.”
Today, where we tend to find children (and adults) having fun is behind consoles, computers and mobile devices playing games. We can abhor the violence, and the time sink, but note two things.:
First, the technology developed for games is now being used for other higher pursuits, (another case supporting Johnson’s thesis). For example, the chips that power the amazing graphics used in modern games have found new lives feeding resource-hungry artificial intelligence algorithms, big data analytics, and cryptocurrency mining.
Second, gaming itself has evolved. Instead of linear, single-player games with simple, static objectives, games today are team-based, online, community-driven, and multiplayer.
Keith Stuart, a journalist/novelist notes that the game Fortnite “has constructed a true digital Third Place…a hangout where players are given a huge amount of autonomy to seek out the experiences they want. As a child of the late 1970s…Fortnite feels like a skatepark. Or if you prefer, a drag strip. Or a surfing beach. Or a roller disco. It has a central function that draws people in, but more important, it provides a safe place to hang out, experiment, and mess around. To be free… For my sons and a lot of kids their age, Fortnite is not a game they play, it’s a place they go — and, importantly, it’s a place they go with friends and not with Mom and Dad. It’s fulfilling the same development role as those illicit teen spaces from the 1970s and ’80s — those dodgy youth clubs, arcades, and video stores that we discovered unchaperoned…
… What’s really interesting about Fortnite is how it subtly synthesizes many of the things teens look for in urban spaces. In his seminal 1977 work, Growing Up in Cities, author and urban planner Kevin Lynch studied teens in four cities around the world to understand what attracted them to certain hangouts. Among the key features were a sense of safety and free movement, a cohesive and stable community, and nearby green areas for exploration, playfulness, and organized competition. These are all aspects of the Fortnite experience.”
In many ways, Discord which is considered the Slack of gaming can help fulfill similar community functions. As per the tech analyst Ben Thompson, “Discord, probably the most important social network to arise since Snapchat… imposes a social network on top of games of all types, even as its audience uses Discord to discuss topics far more wide-ranging than merely games.” Discord’s key differentiator as a social platform was to offer a ‘server’ to each gaming community, with each server providing an extensible set of functionalities around which the community could connect and grow. In this case, gaming could be seen as a test-case of how communities can develop around any topic, not just gaming; and both Fortnite and Discord’s gaming communities may be viewed as harbingers of the next iterations of all social interactions on the internet.
a final note
We certainly do not mean to celebrate ALL fun and games, nor disregard the deeply negative effects they may have. Clearly, violent games can encourage violence, spending too much time on electronic devices can have negative consequences we don’t yet fully understand. But as pointed at by the Economist, some of the concerns regarding time spent on devices may be over-blown, as researchers have not found strong evidence of adverse effects (except in extreme cases.) What’s more, gaming is and has always been an important part of human existence, and after we have made every effort to make sure our children are NOT spending too much time on such fun endeavors and have convinced them to finish their homework and get some sleep, we should also take time to reflect on the possible benefits that games may represent, and get a glimpse of our future.
Vitalik Buterin (founder of Ethereum) spent much of his youth immersed in playing World of Warcraft. One day, the game publisher removed an aspect of the game he had come to love, his “beloved warlock's Siphon Life spell.” Vitalik claims he “cried [him]self to sleep, and on that day [he] realized what horrors centralized services can bring.”
He credits this experience with his search for decentralized systems and thus the genesis of Ether, the second largest crypto-currency by market cap (after Bitcoin), and the first to enable smart contracts and distributed applications.
Not all game-addicted children will grow up to create multi-billion dollar crypto-currency platforms, but we hope the online interactions provided in games and their related chat rooms will provide some very human lessons for gamers too – even if that lesson is to give up gaming for higher pursuits, as was the case for Buterin.
Disclaimer
The content of this article has been approved and issued by TOP Fund Advisors SA for background, information and discussion purposes only and does not purport to be full or complete. No information in this document should be construed as providing financial, investment or other professional advice.
Authors: Salman Farmanfarmaian and Richard Rimer