Believing in the value of play? No, I don’t believe [ENG].

(Click here for the italian version)

Upon returning from Lucca Comics & Games 2023, I’m scrolling through the social media walls of friends and colleagues and I find a concept that returns again and again. This year I had the pleasure of coordinating a series of proposals, including speeches, talks, demos, and so on, almost always related to the activities of the Committee for the Research in Game Psychology of the Game Science Research Center, inviting a few colleagues to speak and giving a little space to their projects within my very limited possibilities.
I am certainly extremely grateful to them for their contribution, and touched by their thanks. They thank me for the opportunity, while I, of course, thank them for contributing. Beyond the cordial practice of thanking those who invite and those who accept the invitation, one thing strikes me very much: that they thank me for “believing in the value of play” and the projects centred on it.

Here, the issue must certainly be split into two perspectives. The first is related to the stigma that playing struggles to shed, as an activity that would involve a substantial waste of time, that would not be productive in any way but rather opposed to work, and that would not be worthy of study. We are talking about decades, if not centuries, of a culture that puts work above everything else, a culture of productivity and suffering, of which I am certainly not an expert but which – like everyone else – I have experienced on my skin. This is not what I want to talk about, nor is it a subject I am qualified to speak on. I can understand, however, the thanks for doing something to give dignity and space to projects that have no other home and suffer stigma in other contexts.

Instead, I am fortunately entitled to speak on the second perspective, which is not about the value of the game as much as the need to “believe in it”.

No, I do not believe in it.

I do not believe in the value of the game. I don’t need to believe in it. I rely on science. Science, fortunately, does not ask people to believe: it simply allows them to gather evidence, put it on the table and analyse it, drawing conclusions in an incontrovertible and unassailable manner. I do not need to believe that the game allows learning through failure in a context of psychological safety: simply observe the experimental evidence*. I do not need to believe that play motivates people more than other alternatives: just measure people’s motivation*. I do not need to believe that through play discovery and subsequent growth becomes (or rather, returns to being) something natural and intrinsically pleasurable: just collect the data on pleasurability and analyse it*.
I do not need to believe when there are methods based on logic. Even if the subject is the game and some people just don’t like it.

Alan Mattiassi

*: sure, these things are not easy. But there are professionals who are trained precisely to deal with this (researchers).