Words, Design, and Play - Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games - page 165

looks at what makes video games special and dif erent, dynamics that are
often found in play. There are many aspects of play worthy of study, but
two key elements that wordplay is well suited to address can be seen in the
'who' and the 'how' of play. For me, these elements are well represented in
two stories about playing video games: playing the Nintendo DS with my
mom and playing Sally's Spa HD with my partner, Erin.
My memories are fi lled with examples of my mom's relationship with
games. I remember the fi rst night we got a NES and my mom and dad
stayed up late playing Golf . I remember Mom stealing my GameBoy to play
Tetris and later playing Dr. Mario while she was recuperating from lung
surgery. For a while, Mom's interest in games waned. She likes her games
short and ideally driven by puzzles. She wants to play something quickly
and then be able to move on to other things, with the chance to come back
later and play more if she has the time. She's almost a core demographic
for games made by PopCap and Big Fish Games. She hates Facebook games
because she wants to be able to play by herself and be independent. Part
of this is likely because she does not really talk about playing video games
with her friends, as she is a retired librarian who would rather talk about
topics. Mom of ers a dif erent look at the 'who' of play and how play can
be integrated into elements of game design.
Although there are many pieces of my mom's play that could be analyzed
using wordplay, I think the most notable is our experience with the Nin-
tendo DS. I knew my mom would like the DS because it is small, portable,
and generally features games that are bite-sized. She could pick up games
and quickly play for a bit, then move on to something else. However, she
was unlikely to ever purchase one for herself because she would never put
herself in a situation where she would see how well the game suited her.
Fortunately for her, I visited her shortly after I picked up Tetris DS . Soon
after I showed her how the game worked, my DS disappeared for the rest
of my trip. After my stay ended, Dad bought Mom a DS of her own, and
we have periodically swapped games back and forth. For Mom, wordplay
helps explain how her play of games is governed by a number of dif erent
social factors. She plays video games almost daily, but is more likely to
consider herself a player of games than a gamer. She prefers doing other
things, so that her play has to fi t her existing lifestyle. She enjoys playing,
but is unlikely to go out of her way to keep on top of news about games.
She is far more likely to try something when the chance to play comes at a
low opportunity cost, which has meant that she is now more prone to play
games on her iPad than her DS, as she loves to try games for free. 26 For
Mom, wordplay helps focus on the circumstances of her play and how her
practices of play may be quite dif erent than for other gamers, reshaping the
discourse of video games.
Wordplay also facilitates deeper examination of play in particular
games. Similar to the focus on the rhetorical force of motion control used
by the Nintendo Wii and the Xbox 360' s Kinect, certain games on the iOS