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In Defence of a Magic Circle: The Social, Mental and Cultural Boundaries of Play
Abstract
This article reviews the history of the concept of the magic circle, its criticism and the numerous other metaphors that have been used to capture the zone of play or the border that surrounds it, such as world, frame, bubble, net, screen, reality, membrane, zone, environment, or attitude. The various conceptions of social, mental and cultural borders are reviewed and identified. Finally, a model is put forward where the psychological bubble of playfulness, the social contract of the magic circle and the cultural game forms are separated.
... 14 15 Figure 1: The spectrum of geoscience communication, from dissemination to 16 participation (image created using DALL-E with the prompt "the electromagnetic 17 spectrum as a watercolour"). 18 Although many might consider participation and dialogue to be the ideal approach for 19 science communication, some goals may be better achieved through dissemination. ...
... Creative methods simplify complex 14 concepts by employing techniques such as storytelling, analogies, and visualisation, 15 making the subject matter more accessible to non-experts (Schäfer and Kieslinger, 16 2016). They also enhance retention, as entertaining and emotionally engaging 17 content is often more memorable (Wilkinson and Weitkamp, 2020), and facilitate 18 dialogue and interaction between geoscientists and non-geoscientists, promoting 19 collaborative learning experiences (Illingworth, 2020a). Additionally, a creative 20 approach has been shown to foster interdisciplinary collaboration between 21 geoscientists and professionals from other disciplines, such as artists, educators, 22 and communicators, leading to innovative ways of presenting geoscience information 23 and reaching broader audiences (Illingworth, 2022). ...
... By seeking their opinions 16 and identifying ways to benefit from their knowledge, we (as geoscientists) can 17 therefore enhance our own understanding and knowledge. 18 One of the main challenges in creating such two-way conversation is the idea that 19 geoscientists are experts while others are not. This can make people feel less 20 important and less likely to share their thoughts, even though they might have 21 valuable insights about a topic and how it affects society. ...
This article is a written contribution to accompany the 2023 Katia and Maurice Krafft Award from the European Geosciences Union. Though a consideration of my own practice and that of the wider literature, I investigate whether employing creative approaches can enhance the diversification of geosciences and facilitate broader engagement in its research and governance. I propose a spectrum for geoscience communication, spanning from dissemination to participation, and contend that effective communication demands a creative approach, considering the requirements of diverse audiences. I offer practical recommendations and tactics for successful geoscience communication, including audience awareness, transparency, and engagement with varied communities. This article emphasises the significance of fostering increased recognition for science communication within geosciences and promoting wider engagement in its research and governance. It delivers valuable insights for researchers, educators, communicators, and policymakers interested in enhancing their communication skills and connecting with diverse audiences in the geoscience domain.
... This echoes Jansz's (2015) ideas of games as "private laboratories" for identity exploration-although obviously in the context of online gaming, the laboratory is not exactly private. Scholars have noted (e.g., Steinkuehler & Williams, 2006;Stenros, 2014) that games can provide a social space distinct from other everyday environments, and this notion was present in the responses to our questionnaire as well: ...
In this study, we examine young people’s self-reported negative (“toxic”) online gaming conduct via a qualitative survey (N = 95) of active game players aged 15–25 in Finland. Drawing from young people’s lived experiences, we present negative gaming conduct as a complex whole, stemming from a combination of online disinhibition, affective intensity, game cultural conduct norms, and individual preferences. We explore online gaming environments as spaces with different technological and communicative affordances. In this study, we demonstrate how not all negative gaming conduct is equal in intent or outcome and introduce the concept of banal toxicity: outwardly hostile but routine conduct that lacks emotional intensity and serves little strategic purpose yet is conducive to an overall social landscape of negativity.
... It has been used as an ecology learning tool, scientific learning tool, cultural and social learning tool. The collaborative learning environment allows players to know how collaboration works as well as create video walkthroughs and commentaries to practice expressing skills [3][4]. The four main features of Minecraft are: 1. Building(the game has diverse color, shape, and usage of items, which can be composed together to create a magnificent building), 2. Mining(mining underground rewards players experience points, valuable items that can be heat and crafted into useful tools), 3.Crafting(converting raw materials to tools and other items), 4. Redstone. ...
