Inter/vention: Free Play in the Age of Electracy

Preface: MyStory

Preface: MyStory I do not know of any other way of associating with great tasks than play: as a sign of greatness, this is an essential presupposition. —Friedrich Nietzsche I have been a gamer for as long as I can remember. When I was growing up, my family always played games, and every Christmas there would be a new board game under the tree. I can fondly remember such titles as Othello, Mastermind, Cluedo, Scotland Yard, Ludo, and many others. Games created a social atmosphere and provided us with activities that we could do together as a family. In some ways, games and the traditional family dinner were the only activities that brought us all together. Games also provided an opportunity for me and my friends to have fun together on those cold Norwegian winter days when we couldn’t play outside. Games were not just something of a pastime for me, however, they always held a special fascination. Inside the game there was a world of endless adventure and opportunities, and no matter how many times I played them, they never lost their allure. In short, games were integrally part of my family, community, education, and adventure. Writing this book is also the culmination of that history. It is first and foremost about playing and the role that play has in our lifelong learning processes. When I was about eleven or twelve, I designed my first game. It was a board game that I called World Trader. The game was loosely based on Monopoly and a couple of my other favorite games. The playing board was a big 5'-by-3' beautiful and highly detailed map of the world mounted on a thick piece of cardboard. The objective of the game was to sail around the world and buy and sell cargo to the highest bidder. Once you had earned enough money, you could upgrade your vessel, or buy bigger and faster ships, and eventually amass an entire merchant fleet. The rules were simple because the purpose of the game was not to win. In fact there was no xviii Preface: MyStory discrete winning condition. Instead players were encouraged to build their shipping empires and have fun seeing them grow while exploring trade routes and profitable cargoes while avoiding the many hazards of the high seas such as storms, pirates, and the dreaded hundred-year wave. World Trader was a game of adventure and exploration, but it also had educational aspirations as it turned out, although that was certainly not a conscious design decision on my part at the time. That winter I also spent a lot of time in my family’s woodworking workshop creating a Chess set from scratch. The little town Geiranger, in which I grew up, did not have any stores where you could buy games back then, so when I wanted to learn how to play Chess, I built the game myself. You have a lot of time to learn and contemplate the rules of the game and the abilities of each particular piece when you literally spend days painstakingly carving each one. What fascinated me about Chess wasn’t necessarily the competitive aspects of the game or the multitude of strategies of the game play as such. Rather, what I found interesting was the drama that unfolded on the Chess board. Pawns lining up to defend their King, marching into battle only to be struck down by vastly more powerful Bishops, Rooks, or Queens. Yet in spite of their lowly rank and limited capabilities, the Pawns’ presence and role on the battlefield could easily change the tides of war. When the powerful and awe-inspiring Knights came charging from behind to threaten the enemy King, it was the spectacle of it all, the rustling of plate armor and the neighing of horses, that had me captivated. Until the 1980s and the advent of the affordable personal computer, my experience with digital games was mainly limited to a few arcade titles such as Pac-Man and Space Invaders. These games had become increasingly popular in the 1970s as pay-for-play systems, and in larger cities around the world, gaming arcades became immensely popular gathering spots for people of my generation. In the small town where I lived, however, we only had four or five different arcade machines that everyone played, and while I certainly spent my share of coins playing, I have to say that I grew tired of them pretty quickly. Saving...