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Writing a book: your thoughts?

Blogs > Thereisnosaurus
Post a Reply
Thereisnosaurus
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
Australia1822 Posts
December 24 2014 03:52 GMT
#1
Hey all. I've been around here for a while now, and I'm starting to work on a project which my time on TL has played no small part in influencing, so I thought I'd write a short precis of what it's all about and post it up for your thoughts. I'd be interested in hearing what you'd like to see in the book and (honestly) whether you'd think it's the sort of thing you might buy.

Cheers
Saurus



Powerup!

Playing games isn’t something you’d normally associate with self-development. Play is what you do when you’re taking time out from the frenetic activities that make up your daily life- making money, building relationships, planning ahead, remembering (occasionally) to eat, and far more often to consume an ever increasing amounts of your caffeinated beverage of choice. Increasingly, though, there is a case to be made that play is a vital and integral component to helping people overcome, cope with and learn from the pressures of life, not just as a way of getting away from it all, but woven throughout every part of life. Play can be a deeply serious and passionate endeavour, far from the childish frivolity the word commonly evokes.

Powerup! is a book about exploring- often playfully- the idea of play with a view to helping the reader understand how play contributes to their life. In doing so, I hope that awareness will allow them to more actively harness the incredible power play has for self empowerment and self development. Make no mistake, this is not a ‘how-to’ book. Play is a deeply individual and incredibly complex thing, built on many layers of behavior both personal and social. This book is a lot more about exploring ideas and general concepts than providing a catch-all recipe for success. As with other areas of self-development like study, exercise and diet, everyone will have their own particular needs and will struggle if those aren’t addressed. Unlike these other forms of self-development, however, play has a huge advantage. It is- almost by definition- fun.

Asking someone why they are playing is a meaningless question in a way, or it certainly seems like it from the blank and benignly confused responses I have recieved when I have asked it. Play needs no justification, it is a goal in and of itself (the fancy word for this is ‘Autotelic’). Because of this, we don’t suffer the problems with motivation that many other forms of self-development are so laden with. So why do you even need a book like this? You’re going to play anyway!

There are two main reasons. The first is that though play needs no motivation, it almost inevitably has one. Often we feel bad about playing because we feel like we should be doing something constructive, when in fact there is almost nothing more constructive that we could be doing. By thinking about the value that play brings to your life in a more focused and complex way, you’ll probably be able to worry less about whether you should be doing it and as a result get even more out of it! The second is that by understanding why play is so intrinsically motivating, you can begin to deliberately bring this attribute into other parts of your life where motivation is hard to come by.

Along with these there are a host of other benefits. By understanding the many kinds of play and motivations for playfulness you can begin to understand how other people play and communicate what you value in your own play more clearly. You can appreciate how areas of play overlap and intersect with each other, bringing your favourite pastimes together in new and creative ways. There’s also the simple fact that the world of play is fascinating, engaging and deeply entwined with creative and meaningful endeavours everywhere you look. It’s worth thinking about.

What will be in the book?

First the book will give an overview of the concepts of play and games. What is play? What are games? Unfortunately, there’s no simple answers- it really depends on what you want to accomplish with your definition. With that in mind we’ll look at developing some historical ideas into something more simple and pragmatic that can be used to examine play.

Then we’ll take a look through the motivations for play and the benefits of playing, both those expressed by the players themselves and those discovered by more systematic research. I’ll isolate these motivations into some simple characters who epitomize that motivation, characters we’ll call back to later in the book.

From there we’ll begin to dive into the real content of the book. Looking at existing kinds of play and communities of players, we’ll see how you can use these ideas for self-development and self-empowerment. This section will be broken down into three broad parts

Solitary play:
Exploration and investigation, fantasy and creativity, ritual and meditation, solitary play behaviors take up a good part of our lives. They’re also the ones we’re liable to be most self critical of, and for good reason- play can be self-destructive as well as self-empowering and without the benefit of other people to see the play from a different perspective, it’s easy to get caught up. How can the positive aspects of play be harnessed throughout your life? How can solitary games be used to at the same time relax and grow. By understanding play you can direct it towards helping you achieve your goals with a greater degree of control, and a feeling of control is essential to getting the most out of many kinds of play, so this creates a kind of virtuous cycle- achieve more and feel better doing it, the holy grail of self-development gurus everywhere.

