The spirit of the law.

As I continued to reflect on the letter of the law/spirit of the law distinction that I talked about the other day, my thoughts slowly became a little more personal.

As an oldest sibling and follower of Jesus, I fall definitively into the spirit of the law camp.  When I play poker, I avoid looking at other peoples' hands, even if they're open in plain sight.  When I played Super Smash Bros: Melee in high school, I would purposely avoid using fighting tactics deemed "cheap" by my friends in favor of having a good fight. I do this because I apply the behavior I choose in life (follow the law of God) to my behavior in games.  I feel like, in some way, my integrity takes a hit if I behave in a way that is clearly against the intent of the rules. 

This seems to be some confusion on my part, though.  Maybe I'm just really bad at moving into the magic circle.  The contract that we adhere to as players of a game is completely different than my contract with God (though I still believe there should be clear boundaries regarding behavior for the Christian, even within the magic circle).  Perhaps a little bit of rebellion is exactly what I need.  Rebellion is too strong of a word.  Perhaps, in the world of the game, our job is to find new expressions of the game's goals within the constraints of the rules.

In that way, maybe games are a lot more similar to life.  There are rules, but our job as humans is to find creative ways of bending them toward a certain purpose.  In life, there are some immutable truths.  Gravity, for example.  We can't just fly anytime we want.  Within that constraint, though, we made airplanes!  If the designer's intent in creating the law of gravity was to prevent humans from flying, we have broken the spirit of the law but maintained the letter of the law.  So, too, in games, perhaps the designer of Mafia (if there was one...) wanted us to experiment with different behaviors.  There are few behaviors explicitly outlawed by the rules because we are meant to play.  Find out what works and doesn't work.

So maybe I need to be more of a letter of the law gamer.  Maybe I need to push the envelope of what's acceptable within a game system rather than just passively accepting my role as hero of the world or solver of puzzles.  I think it's ideas like this that caused Jane McGonigal to suggest that playing video games will make the world a better place.  She's hooked on the idea that, by entering a safe place to push boundaries, we will learn to push boundaries in real life. 

Maybe she's right.