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Metacommunication and Play
In his important essay "A Theory of Play and Fantasy," Gregory Bateson defines the concept of metacommunication. For Bateson, play not only grants distinctive meanings to actions but also communicates an attitude toward those actions. This attitude is a type of communication about how the actions associated with play should be interpreted and understood. Bateson's formulation was inspired by a visit to the zoo: What I encountered at the zoo was a phenomenon well known to everybody: I saw two young monkeys playing, i.e., engaged in an interactive sequence of which the unit actions of signals were similar to but not the same as combat. It was evident, even to the human observer, that the sequence as a whole was not combat, and evident to the human observer that to the participant monkeys this was "not combat." Now, this phenomenon, play, could only occur if the participant organisms were capable of some degree of metacommunication, i.e., of exchanging signals which would carry the message "this is play."[7]
Bateson saw play as an important step in the evolution of communication because it was "the point at which the organism is able to recognize the sign as a signal, that is, to recognize that the other individual's and its own signals are only signals."[8] To play, in other words, is not just to follow the rules and rituals of play, but also to continually communicate the idea that the play-actions are just play and not something else. Two dogs are playing: one dog chases the other, catches up to it, and nips it on the neck. As an act of play and meaning, what is going on here? The playful nip connotes a bite: it means, Aha! I pursued you, caught up to you, and bit you! At the same time, the nip connotes the opposite: the nip also means, I didn't really bite you. I'm just playing. This double meaning, that the nip represents the bite but also exactly what the bite is not, is what Bateson means by metacommunication. Metacommunication not only occurs with animals, but in games that people play as well. In Spin the Bottle, the ability of players to recognize that a kiss within the frame of the game at once represents but also does not mean the same thing as a kiss in the real world is an instance of metacommunication. We might say that players in a game of Spin the Bottle exchange signals that carry the message "This is a kiss," but at the same time convey the message "This isn't a real kiss—it's just a game." This double consciousness is a product of the fact that the artificial game structure gives players license to kiss each other. Without the game, the kiss would probably not take place. The in-game kiss is a strange semiotic hybrid that could only emerge from the unique context of play. The kiss of Spin the Bottle has and does not have the meaning of a kiss in the real world. Like the nip and the bite, a Spin the Bottle kiss denotes a regular kiss (I kissed that cute boy!),even as it simultaneously denotes what the kiss is not (But it was only in a game.).
The concept of metacommunication is an absolutely critical idea that will greatly inform the following schemas, Games as Narrative Play and Games as the Play of Simulation. Play, as a form of metacommunication, reframes the events of the situation at hand, so that actions of "play" are related to, but are not the same as, other actions of "not play." Whenever we play, part of our play-activity involves the communication of the idea, "I am playing." This continual stream of communication between players, and between those playing and those not playing, helps sustain the magic circle. One of the functions of the magic circle is to actively demonstrate its own distinction from ordinary life. As Sutton-Smith notes, "Playfighting as an analogy to real fighting seems more like displaying the meaning of fighting than rehearsing for real combat. It is more about meaning than mauling."[9]
The exchange and recognition involved in arriving at the seemingly simple message "This is play" involves a range of interpretive acts. As in Wonderland, these interpretive acts connect "play" (events and actions within the magic circle) to "not play" (events and actions outside the magic circle). We need to take metacommunication into account when discussing the representational capacity of games, especially in the context of narrative, simulation, and immersion. The interpretative frame conditions how we "take" an event, or sign, as a communication. The point, in the end, is not what a play event means, but how we take its meanings. [7]Ibid. p. 179.[8]Ibid. p. 178.[9]Brian Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play (London: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 23.Our emphasis.
