More than a Game

Tracing the Role of Play Across History & Contemporary Singapore

A Singapore Kaleidoscope Project

Students, stop playing and focus on your homework!

Is play really just entertainment?

We enjoy play, yet often push it aside in favour of what feels more serious or productive.

In Singapore, with its strong focus on academics, technology, and performance, what place does play hold today?

Today, my learning journey begins.

Exploring Play in History

I began my journey at the Asian Civilisation Museum's Let's Play! exhibition covering the Art & Design of Asian Games.

Games are a tangible form of play, and what's a better start than exploring the ideas and impact it had throughout history, specifically around Asian culture?

I noticed that the entrance fee was complimentary for Singaporeans, which really highlighted Singapore's drive to build a strong museum-going culture, foster national identity, and ensure accessibility to local heritage.

I visited this exhibition twice:

Broad Overview: 07/12/25, 10:42AM
Deeper Interaction: 21/12/25, 3:18PM

The Gift of Play

Thinking a few steps ahead, strategising, patience and restraint - games gave more than play. They brought companionship, and taught values in ways ordinary life doesn’t always manage.

Perhaps our ancestors understood something about games that

we have slowly forgotten.

Ancient Snake & Ladders

I thought this was a comic strip, but it turned out to be a game of Sugoroku, an Edo-period Japanese board game and an early ancestor of Snakes and Ladders.

Unlike its modern-day counterpart, where players race competitively towards a finish line, each move in Sugoroku reveals scenes from life, such as marriage, family roles, and moral behaviour. Progress is shaped by choices and their consequences, rather than speed.

This led me to wonder - If play once shaped values and social conduct, how is modern day Singapore shaped by the games we played growing up?

The Dark side of Games

The Humiliation of Draupadi, 18th Century, Gouache on Paper

Can you imagine losing a family member - or worse, the love of your life - over a game?

I’m glad I stopped to read the inscription beside this painting. It told the story of a king who entered a dice game he could not walk away from, and in doing so, lost everything.

What struck me most was how casually it began. It started as play, before spiralling into something irreversible.

When Squid Game was released, many people were shocked by how far individuals were willing to go in the hope of changing their lives, and how familiar childhood games were used to heighten that discomfort. It felt novel, even extreme.

Standing here, I realised it wasn’t entirely new. History seems to remind us that what we experience today is often a remix of what has already happened, perhaps only dressed differently for our time.

When Games Were Treasured

Learning about how games were once valued made me reflect on how differently play is viewed today. Often, it is dismissed as childish, something to be indulged in only after “real” work is done - or worse, seen as harmful altogether.

The art of games, which once carried purpose, significance, and were valued within throne rooms and courts of power, is now often brushed off as an ordinary, trivial pastime.

Yet when games like Go / Chess were once part of the Four Arts expected of a cultivated person, play was clearly understood in a very different way. It made me wonder whether our priorities have shifted so far that we no longer recognise what play once helped to cultivate.

When the playground becomes school

Could it be possible to have so much fun learning something that we forget we are actually being taught? I believe it is indeed possible through games.

Long before we even stepped into an army camp or fought in a war, we have learnt about soldiers, generals, queens and kings just through the games we played growing up. We are able to visualise how they look like through meticulously crafted game pieces, and we learn the art of strategy, patience and creativity through play.

Perhaps, we as educators might benefit from revisiting the idea of edutainment. Not merely gamification, but through immersion.

I still recall the days of learning geography as a detective while playing "Where in the world is Carmen Sandiego?" , learning how to count by feeding Stinky the Skunk ice-cream in "Howie's Fun House", and mastering spelling by climbing on hippos in the Spelling Jungle.

You can bet mum and dad didn't hear a word (or squeak) of complaint when it was time to "study"!

Peek-a-Boo, I See You

I loved this interactive part of the exhibition.

It's a space where we could interact and play with some of the games along with our companions, giving us a first-hand experience of the art of play itself.

One thing that I noticed in this interaction was that games tend to reveal more about our opponent's personality than we realise.

It's an extremely social experience where you repeatedly reveal and hide facets of yourself to try

to exchange information, in hopes of digging deeper into the mind of the person you are playing with.

At the Playground During Recess...

Do you remember growing up, when recess meant whipping out country erasers and battling it out in the school canteen?

Most adults I’ve met, whether older or around my age, speak of this shared experience. Yet it is one that is fast disappearing from what many students experience today, often due to school bans and parental complaints.

Congkak may have gone the same way. This was the very first time I experienced it, and yet I was instantly hooked. Click-clack went the marbles. I barely managed to clutch the cool stones in my tiny hand, but relished every moment.

The facilitator was sharp. She pointed out, more than once, the opportunities we had missed to score. “How could you be so fast?” we gushed.

“My grandma taught me,” she laughed. And so did her grandmother before her, and the one before that.

I never imagined I’d encounter a game where it felt like our ancestors were playing alongside us. It made me wish, quietly, that more of these moments were still being passed down through generations.

Hello, old friend.

Most of us recognise the game of Go from the movies we grew up watching. Some of us may even remember our grandparents playing it at the void deck, alongside familiar neighbourhood games such as Chinese chess or mahjong.

I recall hearing them lament the loss of their game “kakis”, often attributing it to the increasingly busy pace of life in Singapore.

Today, a new kind of game “kaki” has emerged, one that never leaves, no matter the hour. AI has entered our lives, but does it replace human connection and ease loneliness, or is it simply another way for us to stretch ourselves and reflect on how we engage with the world?

As I left the place, I noticed a couple of tourists who had just discovered the large chessboard outside. They ran towards it, laughing, one of them grabbing a piece and swinging it forward, inviting the other to join.

It reminded me of the hopscotch lines outside my primary school canteen. For a brief moment, I was back there, watching my friend rush ahead, tossing her wallet into the first square and calling out...

"Wanna Play?!"