what makes game, and what makes work?

I speak in lieu of Ian Bogost's recent article, Video Games Are Better Without Gameplay. I have studied Bogost in university before this. One of the things to be aware of is that his title are often moot, a series of jokes meant to garner attention and debate. I am reminded of two foreign policy papers I recently read: Cyber War Is Not War and Cyber War Is War, both written by colleagues at Cambridge taking fun jabs at each other while bringing to light the destruction cyber warfare can potentially inflict. (As an aside, Bogost also has written Video Games Are Better Without Characters and Video Games Are Better Without Stories.)

But how moot is the title, really? Can one imagine a game...without gameplay? A number of my friends play a game known as Girl's Frontline, a Chinese mobile title where you set up a squadrons of "T-dolls" - which seem to be rifles turned into female soldiers by some weird alien technology - and then they just kind of…watch the game play itself. The thinking and challenge comes in how best to arrange the girls so they can beat the level while not spending too many resources. But the rest of the game is all but a very repetitive TV show. Doesn't that sound like a snoozefest? Yet Girl's Frontline exceeded 17 million USD in revenue in FY 2018 (source). 

See, the underlying idea Bogost puts forward is this: what makes the human mind differentiate "work" and "play"? For example, what is the difference between spending one's evenings pressing buttons at a grocery store cash register versus spending evenings pressing the Start Mission button in Girl's Frontline? And there's no reason to stop at games. People run grueling marathons, research and write articles on Wikipedia, build things out of wood or metal, the list goes on. What makes these recreation and not work?

Clearly there exists some answer, some kind of subconscious mental divide - it's quite doubtful for instance that a manager can merely tell employees to "think of work like play" and suddenly expect increases in motivation (although I do expect there are managers who have tried). Academic theories surrounding the work/play paradigm delve into a blend of motivation psychology, behavioral economics, and philosophy. The research is very incomplete when trying to put all of these schools together: it's an area that currently lacks expertise (given its multidisciplinary nature and relative newness) and funding. But all game designers know this much at least: a large number of very popular games get away with having a lot of "grind", that is, repetitive in-game actions that are not intrinsically enjoyable to most but are done solely for in-game rewards. In fact, having a certain quantity of grind often improves games in terms of popularity (although too much grind is often detracting).

Bogost also takes another angle: the "goose game" he talks about - its official name being Untitled Goose Game - is a currently trending comedic title. Bogost maintains the Goose Game's popularity actually comes more from watching others play the game on streaming services and less from the enjoyment of playing the game itself, thus begging the question if it's the game themselves that is really fun, or if it's something else; perhaps the sense of wonder or humor we inject into the experience and that designers have learned to facilitate. But it seems many people actually did enjoy playing the Goose Game, so the point of the article (along with the misleading title) was missed by most. I merely think Bogost would have been clearer had he cited League of Legends instead.

Video Games Are Better Without Gameplay doesn't really seek answers, but to simulate discussion. To myself, the discussion around games forever seeks to deteriorate to uninformed arguments, as people always think they know something about games just because they play. (A familiar sentiment to me: as a music student prior, I find the world is grotesquely misinformed on what makes themselves enjoy certain music.) My goal is to research so I don't succumb to the same pitfall. And if I can share a bit of that with the people around me, why not?