by Bruce Whitehill
An editorial published September 2006 in Knucklebones games magazine
I love games. But I have trouble with the language. “Game” is a nice word, but it has too many meanings. More than five years B.E. (before eBay), I used to walk around antique shows with a shirt that read, in the front, “The Big Game Hunter.” People would stop me and try to sell me antique rifles, spears, traps and large stuffed animals that were once alive. I would turn around and show the back of my shirt, “Got Any Antique Games?” After years of too much turning, I had a new shirt made with the “antique games” on the front, and a back that read, “The Big Game Hunter’s back.” It helped only a little. When you mention “game,” some people think only of deer meat.
The word “game” is also confused with “game” in the sports sense. There are a lot of differences between a sport and the pastime-in-a-box we play in the den (kitchens just aren’t what they used to be), but too many words are needed to describe these distinctions when you’re trying to define the game—not the sport—you’re talking about. And what about the collector who collects sport games? Are those games “game games”? I liked it better when the Victorians used the words “table games”—even though some are played on the floor and others in strange places.
I’m not sure if avid game players tired of the word “play,” as in “to play a game,” or whether they found the word too juvenile for their serious adult pursuits. In desperate need for another verb, they shortened “game playing” to “gaming,” as in, “Honey, I’m going gaming tonight.” Trouble is, there are official government bodies all over the country referred to as “gaming commissions,” whose bent is controlling the complete range of gambling pursuits and lotteries. I certainly don’t want my wholesome and dignified hobby to be confused with activities one number short of a Powerball. I’ll stick with “game playing,” thank you, until someone comes up with something better. I am, after all, a game player, and not a “gamer.”
Well, back to square one. Oh, did you know that expression might have been taken from a game? The phrase has been attributed to everything from board games such as Chutes & Ladders, where you could land on a space that sent you back to start, to a notation system used to follow a football game on radio. I don’t go with the first proposal, since that would have given us the phrase, “Back to Start” and not, “Back to Square One.” Another interesting origin is the word “mall,” as in one store after another in one long alley; it is said to have come from the French game of Pall Mall, where a ball was hit down a long alleyway. (Check out Samuel Pepys’ diary for April 2, 1661, where he refers to the Duke of York playing at Pelemele, spelled how “Pall Mall” is pronounced.) Well, it’s all in the game.
And what about “I’m game!” in reference to being ready and willing to try something? Is its origin the “game” in the game sense or the sport sense—or does it take us once again to bows and arrows and moose heads?
Never mind. Let’s discuss psychoanalysis. When I was growing up, role-playing was a facet of psychology and a serious tool in therapy. Now we have role-playing games—though the kinds of roles people are called upon to play certainly go beyond what I would imagine as real life, and not necessarily what I would want played in my living room. It’s interesting that play gatherings are called “sessions” just like the 55-minutes on the couch. In any case, the role-players have distinguished their art from the psychobabble stuff by coming up with the acronym “RPG”s, so I can now differentiate between people having fun and those having treatment. Another acronym is CCG—collectible card game. Magic the Gathering, was the pioneer of the CCG craze. What’s amazing is that some CEO, CFO or VIP didn’t come up with the idea sooner—a concept that allows manufacturers to sell more cards (expansions) to more players who need more might to win more games. For me, when the RPGs and the CCGs come out, I leave ASAP.
Speaking of words, it’s time that “meeple” became an official part of game language. Meeples are the small players’ tokens found in many games; it is a combination of the term “men,” commonly used for playing pieces, and the term “people,” which is less sexist. Meeple proponent David Bernazzani attributes the name to Alison Hansel, who was said to have invented the term to refer to “My People,” the playing pieces in Carcassonne that resemble tiny people. There is even a website devoted to the Meeples’ Choice Awards for the three most popular games of the year (from 1995 on) as voted on by members of Spielfrieks, the internet discussion games group: http://www.meepleschoice.org/credits.html.
Klaus-Jürgen Wrede’s popular Carcassonne, by the way, is German. In German (the language), “game” is “Spiel,” and “to play” is “spielen.” So “to play a game” is “ein Spiel spielen.” That would be like saying in English, to play a play, or to game a game. And in theater, actors in Germany “spielen,” or play, just as American actors play a role in a play. And what about the description of a big corporate competitive mucky-muck being considered “a major player”? Seems as though nearly everybody is playing at something.
Linguists will tell you that language defines our society and describes our surroundings. Is a sunset more beautiful if we have a word for it than if we don’t know what it is called? Can we appreciate a game or a meeple more if we are able to describe it?
Some of my best friends are puzzle doers rather than game players. They seem to be having fun partaking in their craft, but I always found it interesting that we “play” a game, while they “work” a puzzle. The sometimes puzzling language of games and of play leaves much fodder for the word sleuth. As Sherlock Holmes once said, “The game’s afoot!”
Enough of my musings for the present. Now it’s your turn.
