Killing two pigs with one bird - January 22, 2012

A quick walk this morning, in the thin snow over wood chips on the playground. Ingrid took Anya to the dog park, and I spent a bunch of the day doing work... and killing electronic pigs with birds hurled from slingshots.

I'm not what you would call a "gamer." But I do every so often get hooked on a game,usually on the computer. In college, it was Marble Madness on my roommate's Amiga. In Vermont, it was Tetris. I've had two separate rounds of online Scrabble, at least. This winter it's Angry Birds.

Like entertainment, playing games has a long disreputable history—it's frivolous, a waste of time, and prone to be habit forming. I wonder if, like stories, it's grounded in a less-obvious basic human need. Competing with games does seem pretty universal.

There is a clear distinction between "outdoors" and "indoors" games. Outdoors, play generally involves whole-body movement through a controlled physical environment. What makes sport a game is rule-following, the formal structure that controls how one may or may not act in the contest.

Indoors, most games are removed from whole-body competition. People have made large-room competitions that are specifically about playing the room, and more recently arenas have become so large we can play outdoor games in an indoor space. But the oldest indoor games are all variations on card, board, dice and word games.

Outdoor games have little story-telling embedded in them. The narrative is in the physical actions on the playing field. By contrast, indoor board games often parallel some more physical content: chess and checkers are like a formalized battle, cribbage like a horse race. Not all indoor games do this: most word, card and dice games are utterly abstract.

Games, in fact, move fluidly with need, in and outside. Bowling was an outdoor game first, before it came indoors in North American winters. Dice and cards were historically as much the pastime of soldiers and travelers on the road as of casinos and gambling halls, their appeal in large part that they could be played almost anywhere.