Previous research on Minecraft only generally analyzed an important component of the game called Redstone along with other aspects of the games educational advantages. In the paper, the author focus only on Redstone and tries to find the connection between the mechanism and real-world engineering. The author first categorized content created by advanced Redstone players of the game into Vanilla Redstone and Exploit Redstone and analyzed them, searched for similar mechanisms in engineering as well as asked AI similar questions for reference, and recorded qualities players displayed throughout the video aligning with that of effective engineers. The author then stated the specific fields the build falls into and also the qualities the creator possesses, then put images for each creation to give an idea of the structure. In conclusion, the author summarizes discoveries in the research, shows all the qualities those players seem to have that help one person to prosper in engineering, and lists general fields of engineering having the deepest connection with Redstone. Next, the author suggested that educators could use Minecraft to raise students interest to STEM. The author stated some limitations the research has such as a limited number of videos analyzed or some other technical aspects of the game that can also be connected to STEM and engineering. Finally, some advice for future research has been put in the last part of the paper.
... The findings of this study have theoretical and practical implications by highlighting the interconnectedness of problem-solving and epistemic processing. One theoretical consideration involves the concept of the Magic Circle in games, defined by Stenros (2014) as the boundary between play and everyday life. Prior critiques of this construct focus on the blurring of boundaries between the two, such as the possibility that real-world experiences permeate play spaces (Woodford, 2008). ...
... Virtual wrongdoings being within a game make them likely to be playful (see Stenros, 2012;Seddon, 2013) or be consented to (in multiplayer games) via rules (Huizinga, 1944;Howe, 2008, p. 7;Young, 2013, 14), which arguably transforms their morally normative character (Hurd, 1996). Virtual wrongdoings being virtual make them unreal in respect to 'real-world' entities, and have been accordingly treated as analogous to how one appraises the existence of fictional actions, whereby it is only fictionally the case that a wrongdoing has occurred (see Mildenberger, 2017;Luck, 2022;Friend, 2008;Walton, 1990, p. 70;McDonnell & Wildman, 2019, p. 391). ...
Debate over the normativity of virtual phenomena is now widespread in the philosophical literature, taking place in roughly two distinct but related camps. The first considers the relevant problems to be within the scope of applied ethics, where the general methodological program is to square the intuitive (im)permissibility of virtual wrongdoings with moral accounts that justify their (im)permissibility. The second camp approaches the normativity of virtual wrongdoings as a metaphysical debate. This is done by disambiguating the ‘virtual’ character of ‘virtual wrongdoings’. Doing so is supposed to provide illuminating ontological distinctions that inform ethical aspects of the debate. We argue that each approach faces its own set of issues, and as a result, motivates consideration of an alternative. The alternative we suggest turns inquiry concerning the normativity of virtual wrongdoings into a distinctively conceptual question. Rather than asking whether some action is right or wrong, or whether some virtual phenomenon counts as a particular action at all, we argue that research into the normativity of virtual wrongdoings may be guided by reflecting on whether a concept that originated and developed within a non-virtual context should be exported into a foreign virtual domain. We consider this approach and several objections.
... While the social space might be open, such as a cafe or bar, the gaming happens with a predetermined number of players and with restricted access to that space. Additionally, the gaming itself can be very dynamic and free in its form of progression, but the play itself happens within this magic circle that has its own operating language and rules (see e.g., Giordano 2022;Stenros 2012). ...
Gaming capital: a fifteen-year-old theory detailing how one’s gaming knowledge can be conceptualized into something tangible. In her book Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Video Games, Consalvo (2007) presented the term gaming capital to give a name and meaning to the collective understanding of both the individual player and the communities that entail the discussions about the game, genre, or the platform – including topics like knowledge, experience, and skill. Yet, there has not been much scholarly attention given to where one would situate gaming capital between cultural and symbolic capital, and where social capital would influence the transformation of knowledge to gaming capital. The discussion about gaming capital has been more about what it is, and what can be or cannot be gaming capital, but what steers gaming capital as an entity at their disposal has not been studied enough yet. The world of gaming has moved massively forwards in fifteen years, and the whole concept of what “gaming” is has subsequently changed, not only within the online multiplayer video game scene, but within analogue role-playing games too. Both mediums have their ways of accumulating and spending capital, and not everything is different in terms of gaming capital. Therefore, this study approaches the formation of gaming capital within both Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) and Dungeons & Dragons (1974) through information flow and social space perspectives.
... As discussed in much detail in the Gamer's Dilemma literature, we lack good evidence for this claim, which is not to say that the claim is false, merely that it is unproven (see Young, 2016). Finally, the most used positive theme that "it is just a game" points back to a range of amoralist views in the literature that argue that virtual actions take place inside a morally insulating magic circle and should not accordingly be appraised through a (real-world) moral lens (see Huizinga, 1944;Juul, 2008;Nguyen, 2017;Salen & Zimmerman, 2003;Stenros, 2014aStenros, , 2014b. This leaves open the view that off-limits fictional wrongdoings might be what Patridge (2011, 306) calls "juvenile, or in bad taste, or even boring, but not morally objectionable". ...
