![]() ![]() The same player might be blamed of being too competitive after tackling a six-year-old at a family round of soccer at a neighborhood barbecue. A soccer player using a championship game to playfully experiment with new ways to outplay opponents and esthetically please her audience might be criticized for not acknowledging the significance of the game. Playing together requires players to come to a mutual agreement about how seriously, how earnestly they want the game to be played. And it is, in relevant parts, the players’ choosing, how real they want it to be. This description does not yet overcome the binary thinking, but it helps to intelligibly describe one of the core aspects of play: it is, in many ways, real and unreal at the same time. Video games, according to Jesper Juul, are half-real. While there are a lot of logical inconsistencies to be uncovered in such commonplace critique of digital play, I believe it to be most productive to focus on the deconstruction of the premise of a clear distinction between the real and the virtual. And large parts of the discourse of video game violence are based on the idea of this inability. Social contacts via online games are often considered not to be real. A lot of widespread criticism of digital games is based on the premise of players not being able to distinguish the real from the virtual, implying a binary system of reality and unreal game worlds. The perception of digital game worlds as ‘not real’ is hard to avoid when playing, discussing or studying digital games. The research focuses on needs and longings satisfied by digital play and asks, what the existence of those needs and longings can tell about the social contexts they originate from. It is based on qualitative interviews with players as well as parents and teachers and on a large number of participant observations and group discussions all conducted between 20. The thoughts presented in this text are rooted in my cultural anthropological research on social functions of digital play. And I want to show, why this is especially attractive for people who struggle with and are angry about changing social norms or, to be more specific, for men struggling with and angry about the ongoing crisis of hegemonic masculinity – a discourse closely connected to the riot at the US-Capitol in January 2021. In this text I want to focus on this elusive aspect of playing games, evading theoretical frameworks and the power structures attached to them. And by doing so they embrace those inner conflicts and encourage players to interact with them without a high risk of getting hurt. Digital games, as I will argue in this article, invite players to experiment with the in-betweens of real and fictional, heterotopia and utopia, fun and earnestness. Or one can be frustrated about the objectifying representation of women in games and be pleasantly aroused by scarcely clad damsels in distress and sophisticated breast physics. ![]() ![]() One can use online games as places to rant and rave ardently and at the same time be ashamed of one’s behavior. ![]() One can criticize pop-culture’s constant reproduction of seemingly outdated ideas of heroism and at the same time enjoy saving the (fictional) world time and time again. Conflict not only between conservatives and progressives, but also within individuals. And when social norms change, conflict is at hand. The times, to quote the young Bob Dylan, they are a-changing. And anger, as is frequently claimed, is not so much about rational disagreement rather than about fear and uncertainty. These days (as most days I guess) there is a lot to get angry about. ![]()
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