XII: Worlds of plays & games

 

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Plays and games create model worlds

Forming of personality

Toys

Virtual worlds

 

 

 

Plays and games create model worlds

 

Most toys and games create model worlds. Doll play, puppet theater and doll’s houses have been, since ancient times, pieces of the world which show and teach social behavior (Fraser, 1966). Various specific model worlds are opened by the colored palettes of board and card games, games of dice and chance, games of skill as well as of sports.

 

Due to the heuristic as well as exemplary character of the 3D-model as learning object and teaching aid, it opens a "realm of possibilities" [Kaulbach, 1965, 475f.] either of sight, cognition and imagination, or of shaping, mending and perfecting. In this perspective we can understand toys - like the activities tinkering, modelling and playing - not only as a medium through which to gain knowledge, but also as a means for testing out possibilities in small scale, manageable conditions.

 

Forming of personality

 

Under "child's play" already Johann Georg Krünitz (1786, 847-867, esp. 854ff) describes the fact, that the use of models of buildings and of useful machines can enjoy and inform at the same time („sowohl vergnügt als auch unterrichtet“).

 

It is known of Goethe that in 1786 on his visit in Venice he remembered a gondola model owned by his father and with which he sometimes was allowed to play (described in the "Italian trip", 1816). At this time children played already with apparatus for electrizing (Albrecht Timm, 1964, 91).

 

Personality is formed between the poles of pure imitation and free draft, reality and illusion. Man can experience free space as well as limits, he can understand structures, relations and dimensions, causes and effects. Manual skill and artistic sense, formative and social proficiency evolve between looking and planning, deceitful appearance and calculated goaldirectedness (see also Friedrich Schiller: „On the Aesthetic Education of Man“, 1795, esp. 12. letter ff.).

 

Toys

 

Toys are well-known since earliest time of Antiquity. Nice toys are found in Mohenjo Daro (2500 BC); wonderful baby-houses in the tomb of Mehet-Rê (2000 BC).

 

Because the medieval education system was rough and undemanding, toys were the same way.

Christmas cribs are mentioned in sermons around 400 AD, rag dolls (simulacra de pannis) in the 8th century, mechanically moved dolls and birds around the year 1000. In the “Hortus Deliciarum" (1160) we see two children playing a tournament with knight figures, moving them like jumping Jacks.

 

Since these times toys have been offered on fairs by flying dealers (Antonia Fraser 1966). Toys have survived since 1250: female figures and fable animals from tone, the tin figure of a knight in armament on his horse, a water jug in the shape of a horse.

From 1283 dates a accurate description of chess, games of dice and board games.

Since 1300 we have drawings of hobbyhorse, wind wheel, hand doll play (1338), kite (1405) and paper toys.

 

The first professional peg-doll carver („Dockenmacher“) is mentioned in Nuremberg in 1413. The invention of the peep box is attributed to Leon Battista Alberti (1437). First reports of a baby-house (doll’s house) date from 1558, of silver household appliances for children from 1571. A mechanical Christmas crib with music was created 1589 by the Augsburg constructor of automata Hans Schlottheim.

 

Virtual worlds

 

Beginning with the early computers in 1946, there were attempts to program popular plays such as draughts or tic-tac-toe (in 1952 on an EDSAC computer). In 1958 physicist William A. Higinbotham developed “tennis for two”, an arrangement of an analog computer and an oscillograph with wich two persons could play a simplified kind of tennis.

The first coin-operated “arcade” video games as well as the first commercially sold “video game” were promoted 1971.

Magnavox launched “Table Tennis” in 1972. Some months later Atari launched “Pong” and in 1976 “Night Driver”. “Pac-Man” was released by Namco in 1980, “Mario” by Nintendo 1981, the latter 1983 on computer. The so-called “first-person shooter” games started in 1973/74, the first on an Atari-computer was in 1979 “Star Raiders”.

 

Creation of “virtual worlds” in role-playing games by means of computer started around 1974/75 with “Adventure” and “Dungeon” as well as “Dungeons & Dragons” (dnd), the firsts of a kind of plays called MUD (e. g. Multi-User Dimension) and soon MUSH (e. g. Multi-User Shared Habitiat) for social intercourse and role-playing games on mainframes and computer networks, today internet (MMORGP: Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game).

The vision is “ubiquitous computing” and the “symbiotic net”, “hypermedia” and “cyberspace”.

 

Biblography

model: special topics – Spielzeug