Experts drive home the importance of play for all ages

The joy of play isn’t just for children. But children who don’t have play in their lives can end up with a dark adulthood.

That was one aspect of the importance of play conveyed by Stuart Brown, founder of the National Institute for Play, in a talk he did with the Aspen Institute.

He was on a panel that included Cj Hendry, an artist whose large-scale installations often lead people to play, and Heidi Erwin, senior game designer at the New York Times.

Brown started his foray into studying play after a mass shooting in the 1960s. It was discovered the father of the suspect suppressed play essentially from the day his son was born. Brown then did research on prisoners in Texas.

“What do you know, the homicidal individuals compared to the controls didn’t play,” Brown said. “Something is going on with play.”

He also studied criminal drunken drivers, noble laureates, financial wizards and others.

“Most of the noble laureates could not tell the difference between play and work,” Brown said.

He said the biggest misconception is play is trivial and not important once outside of childhood.

“There is a need even under the worst of circumstances for play,” Brown said.

Erwin works on early stage prototypes of games for the Times.

“Games are a great tool for building agency or competence, even if it’s feeling really smart for just 20 seconds,” Erwin said. “Difficulty is subjective. My take is I would err on the side of more difficult. It’s better to be challenged than given a gimme.”

The difference between good play and bad play is how you feel at the end, Brown said. Whereas Hendry said there is no good or bad, there is just play.

The importance of spending time outdoors was also stressed, underlining this is true for adults and kids.