Author: Luca Morini   5th May 2016

 

Almost two years ago, halfway through my doctoral course, I found myself in Finland at the “Critical Evaluation of Game Studies Seminar,” where, above all the “big names” in the field of Game Studies who spoke there (among which were Aarseth, Deterding, Juul, and Mäyrä), one thing was indelibly imprinted in my memory: Canadian sociologist Bart Simon’s characterisation of Game Studies as a true, undeniable “bulwark of uselessness”. As a customary “tank” player in MMOs, always relishing the role of defending my teammates in our small, unnecessary virtual struggles, the image stuck strongly.

As I continued climbing toward the completion of my Ph.D. in Education and Communication, largely by playing and making games within communities of amateur game designers, I realized that this powerful image, “the bulwark of uselessness,” could be a conceptualisation relevant to all cultural endeavours in their conflicted relationship with utilitaristic economic forces, a conflict that is becoming especially relevant in times of economic crisis. While culture as a whole cannot be constructed or conceptualised on the mere criteria of efficiency and profit, nor in subordination to market imperatives, even public institutions devoted to education and cultural endeavors are being currently subjected to the push toward adopting more market oriented approaches and therefore abdicating the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. What I call “Bulwark of Uselessness” is therefore the diverse set of cultural spaces and activities that are not devoted to profit and production and that indeed can work to resist them. In the current historical-cultural moment, however, this Bulwark finds itself attacked in its very anthropological root, that of play.The “fall” of this bulwark – its full exclusion by public spaces, cultures, and discourse – would be nothing short of catastrophic, strongly curtailing the possibilities of human expression.

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