An ancient Hindu hymn likened a game of dice to an addictive drug. Fast forward three thousand years, and the first casino in Renaissance Venice nearly bankrupted the ruling class. Our love of games reveals a lot about us. For millennia, they've captivated people, with the gaming market now rivalling all other forms of entertainment combined.
Play is often dismissed as trivial, yet it's deeply ingrained. Most mammals, some birds, reptiles, fish, and even insects partake in it. It's a puzzle for neuroscientists. Even rats without their higher-thought cortex can still play.
Why is this behaviour so embedded? The brain builds models of the world to predict events, but games thrive on uncertainty. The unpredictable nature of games is fascinating because it exposes gaps in our brain's understanding. Uncertainty acts like a signpost, indicating there's more to learn. Children abandon tic-tac-toe once they grasp it always ends in a draw. Through play, we learn to navigate the unknown.
Many animals play to understand their environment's physics, while social creatures play to grasp each other. Researchers have isolated young rats to study how play affects brain development. These play-deprived rats become more aggressive and less attuned to social cues as adults. Play teaches us to get along and understand boundaries. Kittens learn to retract claws and control their bites while playing. It's a way to learn how to interact without causing harm.
Long before science delved into play's role in social learning, Plato argued games were vital for teaching children to follow rules, preparing them to respect laws as citizens. In medieval times, chess was compulsory for aristocrats, seen as a reflection of character. Philosophers similarly praised the ancient game of Go for honing players' insight. Competitive games are ultimately about cooperation. They train us to follow rules and achieve goals fairly within a social framework. They act as a form of domestication.
Given play's power in socialisation, it's unsurprising that games have been used to impart moral lessons. An Indian saint supposedly invented Snakes and Ladders to demonstrate karma's workings. The ancient board game Senet taught Egyptians about navigating the afterlife. The Victorian-era Mansion of Happiness (forerunner to today's Game of Life) showed children how virtues and vices could affect their life path. Games nudge us to consider others, their desires, and strategies. This isn't quite empathy, but it lays the groundwork for it.
Games have even revealed profound truths about reality, or so it seemed. Renaissance Europe's gamblers, seeking an edge, studied dice mechanics. Their efforts to mathematise gambling birthed probability theory, a remarkable early success of empiricism. Chance, previously seen as God's whim, could be studied and systematised. It operated according to laws. The ability to formalise the very randomness of dice throws was revolutionary.
Probability theory, a language adept at expressing the unknown, helped fuel the scientific revolution. However, the randomness of dice is a structured kind, far less messy than real-world events. This seemingly abstract issue is partly blamed for the replication crisis in science. Researchers might mistakenly use statistics suited to games to analyse their experimental results.
Today, the business world uses probability theory as its common tongue, framing economic ventures as wagers. The implications ripple through stock markets and their complex financial derivatives. The connection goes even deeper. Game design's influence on behaviour extends to shaping our modern social and economic systems. Game design dictates the ads we see online, how dating apps match us, and even how we're matched with jobs.
Game designer Reiner Knizia argues that scoring systems are crucial to game creation, as they dictate how players approach the game. By leveraging rewards, designers can control player behaviour to achieve the desired outcome. Take Monopoly, for instance. Winning requires acting like a ruthless capitalist, regardless of personal beliefs. Games designed by corporations permeate our lives, yet their rules often remain obscure. Understanding how these games influence us is vital to separate our own values from those imposed by the designers. Otherwise, we risk becoming pawns in their games.