The Gamer’s Dilemma refers to the philosophical challenge of justifying the intuitive difference people seem to see between the moral permissibility of enacting virtual murder and the moral impermissibility of enacting virtual child molestation in video games (Luck Ethics and Information Technology, 1:31, 2009). Recently, Luck in Philosophia, 50:1287–1308, 2022 has argued that the Gamer’s Dilemma is actually an instance of a more general “paradox”, which he calls the “paradox of treating wrongdoing lightly”, and he proposes a graveness resolution to this paradox. In response, we argue for four key claims. First, we accept Luck’s expansion of the Gamer’s Dilemma to be applicable to a wider set of media, but give a novel recasting of this in terms of the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far. Second, we develop a novel criticism of Luck in Philosophia, 50:1287–1308, 2022 graveness resolution to this broader paradox. Third, we argue that the Paradox of Fictionally Going Too Far helps to expose an implicit moralism in the Gamer’s Dilemma literature when compared to relevant nearby literatures about other forms of media. Fourth, we consider a range of non-moral, cultural and media conventions that plausibly help to dissolve the intuitive moral gap between non-sexual and sexual violence that is central to this paradox.
... Thus, in larp terminology, engaging with the storyworld means entering the "magic circle" (Hopeametsä 2014, Montola 2012, Montola 2014, Stenros 2014. This is often achieved through almost ritualistic means. ...
Live-action role-playing (larp) is characterized by participants’ physical and mental immersion in a storyworld, played out in a specific location during a fixed period of time. Most of the immersion is realized during the live event itself, where a collective story is acted out in physical space in real time. However, contemporary larping also usually entails significant interaction and communication between players, and between players and organisers, before and after the event itself, through digital media. In this article, we explore the social media afterlife of one of the most significant Nordic larp events in recent years, Fortune and Felicity (2017). Using an affordance framework, we discuss what happens to the “liveness” of the larp when it is extended into social media. Through the affordances of persistence, visibility, editability and associability, we analyse material from the Facebook group connected to Fortune and Felicity, used by players and organisers to prepare for the larp and, afterwards, to continue the gameplay and to de-brief. In social media, the continuum of time and space, which is characteristic of the larp event itself, is changed into asynchronous and physically separate player action. Thus, the affordances of social media, we argue, enable player interaction and collaborative storytelling in ways that change the narrative, interactive and immersive dynamics of the larp.
... In the game, LARPers react to different fantasy events and situations within a space based on a historical time period, a fantasy world from a novel or film, or take place in an unrestricted setting. This space is symbolically demarcated by the magic circle (Stenros 2014). This circle is a conceptual and metaphorical delimiter that represents the liminal space between an individual's real-world persona and the fantasy character identity assumed for roleplay. ...
Dagorhir is one of the largest and oldest documented live-action roleplay groups. Dagorhir organizers have published multiple game regulations via handbooks with much emphasis on costumes since the 1970s. Dagorhir facilitates community building, identity negotiation and creative storytelling that expands beyond the game through transformative play. In our research, we examine how these costume regulations have influenced fantasy character and real-world identities, how the regulations have influenced perceived costume authenticity over time and how the handbook regulations have engaged with power dynamics related to intersectional identities. We analysed costume-related content in the three handbooks while drawing upon content analysis and historical methods. We found that as the regulations evolved since the 1970s, the rules increasingly centred costumes, indicating the prominence of costume in this escapist community. However, while these spaces centred on the costumed body, Dagorhir regulations reinforced oppressive intersectional norms. Our work has implications for society and business, that is, our findings can help individuals understand why people participate in live-action roleplay, which may reduce stigma surrounding this activity. Additionally, costume producers and retailers can make informed business decisions based upon our findings. Last, live-action roleplay communities can utilize our findings to reject oppressive written and unwritten regulations.
... From the perspectives of evolution and human development, play literally is a "serious" practice and an important adaptation method as well as a method for learning skills that are ultimately essential for survival. On the other hand, gameplay could be characterized as a safe constitution of "reality" (e.g., Piaget, 1952;Stenros, 2014) and as an activity that captivates its actors, induces passion, and facilitates social bonding (e.g., Whitton and Moseley, 2014). In all its seriousness, gameplay thus may be absorbing, engaging, and, in all, an entertaining experience regardless of whether the game has been designed with a particular learning purpose in mind. ...
