NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 9256545" data-attributes="member: 71699">This morning I reflected on this sort of question in the light of the autotelic nature of game play. Which is to say that playing a game isn't primarily instrumental: it's not done toward some other ends, but for the sake of the play itself. Play is process, not product.In that light, what obligations do we have toward one another? Does a participant who wants to experience play of a certain sort have any obligation to join play with another who wants to experience play of another sort? That seems trivially ruled out: if I want to play Monopoly and you want to play Dark Souls, you've no obligation to join me in Monopoly. In fact, you cannot have, as it would defeat your autotelic purpose in playing at all.Thus it seems to me that it has to go one of two ways -I. Either there is no harm to A's autotelic purpose in B joining their game, and thus they can proceed with joint play. II. Or there is harm to A's autotelic purpose in B joining their game, and neither of them can be under any obligation to proceed in joint play. To do so would be self-defeating: it would remove the point of playing at all. To my reading so far, the posts about this are either a claim that I. prevails, or an observation of II. However, it seems reaching too far to claim that I. will always prevail, and thus there must be cases where one accepts II. However, based on II., one can frame a positive principle -II'. Where A's autotelic purpose would be enhanced by B joining their game, A ought to prefer that B joins their game.That illuminates the possibility (for those whose intuitions lean toward I.) that A might not always be able to accurately judge whether B's involvement will harm or enhance their game, prior to play. Is the possibility of enhanced play worth the risk of finding out later that it doesn't work out? On that, one cannot set aside the imagination and ingenuity of players in course-correcting their play toward whatever works... and one can spot a mistaken assumption that play is a fixed and final product in some of the concerns raised.Due to the nature of play - what it is to play a game - A cannot always be committed to joint play with B, as that would be self-defeating. A's game play as such serves no ends other than A's experience of play. I put that this way in order to provoke doubt concerning one of the more longstanding assumptions about game play. Is it right that the autotelic nature of game play is always self-serving, as seems to be implied?</blockquote>

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