Are Gladiators Playing a Game?

[robinturner]

Today some students in my games course asked me if I could provide an alternative question for their current assignment. this puzzled me, as I thought "Analyse reactions to games in terms of moral panic" and "Can actions in a virtual world have moral significance?" were both easy and fun, but I promised to try and think of one. While they were studying a fiendishly difficult text about the infamous lambdaMOO cyber-rape, full of words like "illocutionary" and "perlocutionary", I pondered and came up with the question: Are gladiators playing a game?

This popped into my head as a result of a comment I made about seriousness not precluding something being a game: "Think of the last scene in Gladiator where Maximus' soul is wafting away after he's been killed by Commodus. He probably wasn't thinking 'Oh well, it's only a game.'" Gladiatorial combat was in some sense a game; in fact, we speak of "gladiatorial games". But were the gladiators themselves playing a game?

Comments

[philipispdr.livejournal.com]

I say no, because they had no choice about entering the 'game' or not. Not everything that one chooses to do is a game, but I think that all games must be entered into with free will. I've never studied gladiators in any great depth, but I have the impression that the majority if not all were forced to be gladiators as slaves?

Voluntariness

[solri.livejournal.com]

Voluntariness is counted as a criterion for game-playing by a number of theorists; e.g. Wolfgang Kramer, in an article for The Games Journal which we read in class, states confidently: "Whoever plays a game, does it from his freedom of choice. He is not forced or coerced by anyone to play. Playing games is not work, not commitment, nothing you have to do. Therefore, we can say that playing games means being free." (http://www.thegamesjournal.com/articles/WhatIsaGame.shtml)

However, while voluntariness is typical of games, I'm not sure if it is an essential characteristic. What about a professional footballer who plays a match even if he doesn't feel like playing that day? We could argue that in a sense he isn't "playing football" but "working at football". This seems a little odd, but I suppose it's something a commentator might say on noticing his rather mechanical performance: "Ronaldo isn't playing football today, he's just doing his job."

This distinction would also open the possibility that some gladiators - and not only the tiny minority who became gladiators from choice - might actually be "playing the game". Maximus in the film isn't, because he is treating the games simply as a "technical activity" performed in order to attain a goal - killing Commodus - in the most efficient way (see Bernard Suits' "What is a Game?" (http://www.stsintl.com/articles/whatisagame.html)). But it would be possible for some gladiators to have what Suits calls a "lusory attitude". We can imagine another gladiator who although being forced into the games as a slave, actually finds that he loves them. Proximo (Oliver Reed's character in the film) is a bit like this. Such a person may well have a lusory attitude; for example, he may cheat in order to stay alive (as Commodus does), but he would only feel happy if he won fairly, and so we could say that he really was playing a game.

Re: Voluntariness

[philipispdr.livejournal.com]

I obviously can't say I've read any theory of games, but I think there's a clear distinction between a job that one enjoys, which may be in an activity that others consider to be a game (sports such as chess and football are obvious, possibly something like political debate could also be loosely lumped in), and games that are entered into freely without any external coercion or profit. Gambling occurs as a tricksy activity which has an external profit, but I suspect it comes down to the individual gambler's motivations.

Essentially, I think that a workaday performance from a footballer shows precisely that they are not playing a game: it's an indication that they're in the lucky position of enjoying their job most of the time, so the occasions where it is clear that it isn't a game - that they actually just plain have to be there - show up. Proximo's character did grow to love the games - or the adulation of the crowds, at least - but I don't think that your lusory gladiator's aversion to cheating can be explained entirely in terms of playing a game or not. In business and in sport, the concept of fair play or 'sporting behaviour' exist, and while there are some that treat cheating as part of the game (Nick Leeson / Cristiano Ronaldo) there are others to whom remaining unblanched in character is as important in sport as in business.

All of which is to say - I still see freedom of choice as essential to defining an activity as a game, agreeing with Kramer, though there are clearly some grey areas where game playing and gainful or coerced employment intersect more readily than others.

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

I think the best ones did.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Maybe. If you're such a good gladiator that you can dispatch an opponent in a trice, then you might well start playing with them. Part of Bernard Suits' notion of games is "selection of inefficient means" or "limitation of means". (For example, the most efficient way to get a ball into a hole is not to stand a long way away and hit it with a golf club.) If you can achieve your end (in this case killing the other guy) easily, then you could make it into a game by making arbitrary victory conditions: "Let's see if I can kill him in that spot right in front of the emperor," "I wonder if I can dispatch him with that flashy trident move that Gluteus uses," and so forth. In that case, you would definitely be playing a game.

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

Also I think psychologically they would have to approach it as a game or they wouldn't survive--teh weight and severity of what gladiatorial games is lives right along that borderline of what a healthy, normal psyche can deal with--so they're either playing a game in their own minds (at the very least in the heat of battle) or they're just psychotic (in which case its a game, too, b/c they've lost touch with reality as it is).

[solri.livejournal.com]

A good point. Coincidentally, I've just been reading a paper proposal from one of my students which uses Life is Beautiful to exemplify the "life is a game" attitude.

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

You could also refer to the Queen song - Play the Game (although that more specifically addresses love than the broader subject of life). Its a really common and recurrent theme in Anglo-american culture, but I also see it come up in a lot of Asian (specifically Japanese) contexts, and you would probably know more about it than I would but I've also witnessed that attitude in Middle Eastern societies. I think its a great coping mechanism for people, who can tend to become overwhelmed the the greatness of their universes and the burden of mortality--living life like a game is a great shot of Courage.

[solri.livejournal.com]

I don't remember "Play the Game" - the only song on that album I'm familiar with is "Another One Bites the Dust" (which I personally do not think was a ripoff of Chic's "Good Times" - if you listen to the bass lines, the only thing they have in common is the initial DUM DUM DUM ... duDUM' which hardly constitutes plagiarism). It could be good for some light relief in class - I used Sting's "Shape of my Heart" like that.

[sjcarpediem.livejournal.com]

You're not familiar with "Play the Game"? Travesty! I really think you should look it up and give it a listen--I'm sure you know it but just don't know you know it.

Sting is good, and possibly a little easier for language learners to understand...

re

[(Anonymous)]

"Can actions in a virtual world have moral significance?"

I never ever gave this much serious thought until a friend put this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31MVOE2ak5w) up on his blog. You may have heard of the incident. A group of players in a large online RPG game crashed a 'memorial' - for a person who had apparently died in real life - and killed all the players present.

It was a pretty rotten thing to do, but at the same time it could be argued that the offenders were playing well within the rules of the game's environment (I believe they were banned nonetheless). It poses an interesting question of to what extent the morality of the real world has jurisdiction in a fictional gaming environment. Can't say I've come to a firm conclusion about it so far.

I agree with the running opinion that a game must be voluntary. The 'game' in Running Man is only really a game from the perspective of the pursuers; it's more a matter of straight forward survival for the pursued.

Nice site btw. When I googled "Stoicurean" I was rather surprised to only get two hits!

Incitatus

Re: re

[solri.livejournal.com]

The location of the other stoicurean is rather worrying!