... Frames refer to social conventions and expectations structuring and organizing our experience. The magic circle of play refers to a special time and space created when playing that is governed by different rules and understandings than in the everyday world [12,46,53]. Similarly, embodied design methods seem to seek and foster a distinctive frameset apart from ordinary life in which particular kinds of physical and social action that might be weird or unusual in everyday contexts are sought and supported. ...
Movement-based design methods are increasingly adopted to help design rich embodied experiences. While there are well-known methods in the field, there is no systematic overview to help designers choose among them, adapt them, or create their own. We collected 41 methods used by movement design researchers and employed a practice-based, bottom-up approach to analyze and characterize their properties. We found 17 categories and arranged them into five main groups: Design Resources, Activities, Delivery, Framing, and Context. In this paper, we describe these groups in general and then focus on Design Resources containing the categories of Movement, Space, and Objects. We ground the characterization with examples from empirical material provided by the design researchers and references to previous work. Additionally, we share recommendations and action points to bring these into practice. This work can help novice and seasoned design researchers who want to employ movement-based design methods in their practice.
... From the perspectives of evolution and human development, play literally is a "serious" practice and an important adaptation method as well as a method for learning skills that are ultimately essential for survival. On the other hand, gameplay could be characterized as a safe constitution of "reality" (e.g., Piaget, 1952;Stenros, 2014) and as an activity that captivates its actors, induces passion, and facilitates social bonding (e.g., Whitton and Moseley, 2014). In all its seriousness, gameplay thus may be absorbing, engaging, and, in all, an entertaining experience regardless of whether the game has been designed with a particular learning purpose in mind. ...
Introduction: In recent years there has been an increasing interest in the
field of educational computer games (ECGs). Although ECGs have been
researched, more analyses still need to be performed on these variables to
check their effects on language learning.
Methods: To this end, 74-third grade female state high school students from
two schools in Zanjan were selected through a two-stage cluster random
sampling method. The number of students in each class was 37. One of the
classes (control group) was trained traditionally and the other was for one
semester through the researchers-made ECGs. After completing the training,
the research tools were performed as a post-test on the experimental and
control groups. The data collection stage took place for about 6 months.
Results: Based on the results from the research questions, the use of training
computers has been effective in increasing AR, ASR, and AA.
Discussion: It has significant implications for teachers and learners in the EFL
context and opens interesting opportunities for administrators and curriculum
developers to explore when planning EFL courses.
... However, they are also psychologically distanced from us so that we can usually cleanly separate what happens to the character from what happens to the player [15]. This is a concept related to the idea of the magic circle [17,38]-that what happens within a game represents a 'morally discontinuous space' where the normal rules of society do not pertain. There are limitations to how far that circle extends. ...
Tabletop Role Playing Games (TTRPG) allow the player to immerse themselves in a world where anything can happen – within the rules. You can become someone new, fight demons, play out exciting and speculative storylines, all with the help of your party. This ability to place yourself in the life of another person (or ethereal being) resonates with principles of User Experience Design (UX) where usability experts strive to understand the impact their application or interface might have on a hypothetical audience. This paper explores the parallels and potentials of TTRPG within the context of UX and Requirements, its characters, contexts and interactions. We propose creating playable UX worlds with the potential to provide deeper, more insightful output, and make recommendations for the addition of a TTRPG approach to User Experience processes.
... Although we acknowledge that the conceptual, physical, and social lines delineating game spaces can be blurred and form debatable "magic circles" (e.g., Consalvo, 2009;Stenros, 2014), the distinctions also carry pragmatic value that is highly beneficial in illustrating the below differences. We further add that sports hooligans are typically in the role of a spectator in live professional games, usually (but not always) for a team-based sport, whereas esports trolls are typically in the role of a player, outside professional games. ...
Both game-based trolling and hooliganism have existed in some form since the inception of online gaming and professional sports respectively. The two share many characteristics: provocation of an opposing entity, the tendency to taunt or trash-talk others based on their social or individual identity, and disruptive and/or destructive behaviour. However, despite this and the increasing similarity between the worlds of traditional sports and esports, research on the two negatively perceived phenomena has remained largely separate. The present article aims to both link and distinguish the two types of behaviour in terms of what motivates them, the agents involved, and the spaces in which they take place. By drawing from communication theories and cases described as both hooliganism and trolling in professional sports and esports settings, we (a) refine the definition of trolling in light of hooliganism, (b) discuss practical implications for the future health of esports communities, and (c) explore deviance as inherent entertainment in mediatised sporting events. Suggestions for future collaborative research between trolling and hooliganism specialists are also included.
