Disney Infinity - Play

A child’s play incorporates many learning and social experiences that are crucial to their development—play isn’t simply a recreation to them. As we experienced in class, play involves competition, rules, mimicking adults, agency, intertextuality, interactivity, and interpretation. The clips, board games, and the video game, Disney Infinity, all demonstrate the multifaceted nature of children’s play.

It was interesting to watch those who don’t often (or never) play video games pick up the controller and figure out the mechanics of the game. Several times I heard the phrase, “What are we supposed to be doing?” This might be the key to understanding a child’s play versus an adult’s play—as we grow older, activities must have some kind of purpose and when one isn’t found, the activity isn’t worth our time, but a goal-less sandbox game like Disney Infinity appeals to a child’s curiosity and sense of play. Those of us who were more familiar with video games (or simply, more in touch with their inner child, game experience or not) found the freedom of the game exciting. Some chose to fight with their characters, other wanted to build the world around them. The possibilities of character and environment manipulation/exploration were huge, which I think appealed to some and daunted others.

The design of Disney Infinity reminded me of several other video games I’ve played—Minecraft, Skylanders, etc. Because of my past experience, I felt very comfortable picking up the controller and guessing how the designers had laid out the button commands and level objectives—right trigger for gas, 1^st button (X on the PlayStation) for jumping, left trigger for targeting, etc. This is an example of play teaching skills, even if these skills are only transferable between games. However, I’d like to argue that games teach more than just skills only useful when playing other games. When in the context of society, with other people, games can teach sportsmanship and social skills, patience, dedication, and other general life lessons. They can even teach marketable, tangible skills, such as programming and artistry. It’s when a game is decontextualized, when a child plays a game exclusively and separated from other people, that is when negative skills are learned (and where violent video games gain their bad reputation). If children play intertextually, then they also learn intertextually, and the lessons or skills they learn in a game can be transferred to other situations in their life.

My brother avidly played a video game named Kodu, basically a sandbox game with a user-friendly interface to allow the player to build worlds, create objects/characters, and then program those objects/characters with behaviors. It used standard programming logic, with “if-then” statements and modifications such as “except” and “when.” My brother became extremely involved, programming games, scenarios, worlds, etc., and pushing the game to its limits. At the age of 10 he took up an email exchange with the game’s creator, suggesting patches and new ideas for the game, which the creator took seriously and invited him to beta test every version of the game after that. His play was more than an unwind at the end of a school day. He used his creativity, curiosity, and competitive nature to learn programming, logic, and social skills that has impacted his life now as a 17 year-old being accepted to colleges.

(http://youtu.be/9Hp_T0gVkKY?t=10s)