Reading Response (2-18)

I thought that Eric Zimmerman’s article “Narrative, Interactivity, Play and Games” was one of the most helpful readings so far.  He did an awesome job defining all four and brought up some interesting points in the mean time.  One of my most favorite points was in his discussion of play when he wrote that “the designed structure can guide and engender play, but never completely script it in advance.  If the interaction is completely predetermined, there’s no room for play in the system”.  For some reason, this idea of allowing for play within a videogame is really interesting to me because there ultimately is a line that must be drawn between play and predestination (in the sense of a videogame).  When you stop and think about it, all of your options when playing a game have already been considered and determined.  You are not able to do something that is not compatible with the game, so you are forced to follow the rules that the designer has put in place, and when we do this we are interacting by “playing”.  That is really kind of crazy, especially when you get really deep and apply that same idea to real life.  If you belief that God has created (designed) the world and everything in it, and you are only capable of doing something that God has physically allowed for you to do, then is life predetermined?  If God had created everything and every option in life then God would know everything that we could possibly do and our only choice would be to “play” in life.  Well clearly, I got away from Zimmerman’s article, but overall I thought it was a great piece to read to really understand the ideas we have been circling so far in class. 

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