... In terms of Pony Island's narrative qualities, these kinds of transgressions are of course clearly metaleptic, but they also have implications regarding its game spaces and ludic system that are connected to the concept of the "magic circle." While, according to Johan Huizinga (1949: 12), the magic circle is a "temporary suspension of normal social life" in which "the laws and customs of ordinary life no longer count," Pony Island seemingly crosses the boundaries set by such a "magic circle," thus presenting the gameplay experience as much more "open, permitting interchange between the game and the world beyond its frame" (Salen and Zimmermann 2004: 96;see also, e.g., Calleja 2015;Consalvo 2009;Stenros 2014 for additional critical perspectives on the concept of the "magic circle"). ships, Pony Island at least hints at the possibility, unique to videogames, to stage metaleptic events that extend beyond the (fictional) storyworld to affect the player's computer system, and even their "real life." ...
This article sets out to explore the playful poetics of recent indie games in terms of what could be described as metareferential interfaces. Drawing on a range of theories from literary studies, media studies, and game studies, we propose to conceptualize metareferential interfaces as interfaces that foreground and draw attention to their own mediality. They thus allow for videogame-specific forms of metareference and metalepsis to be employed as part of often quite experimental and aesthetically ambitious approaches to videogame design. Using the recent indie games Pony Island (2016) and OneShot (2016) as our core case studies, we offer an in-depth analysis of this metaization of videogames’ playful poetics, focusing primarily on three salient aspects: First, the multiplication of interfaces can lead to mise-en-abyme-like structures that highlight and reflect on the mediality of videogames while also establishing ontological boundaries between different levels of videogame storyworlds. Second, the disruption of interface functionality is a metareferential strategy that can be used to establish specific gameplay challenges and reflect on the design conventions of videogame interfaces. Third, the transgression of ontological boundaries affects not only the borders between subworlds within a videogame's storyworld but also the more fundamental distinction between what is “in the game” and what is “outside it.”
... We suggest that the same set of phenomena which Nichols and Stich call cognitive quarantine has its own history under the umbrella term of "magic circle" or "boundary of play" within games studies (Stenros, 2014), where it is in some ways more elaborated due to the more variable range of experiences. We presume most challenging topics for any theory of pretense will be connected with the question of permeability of the boundaries between the play and non-play, which is especially relevant for embodied role-playing. ...
This is a collection of 21 articles published as an eBook in Frontiers in Psychology. This Research Topic aims to demonstrate that imaginative culture is an important functional part of evolved human behavior—diverse in its manifestations but unified by species-typical sets of biologically grounded motives, emotions, and cognitive dispositions. The topic encompasses four main areas of research in the evolutionary human sciences: (1) evolutionary psychology and anthropology, which have fashioned a robust model of evolved human motives organized systemically within the phases and relationships of human life history; (2) research on gene-culture coevolution, which has illuminated the mechanisms of social cognition and the transmission of cultural information; (3) the psychology of emotions and affective neuroscience, which have gained precise knowledge about the evolutionary basis and neurological character of the evolved emotions that give power to the arts, religion, and ideology; and (4) cognitive neuroscience, which has identified the Default Mode Network as the central neurological location of the human imagination. By integrating these four areas of research and by demonstrating their value in illuminating specific kinds of imaginative culture, this Research Topic aims at incorporating imaginative culture within an evolutionary conception of human nature.
... This may factor into bleed, a key concept in larp theory referring to the emotional and cognitive interaction between a player and their character (Bowman, 2015). Important for most experiences called larp is the understanding that player and character are not identical (Montola, 2014;Stenros, 2014a). Alibi, the social contract between participants that actions taken are those of the character (Montola and Holopainen, 2012), allows players as their characters to scream at each other, or even subject one another to torture, but ensures that they remain friends out-of-character. ...
... All games involve a deliberate spatially marked playground within which special rules apply for a temporary period. Katie Salen Tekinbaş and Eric Zimmerman (2004) argued that the term magic circle is appropriate because there is a truly magical element in gameplay-within the magic circle's temporary world, game rules have authority and players are expected to adopt a playful demeanor and abide by the rules to remain in it (Stenros 2014). ...
