At first glance, games and video games are seen merely as entertainment and/or distraction. Mary Flanagan takes a cultural-historical as well as artistically-tinted look behind the scenes of an otherwise largely one-sided exploration of games and the increasingly popular virtual, electronic forms.
The author approaches the idea of games in a remarkably unconventional manner; in her eyes, games - from the board games, dolls to electronic virtual games of the 20th and 21st centuries - are an expression of cultural norms as well as a reflection of societal unrest. Flanagan even goes so far as to suggest that games can also be interpreted as narrative tools in the sense of social "reflectors". Consequently, games also serve as a means to process social problems, based on the restructuring of the games culture through new games and game styles.
First of all, the book tries to capture the socio-cultural significance of games by means of a well-founded contextualisation exemplified by a few historical milestones of different types and forms of games. There is also an attempt to record the cultural ambivalence of games. For the most part, Flanagan here follows anthropologist Brian Sutton-Smith, who has interpreted games as a narrative form with a catalyst function. According to this, players are able to channel real-world risks, and observe and evaluate these at a safe distance. Games may therefore highlight real problems in their "downplayed" form and can almost be held up as a mirror to the willing "players" showing their own cultural involvement and participation.
Flanagan provides plausible evidence for her theories, from the Dadaist-influenced puppet show of the 20th century to the popular PC series The Sims. Games can be viewed not only as an expression of altered recreational behaviour and technical progress, but also as the transformed self-image of the political function of games. Based on such political and socio-cultural contextualisation, Flanagan ventures to apply her instruments, which results in the concretisation of her game design model named Critical Play. It is interesting to note here that the author only deals with the question of where games start to become critical relatively late i.e. in her last chapter.
In this context, Flanagan is impressed by the ideas of Marshall McLuhan, whom she believes was far ahead of his time in rating the ability of art and games to place human associations into different relationships, including opposing positions. Essentially, Critical Play is thus a normative two-way approach to development. A model, which, based on cultural influences that manifested themselves in the games, pretends that innovative approaches of a "new, critical" game design would be able to challenge established norms and thus create a wider spectrum of the games experience. Peering at the social significance of virtual worlds (Second Life, World of Warcraft, etc.), Flanagan remarks (not without justification) that it is precisely for this reason that video games today are given high significance, as starting points and positions of social interaction and the cultural realm can be seen within them.
Conclusion:
Critical Play: Radical Game Design takes some highly interesting games theory approaches and develops them - based on a historically well-founded contextualisation substantiated by plenty of solid and graphic examples - into an innovative methodology of game design. Although peppered with scientific citation (which can, however, be looked up in the appendix for greater reader-friendliness), the paper is clearly structured; the writing style proves simple and comprehensible for the most part. As the work is currently only available in its original version from MIT Press.
