Treacherous Play

Over on ihobo today, a new blog letter addressing Miguel Sicart and Douglas Wilson. Here's an extract:

Treachery has long been an important aspect of competitive boardgames, but in videogames there seems to be far less betrayal between players. When treacherous play occurs in digital games, it is more likely to occur between the game designer – who presumably enjoys imagining the schadenfreude they would experience if they could watch their future player! – and the eventual ‘victim’. Except, as the two of you stress in your wonderful paper Now It’s Personal: On Abusive Game Design, certain players will actively enjoy and seek out the challenge this represents. There seems to be something of a paradox here, since not every way of increasing challenge will be welcomed even by those players who happily endure betrayal of this kind. Is it solely the pursuit of victory that makes treacherous play entertaining, or is there a strange pleasure to be taken from the act of being betrayed? My sense is that this goes beyond the desire to pursue conventional challenges and into the social dimensions of play.

You can read the entirety of Treacherous Play over at ihobo.com.