In this chapter, the authors analyze the relationship of consent with sexual and racial minorities through three frames: the Magic Circle, the (hetero)sexual script, and tokenism. The authors highlight examples from popular dating shows such as Are You the One?, Temptation Island, and Love Is Blind, which feature problematic instances of sexual consent. Following audience reception studies that recognize viewer identification and development of intimate relationships with the show participants, the authors conduct a discourse analysis of Instagram comments to observe the impact of these representations on viewership. Reality dating shows present love as a sexual conquest through specific production decisions, financial contracts, and game-like rules. The genre’s basis in the heterosexual script, where men present as “sexual agents” and women as “prizes to conquer,” makes consent difficult to define conceptually. Moreover, its application to queer individuals and participants of color may perpetuate adverse stereotypes of race and sexuality. Given this premise, the authors investigate how these shows inform and impact viewership on marginalized groups, sexual violence and consent.
... From the perspectives of evolution and human development, play literally is a "serious" practice and an important adaptation method as well as a method for learning skills that are ultimately essential for survival. On the other hand, gameplay could be characterized as a safe constitution of "reality" (e.g., Piaget, 1952;Stenros, 2014) and as an activity that captivates its actors, induces passion, and facilitates social bonding (e.g., Whitton and Moseley, 2014). In all its seriousness, gameplay thus may be absorbing, engaging, and, in all, an entertaining experience regardless of whether the game has been designed with a particular learning purpose in mind. ...
In this explorative study, we investigated motives of autonomous learners to participate in an online course, and how these motives are related to gameplay motivations, engagement in the course experience, and learning outcomes. The guiding premise for the study has been the idea that learning and game playing carry phenomenal similarities that could be revealed by scrutinizing motives for participating in a massive open online course that does not involve any intentionally game-like features. The research was conducted by analyzing survey data (N = 705) collected from individuals who had voluntarily participated in an open online course about artificial intelligence and its societal impact. The survey included an explorative Motives for Autonomous Learning (MAL) inventory. Exploratory factor analysis suggested that the MAL inventory consisted of six dimensions out of which four were consistent with factors that earlier research has associated with motives to engage with video games. Of the identified factors, the dimension that most clearly described autonomous and playful predispositions was found to be a main precedent for both experienced gamefulness of the learning experience and positive learning outcomes. In all, the results of this study demonstrated that playfulness and autonomy were both prominent and significant factors across the whole learning process.
... We suggest that the same set of phenomena which Nichols and Stich call cognitive quarantine has its own history under the umbrella term of "magic circle" or "boundary of play" within games studies (Stenros, 2014), where it is in some ways more elaborated due to the more variable range of experiences. We presume most challenging topics for any theory of pretense will be connected with the question of permeability of the boundaries between the play and non-play, which is especially relevant for embodied role-playing. ...
Imaginative pretend play is often thought of as the domain of young children, yet adults regularly engage in elaborated, fantastical, social-mediated pretend play. We describe imaginative play in adults via the term “pretensive shared reality;” Shared Pretensive Reality describes the ability of a group of individuals to employ a range of higher-order cognitive functions to explicitly and implicitly share representations of a bounded fictional reality in predictable and coherent ways, such that this constructed reality may be explored and invented/embellished with shared intentionality in an ad hoc manner. Pretensive Shared Reality facilitates multiple individual and social outcomes, including generating personal and group-level enjoyment or mirth, the creation or maintenance of social groups, or the safe exploration of individual self-concepts (such as alternative expression of a players sexual or gender identity). Importantly, Pretensive Shared Reality (both within the specific context of table-top role-playing games, and other instances) are primarily co-operative and co-creative. We draw on multiple examples, and focus on Table-Top Role Playing games (TTRPG) – and specifically, the most popular and enduring table-top role-playing games, Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) – as a primary example of such play. Our conception of “pretensive shared reality” links the widespread existence and forms of adult imaginative play to childhood pretense, places it within a developmental and evolutionary context, and argues that pretensive shared realities – which underpin many forms of imaginative culture – are an important topic of study unto themselves, and may be utilized to provide methodological insight into a variety of psychological domains.
... The game designer states that games are "safe spaces" in which fears can be both confronted and overcome. In this statement we can easily recognise the conceptualisation of play as a social contract, an activity which occurs within a delimited and known context; the "Magic Circle" of play (Huizinga, 2014(Huizinga, [1938, Salen and Zimmerman, 2004;Stenros, 2014). ...
According to their most popular definition, cozy games are characterized by visual softness and relaxing gameplay devoid of combat and time-sensitive gameplay. However, with the recent increase in popularity of these games, game developers started to experiment with genre hybridity, introducing games that combine the elements of coziness with non-cozy elements such as difficult combat or horror themes, showing a need for critical engagement with the working definition of what is cozy. The article proposes a concept of dark cozy games to describe those titles that introduce visual softness and, to some degree, ludic safety to horror or Gothic, using three examples to illustrate different ways in which that can be achieved: Cult of the Lamb, Dredge, and Oxenfree.
