Gaming as a Human Need

I had this thought the other day, humans need to game like they need to eat. It's pretty radical at the first sound of it, millions of people do NOT play games, and are just fine for it. Or are they? Or is it they game in different ways, and don't realize they are filling the need.

By gaming, I mean participating in a mental activity where there is a set of rules, potential actions, and results. By this definition, driving to work could be considered gaming, so let's add another qualification. The good and bad results of the game must be relatively painless and repeatable to the participant. This eliminates real-world dangerous stuff like skydiving and driving pretty well - but what about gambling? Thus, gambling away your life savings is not a game (it is stupid), but playing cards for nothing or pennies is a game, since you can afford to keep playing and keep losing. Of course, Facebook games, video games, card games, board games, RPGs, and the games we talk about here on the blog are out main interest, and covered by the definition.

Now what's this about you need to game like you need to eat? Sociologically speaking, we have been gaming all our lives, testing out little theories as we grow up through play or bouncing off behaviors off our parents. Gaming is simulation, and you could consider your parents telling you to keep your chin up, shake hands, and dress neatly to be all little games we played as kids, with our parents acting as the referee and giving us feedback if what we did was winning or losing behavior. We may not be playing game-games everyday (or at all), but we are gaming as we learn, interact with others, and explore new things. Even as we watch movies and read books, the escape and daydreaming of 'what if' we were in the same situation could be thought of as gaming.

Now what about the games we play nowadays? Let's consider DnD, World of Warcraft, Angry Birds, Monopoly, and a huge number of other enjoyments we bring into our lives. Do we have a need to play them? Well, we certainly won't starve if we don't play them, but an argument can be made that there is something wired into the human psyche that makes the structure of "new world + rules + success and failure" very familiar to us. It's almost as if as humans, we are hard-wired to play games, explore the rules behind them, and discover the paths to success. These activities are natural to us, and don't need to be taught to us.

Games serve as a way for us to safely explore what if? Just like Cowboys and Indians when we were young, we were imitating the 'rules' the television shows laid out for us, and trying to save the day and 'win' at the game. With more modern games, we explore the worlds and scenarios laid out by the game designers, using the tools the designers placed (and even hide) in the world. What if I could be a powerful Orc Shaman in this world? What if I could be a real estate tycoon? How does this little world of Angry Birds work? We enter, we explore, and we search for the golden key.

I believe gaming is hard-wired into who we are as humans, and the elaborate games of today naturally appeal to the gamer within us.