Playing in the Toy Box

Disney’s “Infinity” game embodies many of the concepts that define “play” as discussed in class. There is agency and openness, fun and pleasure, learning (especially about role assignments), and intertextuality. These elements of play help extend reality, react to existing reality, and to focus on process rather than product.

            Not only are there choices as a character in the game, but also as a player of the game. Benjamin pointed out how we chose not to watch the tutorial as a class. Because of the choices we made, we were focused more on the process of learning how to play than making things within the game. After most of the class had left, I decided to go back and learn how to play because I figured I could have more fun if I knew what all the possibilities were. We learned that we could build, race, treasures, and fight others.  Prior to that, my classmates had only figured out how to build and destroy. I enjoyed myself more because I had other things to do. It was the same with “Clue” the board game that we played earlier in class. The group I played with made an executive decision not to read the rules to incorporate new possibilities of the game. We could not exercise full agency in the game because we did not learn all the rules to work within that scene of constraint. Another thing to note about “Infinity” is that the game itself stated, “Be creative!” The tutorial encouraged to not just copy the examples of building cities given, but to make something new.  They can react to the reality of the existing game, and make it their own. Children’s media helps foster what is thought to be innate in children (imagination and creativity). However, because adults make it, I believe adult ideas of creative processes can be projected onto the child through the game and, in a way, warps the agency of the player.

            We learned about how to play the game, but within the game, your characters learn about how to do adult-like activities. Learning about role assignments and responsibilities occurs. In class we talked about how when children play “make believe” they take on characteristics of adults like playing doctor or school or house.  In “Infinity” you learn how to be a builder and an interior designer, a racer, and a fighter, most of these roles being more characteristic to adult work. It makes adulthood appealing by portraying these responsibilities as a game, but it also helps children learn other skills like hand eye coordination with racing and aesthetic design skills with building forests and buildings.

Intertextuality exists within “Infinity” just as it does in the examples we watched from “The Lego Movie” and “Rango.” Disney characters from different movies play together and within each other’s set designs. It extends reality for the children and could potentially help them develop cognitive skills of thinking about possibilities (something I learned in Adolescent development that does not actually happen until later).

Disney’s  video game “Infinity” acts as a playground for kids to learn about agency, creativity, and pop culture. Children are allowed to not be satisfied with the existing stories  and settings of characters by developing skills and places in and with which the characters reside.