Gaming and Play -Alliance or Disunion

Article by Buckler&Shield

“To my mum, gaming was not equitable to play, and is probably an unserious engagement”

My most memorable time of playing as a child was with a bag of lego bricks as I tried to construct my own world as I saw it. Replete with houses, gas stations, cars, humans, streets and other elements of daily human life. Speaking of cars, I had a number of those also, all types. Police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, and so on. It was a perfect world for me and a playful one too.My mum never had problems with me playing with those, oh especially as that was the only entertainment I had asides play with my sibling then and it also kept me out of trouble.

We were young boys and it was accepted, we would have a lot of play, especially outdoors, where we had lots of fun, sunshine, snacks and some injuries. The most severe, If I recall was me falling on my nose from the high incline of the garage driveway.

I had to give this background, to clarify that my parents, especially my mum. Supported my toy play, bought the toys, edged on my creativity and never complained about the time I had devoted to this passion, which probably even influenced my adult life.

Some years later, we had become friends, My brother and I, with another child, who lived a few houses away, and who had a game console. A Nintendo or Sega if I recall. The story of how we became friends and could visit should not be bluffed off. We attended the same church fellowship, and my mum wouldn’t mind, hitherto we had been restrained from keeping too many friends asides from those we had at school.

It is insightful as well, we had even been allowed visits to this friends house ostensibly to play games on his console, but this eventually happened only for a short while and under the watchful eyes of my mum. She remained very curious and eventually discouraged our visits to play console games. To her, these were not a healthy alternative to the toys and bikes we had. After-all, with this new entertainment, there appears to be overly quiet, almost scary possibility of addiction, especially considering us kids, My brother and I would spend hours mute before the game console, lost and oblivious of time and appetite.

I had never really taken any possible reasons for her reluctance to heart then, but I remained conscious of this reservation into my mid-teens and secondary school, where we would have to sneakily play video games. This was not the case for other form of play, we were allowed football, tennis and other forms of play.

To my mum, Gaming was not equitable to play, and is probably an unserious engagement — not well suited for kids who want to pass their exams. She did not feel the same way I felt about it — I had felt in my extreme thoughts, maybe naively, that racing games will help me understand driving better, once I got my license to drive, FPS would help understand wars/combat better, as I wanted to join the military.

So growing up, I wonder where the term gameplay came from, Could it be another marketing creation to humanise the experience of console gaming?, making it appeal to people like my mother. Or maybe it is just a word play, describing gaming as play.

Wherever the reader’s sentiments lie, my mother’s or mine, I believe gaming just like play must be mind engaging, transformative and important to the growth of a child’s mind. And just like play too, should be monitored by the watchful eyes of the parent/guardian to avoid inherent pitfalls and injuries from play, gameplay.