How Board Games Explain Everything — Part 4: Utopia, Sex, Art

Doesn't Thomas More's Utopia look at lot like a game of Settlers of Catan?

Imagine a utopia in which all human needs are met and all interpersonal problems solved. In such a world, what would we do to pass the time? Three things immediately spring to mind: 1) Sex 2) Art 3) Play

Three things immediately spring to mind: 1) Sex 2) Art 3) Play

In his 1978 book The Grasshopper Bernard Suits addresses this very question, but he dismisses my first two answers. He claims that “without the repression, guilt, naughtiness, domination and submission, liberation, rebellion, sadism and masochism, romance, and theology” that are “part and parcel” of sex, the act of sex would be reduced to a mere “pleasant sensation in the loins” and would lose its appeal. Similarly, he argues that art is an expression of “human aspirations and frustrations, hopes and fears, triumphs and tragedies, […] flaws of character, moral dillemmas, joy and sorrow,” none of which would exist in Utopia. The only art that would be possible, he argues, would be a hypothetical art of “pure forms,” lacking any humanity, the creation of which could easily be turned over to machines. So that only leaves play:

[In Utopia] there is nothing to strive for precisely because everything has been achieved. What we need, therefore, is some activity in which what is instrumental is inseparably combined with what is intrinsically valuable, and where the activity is not itself an instrument for some further end. Games meet this requirement perfectly. For in games we must have obstacles which we can strive to overcome just so that we can possess the activity as a whole, namely, playing the game. Game playing makes it possible to retain enough effort in Utopia to make life worth living.

Suits makes the excellent point that we like to solve problems, we like to struggle and strive and overcome, we like to have the experience of resolving tension and uncertainty, and if life doesn’t provide us with any problems or struggles or tension or uncertainty we have to create these things. Games are our primary mechanism for doing this. Gambling games are probably the most straightforward example of the creation of tension in order to resolve it. The thrill at winning is not the thrill of suddenly having more money (although that’s nice) it is the thrill of resolving all that uncertainty and tension and stress that the wager created.

Is this a diagram of a short story or of sex?

I believe that Suits is too quick to dismiss both sex and art. In music, for instance, there is an entire technical vocabulary that deals with creating and resolving tension. The reason the big tonic chords at the end of a symphony are so satisfying is because they resolve all the tensions that have been built up over the course of the piece. Out of context they would sound totally boring and unremarkable. Similarly, every high school student knows that a good short story has rising action, a climax and resolution.

Some also know that sex has these same elements. At the beginning of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Theseus tells Hippolyta of his mounting frustration as he waits for their wedding night. Hippolyta tells him that the time will pass quickly and compares his desire to the moon, which, in turn, “[…] like a silver bow / [New] bent in heaven, shall behold the night / Of our solemnities.” The image of a drawn-back bow is a beautiful image to illustrate sexual desire, but it also illustrates how that initial build of tension is necessary for ultimate satisfaction. If that tension did not exist, the arrow would remain in the slack (or flaccid) bow, but the more tension is created in the bow, the more energy the arrow will have when it is finally released, and the further it will fly beyond the bow. The resolution of tension does not just return us to a state of contentment; it overshoots into pleasure. All Theseus’s frustration will make his wedding night so much better.

The resolution of tension does not just return us to a state of contentment; it overshoots into pleasure.

A sexy moon, taut with unresolved tension

Much of our technology is designed to get rid of problems, to get rid of tension, risk, uncertainty and frustration, to make it so we don’t have to struggle and strive any more, but in so doing it also deprives us of a tremendous source of satisfaction—the catharsis that results from the resolution of all those tensions—and so a parallel branch of technology has developed to artificially create and resolve those tensions: games. I’m currently playing Eve Online, and am frustrated by the slow progress I am making. The tasks I have to do to improve my character in the game (mining asteroids, couriering goods between space stations, manufacturing items) feel a lot like work; but really I should be glad that I’m frustrated—that frustration is like potential energy, ready to be transformed into satisfaction down the road, when I can finally afford that battlecruiser.

I would like to see a technical vocabulary develop to describe this process of creating and resolving tension within games, of the sort that exists within music theory. Maybe such a vocabulary already exists among game designers, who must think about these issues all the time. Maybe one day there will be a unified theory of things-that-create-and-resolve-tension, that will encompass games, music, stories and sex. Maybe that theory will itself fall under the umbrella of things-that-are-worth-doing-in-utopia studies.