Why I Side with the Writers

I've been arguing about the writers' strike on another message board and I came up with concise summary of why I hope the writers win:

1. Deferred compensation is a good idea in high-risk industries. It's why stock options are a good idea for high-tech start-ups and why royalties are a good idea for publishing. It means you can pay your talent less up front and offload risk onto the people who are responsible for the success or failure of the project. Frankly I think the producers are being incredibly short-sighted in this negotiation. They see an opportunity to make a quick buck off online reruns without considering the long-term effect the elimination of residuals will have on the industry.

2. In general I'd rather see talent get paid than the suits. Television executives, like recording industry executives, are a necessary evil. As much as possible though, I like seeing the profits from a hit show or song or movie go to the creative people who are actually responsible for making it.

3. The writers tried being accommodating 20 years ago and got screwed. When terms were negotiated for videotape residuals in the 1980's the writers believed assurances that their compensation would increase as the industry matured. Instead they found themselves locked into the lower rates. So they're entirely right not to trust the producers now that new digital distribution channels are being introduced.

And, of course, because in the long run because I think the game industry would benefit from being organized. A victory for them now means a greater likelihood of a victory for us later.

Huizinga’s Theory of Play

If you’ve read Chris Crawford on Game Design you’re probably familiar with Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens. I agree with Crawford that Huizinga’s analysis of “play” is probably the best book written on the subject (although I disagree with some of the conclusions that Crawford draws from it). Since I’m going to be talking about play a lot in this blog, it’s probably worthwhile to do a brief recap of Huizinga’s thesis.

Huizinga is interested in “the play element of culture”. The word “of” here is crucial. While Huizinga does spend some time discussing games, his primarily interest is how elements of play manifest themselves during activities that we traditionally don’t think of as “play-full”: rituals, for example, or warfare. It’s interesting stuff, and well-argued, but since (unlike Huizinga) I am primarily interested in games, the most useful part of Homo Ludens for me is the very beginning where he lays out his definition of play.

According to Huizinga, there are three conditions for successful play:

• It’s voluntary. It’s a state that can’t be entered into either by compulsion or necessity. Rather it’s something that you choose to do (and can choose to stop).
  
  
• It has its own internal logic. While play is in progress the rules of the real world are suspended and the play proceeds according to its own internal constraints. These constraints can be formal rules (“When you pass Go, you collect $200”) or simply informal conventions (“Pretend that the sofa is a castle”).
  
  
• It’s segregated in space and time. It’s not comingled with everyday life, but takes place in a space apart. This space can be formally defined (a chessboard or a baseball diamond) or it can be informal and transitory (the backyard or the mental space of a reader).

Basically, play is the temporary construction of a microcosm – a toy world where the rules are simpler, the entities are fewer, and the interactions are more formalized and obvious. By contrast, the real world is often confusing and ambiguous. Things happen without clear cause and effect. Meanings are hidden, justice is deferred, and entropy is always nipping at our heels.

The appeal of a temporary retreat into a play space should be obvious. The microcosm is a simplified and abstracted version of the real world. While we are in the microcosm the consequences of our actions mimic the consequences we would expect in the real world, but in an amplified and more explicit form. Good triumphs, evil is vanquished, cleverness is rewarded, and … inevitably … the princess is rescued.

A New Beginning

A new year. Seems like a good time to start a new blog.