The Groove Issue 43 - Why Playing Games Boosts Your Creativity
Welcome to the 43rd issue of The Groove.
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WHY PLAYING GAMES BOOSTS YOUR CREATIVITY
Anything can be turned into fun and games if you let it.
I’ve always relentlessly advocated for keeping your imagination alive, the same way it was when you were a child and avoiding the trap of self-censorship if you want to become more creative. But the more we grow up and the more we become accustomed to the seriousness of being an adult, the more we let go of the idea of fun and games and how these positively impact our work.
How Marcel Duchamp Played Chess to Develop His Ideas
Marcel Duchamp in his apartment in Paris in 1966, behind a chessboard with pieces designed by fellow artist Max Ernst. Photo by Mark Kauffman
The father of conceptual art and a brilliant prankster and provocateur, Marcel Duchamp, had a true obsession with chess. We owe him the fact that he declared a urinal a piece of art and thanks to his unconventional thinking and out-of-the-box ideas, his legacy opened the door for thousands of others including Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst.
For more than 20 years of his life, Duchamp studied the game, bought books on the subject, played chess daily and even competed in championships worldwide.
Chess was central to Duchamp’s life - to the point that he even directed a real-life chess game which was captured by Philippe Halsman in Connecticut in 1956.
He had such respect for what the game could do for his creative abilities that he famously once said: “From my close contact with artists and chess players I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”
And when asked about what chess had added to his life in a series of interviews with art writer and journalist Calvin Tompkins in the early 1960s, he added that “chess was so imaginative that it doesn’t even look logical… The beautiful combinations that people invent in chess only become logical after they are explained”.
While any board game will help you increase your creativity, chess has the particularity that it develops your perspective; improves your memory and deepens your focus among many other benefits.
The Fascinating Story of a Legendary Video Game Designer
Mario, 2020 by French artist Sank. Aerosol paint and wood.
Shigeru Miyamoto grew up in rural Japan in the 1960s in a family of modest means. As he didn’t have many resources in the mountains of Kyoto, he spent time in nature creating his own puppets and toys. He loved to play inside rocky formations and fashioned worlds and stories in his mind.
Miyamoto went to design school and was hired by Nintendo as an intern in 1977. He never stopped having a sense of playfulness and looked back at his childhood to see what memories triggered ideas for his work.
His first hit was Donkey Kong, launched as an arcade game in 1981. In this game, he added a character called Mario, which Miyamoto became endeared with and later created a brother for him, releasing their own game called Mario Bros in 1985 and later upgrading it to Super Mario Bros.
The many hours he spent playing in nature and inside caverns served as inspiration years later when he would go back to his adventures as a child to design both the mushroom world where Mario and Luigi live and The Legend of Zelda, a seminal video game that is still so hot and profitable that even when its first version was released 35 years ago in 1986, one of my kids who is 11 still loves to play today.
In a 2020 interview, Miyamoti told the New Yorker that: “To achieve that harmony [in his games], you need a dash of truth and a big lie to go along with it. That’s the kind of game I try to create. You take things you’ve experienced in your life, sensations or feelings, and then try to conjure them in the game world.”
If you are in any business that requires storytelling (and almost anything from branding to advertising does) think about Miyamoti’s advice.
The Scientific Reason Why Playing Games Helps Your Creativity
Even science has proven that our brains do better when we play. The late researcher Jaak Panksepp of Washington State University noted that “play activates the whole neocortex … and we found that of the 1,200 genes that were measured, about one-third of them were significantly changed just by having a half-hour of play.”
He also mentioned how physical play in pair or groups allows for both a moment of relaxation where other ideas can come in and the activation of different regions in the brain. That’s one of the reasons why Google encourages its employees to play.
In a recent message from Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, he explains the new hybrid model where employees will be encouraged to choose whether they want to work from the office full time or with a few days working remotely. In addition, Pichai stated that: “For more than 20 years, our employees have been coming to the office to solve interesting problems — in a café, around a whiteboard, or during a pickup game of beach volleyball or cricket.”
When we are kids, we express ourselves in any way we want and connect with others and with the world around us when we play.
Across industries, those who keep themselves moderately engaged in any form of play, whether they are board games, physical games or even video games, stay relevant and creative while exercising mental faculties not necessarily replicated in any other activity.
It only takes half an hour a day, and the benefits are formidable.
Thank you for reading this far. Looking forward to hearing from you anytime.
There are no affiliate links in this email. Everything that I recommend is done freely.
THE EXTRA GROOVE
Read:
Duchamp's Pipe: A Chess Romance--Marcel Duchamp and George Koltanowski by Celia Rabinovitch
Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul by Stuart Brown
Watch:
A Game of Chess by Marcel Duchamp