Games, Play, Inspiration Around the World: Part III

Recently, I had the opportunity to examine the role of games and game playing in six counties for a five-week period. During that time, I traveled to diverse countries and studied the role of game playing. I wanted to understand the history of games and the modern playing of games to gain first-hand insights into how games can be better leveraged for learning. I traveled to England, Scotland, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and The United Arab Emirates to study, play, learn, and have fun with games. Here’s my impressions, thoughts and take-a-ways. This is the third in a multi-part series that investigates the meaning of games, gamification and play around the world. In case you missed part one, see it here and you can see part two here and part four here and part five here.

It's not a particularly fun or glamorous job, in fact, it's back breaking, hard, dirty work. Plowing, harrowing and tilling the soil (actually mud) until it's ready. The ground can be tilled by hand or, if the farmer is lucky, an animal assists. When the field is ready, seedlings are transferred from a wet seedbed to the wet field--almost always by hand. Then when the rice is mature, it's cut and hauled from the fields and then threshed and cleaned. It's not an easy way to make a living.

And, yet, there we were in Luang Prabang, Laos in the middle of the wet rice fields up to our legs in what was "hopefully" only mud. A group of tourists "playing" at planting, harvesting, threshing and cleaning rice.

Grown adults pretending, for a short period of time, that we were working in the fields.

And we weren't the only ones.

Plenty of people visit the educational "rice farm" called The Living Land year after year to play in the rice fields. And that wasn't the only instance of "playing at other people's work" we experienced on our world-wide trip.

In Thailand, we had the opportunity to "wash" the water buffalo (probably the cleanest water buffalo in the world-but we cleaned them again) and tended to them as farmers have for decades. Sure there were a lot of kids cleaning the buffalo but, surprisingly, a number of adults were busy washing the clean buffalo as well.

So the act of "work" is turned into "play." But why do people like to pretend to work? Most of these folks wouldn't dream of pursuing rice farming as a career but they embrace the "play time" of being a rice farmer. Why? Why pretend to be a rice farmer?

This pretend play or pretending to be one thing for a little while is not a new phenomenon and it's not just in Laos or Thailand. In Dubai, we headed to the desert and pretended to be nomads crossing the desert on a camel wearing traditional head gear.

The phenomenon is cross-cultural and instances of adult "dress-up" can be seen in almost every country across the world. Festivals ranging from Renaissance Faires to Comic-Cons to the Carnival of Venice in Italy, famous for having gigantic elaborated costumes, or in Binche, Belgium which celebrates the “Day of the Gilles” with odd characters wearing orange costumes and masks with painted-on glasses, beards and mustaches. Dressing up as someone else is a universal form of play.

Why Pretend Play?

At one level, we all play different roles all the time. For me, it might be father, brother, son, employee, boss, subordinate, teacher, student, expert, novice--the list goes on.

So playing at something new or different can be a liberating, fun and enlightening experience. It an also be frustrating or confusing or difficult.

It can be a mix but, regardless of the mix, it is instructional. We learn from this type of play.

In fact, the famous Soviet psychologist, Lev Vygotsky had a strong belief that pretend play was a “leading factor in development.” Vygostsky noted that in play children develop a range of skills and learn culturally valued competencies (Berk, Mann, & Ogan, 2006). Berk et al. state that "early childhood is also the "high season" of imaginative play, when make-believe evolves from simple imitative acts into elaborate plots involving complex coordination of roles."

While Vygostsky was focused on children, there seems to be little difference regarding the adult drive for pretend play. If children use dress up to learn cultural values and to develop a wide range of skills, isn't the same true for adults. Don't we learn a little bit more about a culture by "walking a mile in the shoes" of members of that culture? Such as rice farmers or nomads. Don't we gain insights and empathy by truly understanding the roles others inhabit by playing in those roles? The "dressing up" part immerses us in the role and further allows us to identify with others.

Now expanding on this idea, shouldn't we use pretend play to teach supervisors to become managers and assistant vice presidents to become vice presidents and vice presidents to eventually become president of an organization. Aren't we missing huge learning opportunities when we ignore the ability of pretend play to prepare someone for a future role?

Remember that play, imagination, pretending and "what-if" thinking creates innovation, competitive advantage and value in society.

Play is a way to explore the world around us. Remember that play, imagination, pretending and "what-if" thinking creates innovation, competitive advantage and value in society. Pretending to be a customer of your own company allows you to understand your customer's experience, look at the show "Undercover Boss" to see how much people's eyes can be opened by "playing" a new and different role.

It is time to incorporate pretend play into our toolkit of learning techniques. We should not leave out the ability to dress up in a manner that leads us to think and act as others. We need to spend time dressed as those we serve and as those to whom we aspire to be.

When is the last time you pretended to be someone else?

Immerse Yourself in Play

If you’d like to explore the ideas of creativity, innovation, sense-making, pretend play and games then I have an event for you. It’s called “Step Away.” Register for more information at https://www.stepaway.design/. The event runs from Sept 5-10th, 2019 in Florida in a game house. You won’t want to miss it

Step Away is a five-day experience of living in a game house and focusing on creativity, working with Lego, crafting a game, tapping into your drawing ability, pretend playing as a leader and making concrete linkages between the creative and the productive.

Reference:

Berk, L. E., Mann, T. D., & Ogan, A. T. (2006). Make-Believe Play: Wellspring for Development of Self-Regulation. In D. G. Singer, R. M. Golinkoff, & K. Hirsh-Pasek (Eds.), Play = learning: How play motivates and enhances children's cognitive and social-emotional growth (pp. 74-100). New York, NY, US: Oxford University Press. https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195304381.003.0005 

Bio

Karl Kapp is a professor at Bloomsburg University and he literally “wrote the book” on the "The Gamification of Learning and Instruction" and he recently co-authored the game-based learning book Play to Learn with Sharon Boller. Karl is a researcher, analyst, speaker, professor, consultant and designer of instructional games, gamification and engaging learning experiences. He is a learning experience designer who works around the global helping organizations create engaging and meaningful learning experiences using an evidence-based approach.

He is founder of The Wisdom Learning Group, LLC, a global partnership that helps organizations implement game-thinking and game-based learning to achieve success. He is author/co-author of seven books on the convergence of learning and technology. He is the creator of the LinkedIn Learning courses "The Gamification of Learning" as well as "Gamification for Interactive Learning"

Follow Karl on Twitter @kkapp.