Background
This study explores the emotional experiences of players in online, text-based tabletop role-playing games (TTRPGs) and their potential impact on players. The goal is to understand the therapeutic and educational possibilities arising from these emotional experiences.
Methods
Through qualitative analysis, themes were identified based on participants' narratives. Eight participants who engaged in online, text-based TTRPGs were interviewed to gather data on their emotional experiences and effects outside the game.
Result
The study identified three main categories of emotions experienced by players: emotions related to the community, emotions associated with the game world and characters, and emotions linked to game mechanics. These emotions were found to impact players beyond the gaming environment, influenced by the players' emotional immersion. Additionally, the study revealed two distinct approaches to immersion among players and highlighted emotions as motivating factors for gameplay.
Discussion
The findings emphasize the role of TTRPGs in providing creative outlets, social interaction, and recreation, facilitating skill development, and broadening perspectives based on players' emotional experiences. Additionally, this study highlights the potential for immersion in online, text-based TTRPGs linked to therapeutic and educational uses.
Limitations
This study employs an in-depth phenomenological qualitative interview method. While this approach yields detailed and nuanced data, it may not provide extensive generalizability. Future research endeavors could benefit from more significant and diverse participant pools to enhance the understanding of emotional experiences in TTRPG players. Furthermore, exploring additional factors such as genres, narrative structures, and player-character relationships could offer more profound insights.
Conclusion
This study demonstrates that online, text-based TTRPGs allow players to experience various emotions with implications beyond the game's boundaries. The findings suggest that interventions based on role-playing activities may benefit from the online text-based method due to its accessibility and lower barriers to entry.
Role-playing games (RPGs) are interactionally complex activities in which participants use talk to coauthor narratives across player and character identities. Taking an interest in how talk and interaction mediate collaborative text production, I drew upon concepts and methods of conversation analysis (CA) to examine RPG play. Despite a breadth of CA scholarship that examines storytelling and gameplay, there is scant CA research that examines role-playing games. Contributing to the burgeoning program of education research on RPG literacies, I used CA to study how six adolescent boys negotiated game-based storytelling across their character and player identities. Findings illustrated how participants’ metagame talk worked to negotiate knowledge, fairness, relationships, and pacing during RPG play. Implications of this work call for youth and educators to develop a reflexive awareness of metagame talk to better negotiate storytelling and power relationships during game-based coauthorship.
In this study we analyse negative behaviour in the context of digital gaming through interviews of players (N=12) aged 16-27 who self-reported as having behaved in a manner they acknowledged as toxic. Through thematic analysis of the interviews, we highlight three central themes: games as affective spaces; affordances and norms facilitating negative behaviours ; and players' navigation of negative behaviours. Our study demonstrates the situa-tional and affective nature of negative behaviour and offers solutions for reducing it in gaming .
»Fictional Practices of Spirituality« provides critical insight into the implementation of belief, mysticism, religion, and spirituality into worlds of fiction, be it interactive or non-interactive. This first volume focuses on interactive, virtual worlds - may that be the digital realms of video games and VR applications or the imaginary spaces of life action role-playing and soul-searching practices. It features analyses of spirituality as gameplay facilitator, sacred spaces and architecture in video game geography, religion in video games and spiritual acts and their dramaturgic function in video games, tabletop, or LARP, among other topics. The contributors offer a first-time ever comprehensive overview of play-rites as spiritual incentives and playful spirituality in various medial incarnations.
»Fictional Practices of Spirituality« provides critical insight into the implementation of belief, mysticism, religion, and spirituality into worlds of fiction, be it interactive or non-interactive. This first volume focuses on interactive, virtual worlds - may that be the digital realms of video games and VR applications or the imaginary spaces of life action role-playing and soul-searching practices. It features analyses of spirituality as gameplay facilitator, sacred spaces and architecture in video game geography, religion in video games and spiritual acts and their dramaturgic function in video games, tabletop, or LARP, among other topics. The contributors offer a first-time ever comprehensive overview of play-rites as spiritual incentives and playful spirituality in various medial incarnations.
This review article is a written contribution to accompany the 2023 Katia and Maurice Krafft Award from the European Geosciences Union. Through a consideration of my own practice and that of the wider literature, I explore how creative approaches (primarily poetry and games) can enhance the diversification of geosciences and facilitate broader engagement in its research and governance. I propose a spectrum for geoscience communication, spanning from dissemination to participation, and contend that effective communication demands a creative approach, considering the requirements of diverse audiences. I offer practical recommendations and tactics for successful geoscience communication, including audience awareness, transparency, and engagement with varied communities. This article emphasises the significance of fostering increased recognition for science communication within geosciences and promoting wider engagement in its research and governance. It delivers valuable insights for researchers, educators, communicators, and policymakers interested in enhancing their communication skills and connecting with diverse audiences in the geoscience domain.
