In two of my previous posts (Emotions as a play ground and Play is part of any game), I tried to show how work always leaves room for play.

As Gee's Probing Principle suggests (2003), play and activity in general are also the processes through which learning occurs. Since the beginning of this course, I've always felt that happiness and pleasure played a part in this too as would suggest the title "Games, Life and the Pursuit of Happiness" (Yee 2004). In order to be happy, we would need to be active, that is, to work/play (which is the same anyway) and therefore, to learn. Let's now turn to a couple of quotes that seem to support that view:

"I remember feeling learning like seeing a huge mountain from its foothills when I was little (few years ago :P). Too chaotic to climb, with so many paths to begin from and follow later,but also exciting like having no choise but to start climbing and exploring immediately. It doesn't matter whether we like the path and decide to follow it without seeing the crown it leads to. Or whether we already see the crown we want to reach and decide which path to follow whether it is pleasant to climb, hard or even dangerous. Learning, like climbing, always provides surprises. Like a green valley full of flowers under the sun appearing in front of you right on time when you think you have taken the wrong path, or being exhausted from climbing, assuming that the climb didn't finally worth so much effort. The trip to the crown is often difficult, but it depents on how well prepared the climbing learner is and how proof against the weather the boots are. Reaching the crown is the best relief that a learner can get. Standing there with hands raised, seeing the difficult paths and gaps from top, smaller and insignificant that get quickly deleted from his head. Climbing never ends for a learner. There will always be crowns to reach the one after the other, each one with different kind of beauty, effort and glory."

Most of us found Flery's metaphor to be the best illustration of learning during the Understanding Learning in the Online Environment module. As I previously explained, MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft (2009) are interesting in that they make this metaphor explicit. However, given the importance of challenge in making a game successful (Malone 1980) and for which the mountain may again be the perfect metaphor, that idea may be extended to all kinds of games. So here we are with a likely link between learning and work/play. Let's now look at how this matches pleasure and happiness:

"Man did not invent play. But it is play and only play that makes man complete"

(Eigen and Winkler in Kane 2005, p. 57)

The idea of 'completeness' here seems to relate somehow to 'happiness'.

"The opposite of play isn't work, it's depression"

(Sutton-Smith in Kane 2005, p. 44)

"I think happiness is not to reach the top of the mountain but to climb it"

(Arthus-Bertrand 2009)

Picture: in the view linking playing/working and learning, we initially focus on the goal but we then realise that it's not reaching it that makes us happy but rather engaging in the climb to it. In short, the role of the goal is to motivate us.

Therefore, the mountain metaphor seems to represent a solid link between:

• learning
• activity, that is playing/learning (which seems to strengthen the link which I previously tried to show)
• pleasure and happiness

References:

Arthus-Bertrand, Y. (2009). Interview for his 6 Milliards D'Autres exhibition. In Tele Star, 1-8 May 2009 issue.

Gee, J. P. (2003). Situated meaning and learning. In What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. New York, Palgrave Macmillan: 73-112.

Kane, P. (2005). A general theory of play. The play ethic : a manifesto for a different way of living . London, Pan.
Introduction; Towards the Play Ethic

Malone, T.W. (1980). What makes things fun to learn? heuristics for designing instructional
computer games. Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGSMALL symposium and the first SIGPC
symposium on Small systems table of contents. Palo Alto, California, United States.

World of Warcraft (2009). MMORPG game. Blizzard Entertainment.

Yee, N. (2004). Games, Life and the Pursuit of Happiness. Daedalus Project.
Retrieved: 8 May 2009. http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000776.php