Rex Martin: “Cardboard Warriors”

In the ongoing investigation of how games communicate, I ran across Rex Martin’s dissertation. Wowsers. That guy is brilliant.

Sure enough, anyone can read a massive selection of books and spit it back out on paper. But few write with the eloquence that Martin does. Google tells me he teaches at Bowie State University and is “currently reworking his dissertation for publication.” Sweet.

So what’s the fuss? Well, in addition to the more contemporary ideas by Bogost, Martin has done a lot of the groundwork on the ways in which games communicate ideas. His thesis offers a great overview of the various theories that have sought to explain play and leisure. There are some wonderfully evocative snippets in chapter 2, for instance:

“play is the testing ground for new understandings” [p.46]

Surely you didn’t think that Will Wright was the first one to ‘simulate’ some socio-cultural dynamic in the context of a game? To Martin, wargames are “communicative vehicles” that allow epistemic access to historic events beyond spatial and temporal boundaries.

He drives this home by first listing the various “early theories of play.” As the general ideas towards play move from catharsis to education, from arousal seeking to reversal theory (yeah, go look it up yodelf), he guides the conversation into a choice quote:

“[games] provide opportunities for people to express important or significant ideas which help them to understand, encompass, make sense of, and internalize their own culture.”

Awesomeness. This type of stuff warrants a real-life follow-up. Although his focus is on subcultures and, more importantly, on wargaming as a way to understand historic events, this writing paves the way for my own ideas (just wait). For now, focus on how he connects game play, culture, and reality. And watch for his book.

[I’ll refrain from quoting him extensively here, but I’ll add more as I work my way through his writing.]