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It’s all in the game though, right?

I’m finding Games: Agency as Art by C. Thi Nguyen a wonderfully thought provoking exploration of the role of agency in games. He argues they involve a form of ‘temporary agency’ in which we adopt time-limited ends which we pursue. What makes this fascinating is the immersion it necessitates:

That end must phenomenally engulf us, if we are to be gripped by the game and if its thrills and threats are to have emotional punch for us. We must pursue the goals of the game wholeheartedly, putting our larger purpose out of mind. In other words, we must submerge ourselves in a temporary agency.

Loc 247

This made me think of Bourdieu’s concept of the field and the ultimately contingent nature of what is valued within it. If we detach ourselves too far from the ‘rules of the game’ then it leaves us with an existential predicament; I’ve seen more than one academic I’ve been close to have either cataclysmic or slow burn career crises sparked in part by asking “why am I pursuing this?”. The values within the field cannot provide an answer to that question and the instinct to pursue one in those terms will by its nature be disorientating. But similarly to fully affirm the values of the field stores up the crisis for later in life, setting you up to wonder “what the hell was that for?” when examining what now seems to be a live lived in pursuit of things which lack inherent worth.

What Nguyen’s account points to is the possibility of treating ‘the game’ as a temporary immersion in which we find pleasures by suspending judgement, ensuring we take the time to stop playing; not just to exchange what we accumulated within the field for much laster and substantial goods if we can find them, but simply to find other goods more broadly. I suppose this is where critical realism parts company from Bourdieu’s sociology because we would argue there are contexts beyond the field, whereas I think most (all?) Bourdieusian would see the idea of action without a field as incoherent. But there are some interesting thoughts here to explore.

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