I had a literal shower thought today about how many games, whether sport or video game or board game or puzzle, are time-based, and I wondered if that has always been the case or if time-based games have proliferated under capitalism.
The reason I think about this is I enjoy doing the NYT crossword, but I don’t understand why there needs to be a prominent timer. Why does a puzzle need to be timed? It only adds stress to something meant to be fun, and makes leisure feel like work.
There are more connections as I think about it. Role-playing games are an obvious one. Players begin their journey as isolated individuals, true Robinsonades who must forge a life on their own, standing apart from the NPC society created by the developers. The NPCs and world resources serve only as a means for player advancement. And of course, online highscores bring efficiency to the fore. It is not sufficient to advance. You must advance faster than everyone else, or be left behind. RPGs frequently involve player-to-player market economies for another layer of competition.
Were games historically this focused on time, efficiency, and competition? If so, was it to a similar degree as today?
I am not a historian but I remember reading that the ancient Olympic Games, while still being competitive, were also religious and artistic in nature, not purely athletic. The competitive aspect was because of the rise of neighboring Greek city-states which had to compete for resources, and the Olympics served as a peaceful way to blow off resultant steam. So while this is a different kind of competition from capitalist competition in the market, it’s clear that political-economic situation impacts games and how people view their leisure.
I’ll do some research on it this weekend. It’s just been in the back of my head and thought I’d share.
I won’t lie. I was hoping this would be Marxist Game Theory rather than just “What does Marx think of puzzles/sportsball?”
I think it does say something that games that don’t fit neatly in a time window - like Cricket or Heavyweight Boxing - haven’t proliferated under Capitalism. Even baseball has struggled, and you can see some concessions in this historically traditionalist sport in the introduction of the pitch clock.
As to board games… idk. I think there’s definitely an aspect to tournament play that encourages adding timers to games. Speed chess is as much about getting through a queue of prospective players as it is about the money. One could argue that the very concept of daily and hourly time is joined at the hip to capitalism, but I think there’s a certain prioritization of speed-of-thought that goes beyond that. Its just another means of evaluating a competition.