 If you allow yourself to become perplexed by the simplest of things, life itself becomes a mystery. Somehow, through some biochemical process, we got life from non-life, sentient agents from molecules swirling in a pool. Of course, life has now become smart enough to question its own origin, and hence the impetus for an essay like this. Erwin Schrodinger posed this question in his book What is Life, which was a precursor to many of the discoveries we have made about ourselves. We are self-replicating thermodynamic vehicles that can exercise agency in our own self-replication. Genetics, embryology, the double helix, we are defining our own mechanics. However, is this all that we are, and how could this complexity possibly come to be? Here's a detour, what if games can help elucidate some of these questions, not in any technical biochemical sense, but in a more aesthetic capacity? Game of Life by John Conway reveals how simple rules can generate self-replicating patterns of surprising complexity, and the Mandelbrot set yields infinite fractal patterns by a way of a single equation. In the same way, games are built out of simple rules, but they generate what many people refer to as emergent phenomena. What if in the same way the play of chess emerges from the rules we construct, we emerge from the rules the universe constructs? This is the supposition of Stuart Kaufman in his book At Home in the Universe. He states, most of the beautiful order seen in ontogeny is spontaneous, a natural expression of the stunning self-organization that abounds in nature. Under this view, life is not random or a byproduct of chance evolutionary encounters. We are inevitable. I am not here to discuss RNA, DNA, or abiogenesis, nor to suggest that I think Kaufman is right in his observations, just to present this fascinating parallel between our understanding of play and games and the nature of life and the universe itself. But perhaps our conception of life itself is limited, narrow, anthropocentric. In his book The Web of Life, Fritjof Kapra asks us to broaden our understanding of life. It is not located in the essence of any individual, but across all of life. This is an invitation to see things in ecological terms, in an integrated way. Kapra explains, deep ecological awareness recognizes the fundamental interdependence of all phenomena, and that we are all embedded in the cyclical process of nature. In the game Everything, we are asked to perceive the universe in such a way as a web of connected parts whose essence is interchangeable. We can move from the microscopic to the macroscopic, propelling ourselves through various scales and resolutions. The aim of the game was to systemize the monist philosophy of Alan Watts, who narrates this cosmic adventure with his characteristically soothing tone. To see life as a process and not sustained by our own ego. But you see in all this what underlies, is the illusion that I am going on. However, an integrated outlook of the world is not rooted in the mystical incantations of some new age tradition, it is embedded in real science. It is a tradition of emergent and complexity sciences, from dynamical systems theory to complexity theory to network dynamics. The trace of history is too broad, but it has roots in von Bertalanffy's systems theory and Norbert Wiener's observations about cybernetics. A proper understanding of life requires these frameworks of systemic analysis, but so too does the design and understanding of games. In his book Advanced Game Design, a systems approach, Michael Sellers attaches games to this lineage of systems theory. Games have parts that create holes that are more than these parts, just like life is, just as we are. However, games are also cybernetic systems, feedback loops that require us to participate in sustaining its structure. Ilya Prigoshin introduced the idea of a dissipative structure, of certain objects like whirlpools are created when a set of parts interact in a specific way. As soon as those parts dissipate though, so too does this dissipative structure. As it is with objects in nature, so too do games exemplify these dynamics. Sellers classifies games under engines, economies and ecosystems, each of which require our participation. Engines exist in various geysers, whether boosting systems in racing games, or the rage mode in an action game. It's when inputs are acquired, then are either used or stored for a later time, creating risk reward dynamics in play. Economies are more complex versions of this, where acquired resources can be traded, bartered and transacted. Ecosystems are self-sustaining though. They are webs of complexity like we see in the world of EVE Online, with market phenomena, trade disputes and networks of organization. Some might say, life of a kind. Any game can be viewed through a systems lens of inputs, outputs and converters, and this perspective is employed by some in the design of games. Will Wright's design philosophy centers around this idea of games as dynamic systemic devices, and this shows in his games influences. SimCity is about building economies, networks of related resources, and was inspired by the work of Jay Forrester in Urban Dynamics. The Sims took the work of Christopher Alexander in a pattern language, a book that applies systems thinking to architecture, to craft living spaces and human dynamics. But of course, the game of his that illustrates the parallels between games, system and life the best, is Spore. Spore is a game where you play evolution itself, where you are invited to see the continuity between microscopic amoeba and intergalactic civilizations. The game was inspired by Wright's reading of books like Powers of Ten, which tries to illustrate the way things scale in the universe, but also his interest in topics like astrobiology and the search for intelligent life. It walks players through different stages of evolution, each with different forms of play, but illustrates concepts like evolutionary progression and path dependence in the process. In the cell stage, you are eating as you do in Pac-Man. It's a simple engine which can be used to evolve yourself, establishing a trajectory. In the