Smart people have said many a clever thing about games. One recurring comment is that games are – at their core – meaningless. Some even believe that it is this meaninglessness, that makes games unique. According to these people the appeal and the sweet promise of a game lies in the fact that they are inconsequential. “Serious” activities (whatever those may be) are defined by their consequences. A game – as many a well-educated and cosmopolitan white man would argue – foregoes such nuisances. That is, in fact, why games are so fun. Without triviality, games would lose their sense of identity. You would destroy the light-hearted sense of play, by putting a serious theme on it. Players would dispel the magic of play, if they elevated games to something that actually mattered.

It’s at this point at the latest, that readers should take pause. If you appreciate historical games, you can hardly agree with that sentiment. It’s hard to value diverse and inclusive representation in games, if you also consider them trivial and meaningless. By now it should be apparent that this perspective does not hold water. You can only engage with a game’s theme (as problematic as this might be when treating games as a medium), if you accept that games are not meaningless. If the depiction of specific cultures and peoples in our games enriches our imagination; if it exposes us to new ideas, then games must have a modicum of meaningfulness to us.

Games that reference colonialist narratives have often and rightfully been criticized. Because when we as players have to incorporate and repeat these narratives to participate in the game, we’re justifiably upset. It makes us feel as if we might be condoning and propagating these narratives. Which has to presuppose that the game does have both meaning and consequences. If a game’s ideas and concepts would evaporate without consequence once we’ve played it to the end, nobody would ever need to engage in these conversations.

Games as a medium (and indirectly as art) can only exist and be talked about, if we are willing to spell out one obvious fact: players attribute meaning to games.

Cynics and trolls might talk about delusions and people losing touch with reality here. A game – which is very obviously not reality – surely can’t have any value? It can’t be meaningful, if it’s only done for fun? After all, the value of an activity is found by answering if it is essential for our survival, or if it makes us money. I find this point of view devastating in its nihilism and terrifying in its bleakness. I can’t but reject this entire train of thought whole-heartedly and unreservedly.

Culture – as Johan Huizinga already understood – grows out of our willingness to attribute meaning to the mundane. It turns everyday habits into custom. It turns custom into tradition. And out of the sum of our traditions we develop a culture. But all this is only possible, if we allow ourselves to take that first step. It’s only possible, when we attribute meaning to our actions.

A film only ever allows us to experience immersion, if we believe that we’re seeing something real. When we look at the thought-up dialogues, the rehearsed acting and the curated storytelling and attribute a sense of truthfulness to it. It’s only when we manage to suspend our disbelief, when we repress our doubts about the film’s reality, that a movie becomes film culture. We can only dive into the fantastical world of a book, when we attribute a glimmer of truth to it. It’s only when we see the carefully chosen words as having some inherent value, that a book can grab us.

It’s the same attribution of value and meaning, that lays the groundwork for a game. The arbitrarily chosen goal, the rules made up out of thin air and the components chosen for their economic efficiency only cohere to form a game, when we give this entire concoction meaning. It’s only when the group is willing to accept that a game isn’t trivial and does have consequences, that we get to experience the magic of shared play. We need to think of the game’s goal as meaningful, for us to pursue it. We have to accept the rules as important to accept them as the only valid way to reach the goal.

Of course, we’re all away that none of this is “real”. But we have to treat it as such, in order to play. A game isn’t important because it’s fun. But it can only be fun for us, if we attribute meaning and importance to it.

With this in mind,

merry christmas.