Competitive play:
Competitive play permeates contemporary society both in practice and in spirit, everywhere from politics to romance, competitive play reaches deep into the most serious endeavours of life. No other form of play can bring the same rollercoaster of highs and lows as direct competition with rival players, so this section will explore ways in which to emphasise the positive emotions of competition and cope with the frustrations. It will also look at how to maximise the development from competitive play, win or lose.

Co-operative play:
Less dramatic and consequently less romanticised than competition, cooperative play where several players work towards a shared objective is nevertheless an important part of the play ecology. Dramatists or preachers working an audience towards catharsis, board gamers trying to un-knot a thorny puzzle the cards have laid down, storytellers trying to evoke an imaginary world, even a group of friends working together towards an atmosphere of general comfort and well-being, playing with others can achieve heights that solitary play can sometimes struggle to reach. Having a clear view of what you’re working towards, communicating your objectives and methods to other players and recognizing where working together with others can help are all reasons to think about co-operative forms of play.


***
Poisonous Sheep counter Hydras
Basic
Profile Blog Joined June 2010
Canada288 Posts
December 24 2014 06:31 GMT
#2
Excuse me I am a touch guilty of skimming this article but the outline is really interesting. I might add that it looks like it has more of the ring of a large research project focusing on the sociological and/or psychological implication of gaming on self development. If this book existed, or thesis I would be quite interested to read it.

Regards,

Basic
ninazerg
Profile Blog Joined October 2009
United States7291 Posts
December 24 2014 09:01 GMT
#3
You should go even more meta and write a book about reading books.
"If two pregnant women get into a fist fight, it's like a mecha-battle between two unborn babies." - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Thereisnosaurus
Profile Blog Joined February 2010
Australia1822 Posts
December 24 2014 22:21 GMT
#4
You should go even more meta and write a book about reading books.


That will certainly be a part of it . Though I think the particular evocation I'll use to demonstrate playful reading is people reading online fanfication . Given this thing could be, in some way, fan fiction of the scholarship of play, I'm not pretending to be super scientific here, I think that should qualify as sufficiently meta :D.
Poisonous Sheep counter Hydras
pebble444
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
Italy2497 Posts
December 25 2014 09:06 GMT
#5
Games as self-developement is not new to me. The question arised, after having played some 2500 games of starcraft broodwar. Reviewing my progress, i saw how i got better after a large break in playing, i came back and my game was far superior than before. At the beginning i was astonished: how can taking a 6 month break have made me better? i then carefully evaluated my games, and saw that various aspects of the game where being played better, and then i valued my life, the opponents. My opponents seemed the same skill level of before, but i certainly improved parts of my life.

Now i see the game as a valuable resource to check up on how i' m doing;
examples:
my micro had gotten much better, and my ability to small talk with people too. To concentrate soly on the task at hand in that moment. To find solutions on the go. this unit attacks here, that moves there, this retreats here this casts this spell right here. As in saynig the right thing at the right moment, insisting or letting be in the right moment, making a move in the right moment.

Resource management had not improved, and so my ability to make money and manage my bank had improved. When with 1 base you can do many things, especially when your opponent has one base as well. It depends heavily on how much can your opponent spend, how many factories you want to have and how many units you want to produce. how many defences are adequate to have in that stage of the game. to relate it to real life matter, i' ll use dating example. How much money and energy can be spent to improve my wardrobe, going out at night, making myself feel better so that i am self-confident, as opposed to other men i have to compete with for dating women.

Macro was and is my strongest point, the ability to plan out your life and work for long term objectives. Everything done in macro, is done for something not apperently obvious, for something that will not give immediat results. Making units to have them later, scvs, factories, technologhy buildings, planning out your game plan and then executing it or changing it, based on what is actually happening

Unit upgrades and unit composition, the ability to work with what you have and deciding where and how to invest your resources.
well, thats my take on this,
"Awaken my Child, and embrace the Glory that is your Birthright"
NeThZOR
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
South Africa7387 Posts
December 25 2014 11:13 GMT
#6
Really liking the idea behind the book. Keep on brainstorming!
SuperNova - 2015 | SKT1 fan for years | Dear, FlaSh, PartinG, Soulkey, Naniwa
nunez
Profile Blog Joined February 2011
Norway4003 Posts
Last Edited: 2014-12-25 23:40:28
December 25 2014 23:39 GMT
#7
i think you have the best nickname saurus: 5 stars.
conspired against by a confederacy of dunces.
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