next stage, the creature stage, you must choose to be social or aggressive, influencing the dynamics of play and where you exist in the food chain. The tribal civilization and space stages play like more conventional strategy games, as you try to become the dominant species and enable your exodus from your home. Spore highlights the continuity between games, systems and life more explicitly, but what ties them is their expression of emergent and systemic patterns. However, there was emergence in the process of its creation as well and the use of procedural systems to create everything. Procedural tools in games also exhibit emergence. They generate elements that game designers themselves can't predict. In his book, Evolutionary Game Design, Cameron Brown walks us through how he created the game Yavaleth, a game of surprising complexity by putting games like chess and go through their own evolutionary process, modifying them in the same way evolution selects for attributes that persist in the environment they exist in. Emergence is still a confusing term in the study of systems and games and so needs to be classified. In their essay, The Open, The Closed and the Emergent, the authors distinguish open games which are games that don't have the same outcome to emergence in games which is when games generate phenomena that doesn't exist in their rules. This manifests in three ways, in the way that games self-organize their elements but also in how there is emergence in the process of design itself as well as in how strategies emerge in games that aren't predicted by the designer. In some sense, design is always emergent. It is second order. You are creating a system that others interact with. This isn't some random haphazard process. Designers exercise control over this. However, there are also novel phenomena generated by games that the designers had to play with. It is an interplay between exercising control and unpredictability. And it is in this way that designers like Will Wright and Sid Meier and Warren Spector Design by observing what the system of games generate and evaluating whether they form the play they want, whether play has any vitality, any life. In his talk, The Nature of Order in Game Narrative, Jesse Schell adds aesthetic valence to the properties of play that emerge from the rules of games which only some games exhibit. He borrows a term from Christopher Alexander to give this property of play a name, life. In his talk, This Is Your Brain on Games, Frank Lance argues games can aid with systems literacy, a capacity to peer into the dynamic nature of things and interrogate and refine their machinery. They can teach us how to design, evaluate, and alter systems. By foregrounding the way systems work, games can be instrumental in solving the problems of the 21st century. Not directly, but by virtue of the perceptual shift that the analysis and design of games endows us with. This is a bold claim, one that many advocates for games have been hoping to illustrate, how games and play can be good for us. But how can this systems literacy be instrumentalized to engender an integrated outlook, one where we recognize ourselves as part of a system in the way the aesthetics of everything encourage us to do? Perhaps the answer lies in something we brushed over previously, in the way games are cybernetic systems. Games are feedback loops of processes and engagement, but what's interesting is that we are intrinsically a part of ensuring the dissipative structure persists, that the transience of games is made permanent. Play is what makes the perils of impermanence dissolve, and it is through play we understand ourselves as part of this process. We are algorithmic networks, ecosystems that become aware of their own machinery, of how we think, how we feel, and why we act the way we do. Games create systemic microcosms of our dynamic place in the world itself, allowing us to examine ourselves in thought to peer into our own systems. Equipped with a renewed systems literacy, the problems that face our species become more manageable. At least, this is what Frity of Capra argues in an older book of his, The Turning Point. Michael Sellers argues that games have economies and ecosystems, but what of their real world counterparts? Economics has trodden in reductionism for far too long. We assume that macroeconomics comes from an analysis of the behavior of individuals, but what if our economy exhibits properties that the parts that comprise it don't have? But this abstraction can also be dangerous. As the famous quote goes, there is no such thing as the economy, only people. We need to be able to effortly move between different scales of resolution, recognizing both systems and people. New branches of economics that use complexity theory and systems analysis have recently arose, challenging the reductionism of the past. But so too does a renewed ecological stewardship require systemic thinking, and this is integrated into our economy in fundamental ways. Value is not arbitrary. We must recognize that our life is sustained by the resources we acquire as we do in a game of Minecraft. Anyone who believes in indefinite growth in a physically finite planet is either mad or an economist. However, the impassioned cries of environmentalists often fall on deaf ears. Capra argues that the problems of our time won't just be solved by the mechanics of systems literacy, but also the aesthetics, the beauty of seeing ourselves as part of a web of life. Then there is life in the games we create and the aesthetics that they exhibit and the universe itself. Games reflect the patterns of the universe because they themselves are a part of the universe. But then where does this leave us? We are both part of games and embedded in the cosmos, both mediators and integrated all the same. In his book, Incomplete Nature, Terence Deacon argues that our understanding of the systems around us is incomplete without us, our consciousness, the single most perplexing form of emergence the universe has yet conjured. What life is is a question we are still answering, but that doesn't mean we can't see it, feel it and play with it in the way we do in games.