Last year I interviewed some players of Utagaruta, a Japanese poetry-based card game that plays like a cross between Snap and Sumo. When, after a long and relatively light-hearted chat, I asked what the game meant to them, several broke into tears.
It had changed their sense of self, they told me – of who they are and what they can achieve. ‘It’s a life,’ said one. ‘I think… yes, it is a life.’
When you start pondering the purpose of games, very soon (and quite unintentionally) you run into the question’s titanic big brother, simultaneously the most interesting and most boring question in all philosophy: What is the purpose of life? What is a life well-lived? What should we do with it?
After all, we can only really judge…
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Tabletop Gaming (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 82