(DOKTORA TEZİ) DİJİTAL OYUN YAPISI VE Z KUŞAĞININ OYNAMA PRATİKLERİ
PhD Thesis
Swamp soccer and swamp volleyball tournaments have been actively organized on Finnish mires throughout the twenty-first century, reflecting a change in the cultural relationship with mires. Joyful and festival-style team sports events on mires seem to be a modern trend, not only in Finland, but also in other European countries. This study focuses on mire sporting events in the Finnish context, asking: How do the sensory experiences of team play on mires affect the players’ relationship with mire, and also the cultural heritage associated with mires? The analysis is based on the theoretical framework of the ethnography of the senses, which is complemented by the concept of space. The research material was collected between 2020 and 2022 and consists of thematic interviews with 33 mire athletes, as well as observational material based on the World Swamp Volley and Swamp Soccer Championships held in Finland. The study shows that these humorous sports events emphasize the sense of community between the players. Playing in mires, sensing them, and getting dirty are key factors in this process. Fears of the mire familiar from folklore are forgotten when playing together in the mire. Mire sports bring new multisensory and entertaining elements to the traditional use of mires.
This study explores patterns of thought and movement in the living ‘body’ of playwork theory and practice, through firsthand experiences shared by adventure playground staff. Adventure playgrounds offer rich and dynamic environments within which children are primarily self-directed. Staff are expected to respond (rather than react) flexibly and reflectively to their cues, offering physical, emotional and material support to play processes while mitigating the impact of adult agendas. In doing so, playworkers draw and elaborate upon a shared theoretical framework and vocabulary. This practitioner- researcher study was closely informed by autoethnographic, grounded theory, and embodied approaches to qualitative research.
Somatic paradigms are grounded in firsthand sensory knowledge, and recent years have seen significant interdisciplinary development and application of somatic concepts in dance and performance research as well as psychology, therapeutics, and critical social theory. Fieldwork at two adventure playgrounds in the USA formed the bulk of data for this study, which includes reflective playwork diaries, transcripts of team meetings, and interviews with colleague-participants. These illustrate complex ways in which playwork may be embodied by practitioners, and indicated an important gap between embodied nature of practice and its more abstract representation in playwork literature.
Playwork interventions are specific to each site, relationship and moment, but may nonetheless share common underlying processes and influencing factors. A proposed somatic paradigm for playwork establishes connections between adventure playgrounds as ‘safe enough’ places for children to play freely, and ‘safe enough’ places for practitioners to learn, reflect, and change habitual patterns of interaction. This study explores embodied aspects of direct play support and reflective practices, and examines ‘the body’ implicit through conceptual metaphors in abstract language and theory. Finally, this study develops and presents a concept of reflective playwork capacity, with the hope of facilitating personal, professional and collective transformation in support of children’s play.
This paper discusses the communication in tabletop role-playing games that we call metadiscourse. Prior study of gaming and the act of play prove that the space is inherently social. However, we speculate that, through metadiscourse, the social aspect of the tabletop role-playing game is central to group cohesion and perpetuation of the gaming subculture. Metadiscourse involves conversation not linked to the current game but could be cordial and relational, critical, or completely unrelated to the game. However, it is an informal conversation that would not occur if there was no game. In metadiscourse there are determinations of gaming capital, or elements of value. Participation in metadiscourse allows an individual to feel included in the game and gaming subculture. However, meta-discourse demonstrates a level of gaming capital through situatedness and affordances that can act as a gatekeeping function for individuals.
DOI: 10.4018/IJCICG.308810
This study examines virtual reality (VR) poker and how the platform affects poker players' experience. Players use a self-customized avatar and other features of a computer platform that differs from in-person poker. Data were collected through observations from in-game poker VR recordings and interviews with five professional poker players. Findings are analysed theoretically through proteus effects, social presence, ecological psychology, magic circle, and liminality. This demonstrates the interactive cues that poker players use when immersed in virtual reality and embodied in a digital avatar. The goals from this research are to learn about the influence avatars have on poker players: if players can still maintain their poker skills and read different cue signs from other players while embodied in an avatar and immersed in VR. This paper also explores the promise of poker in virtual reality and its environment, examples of existing applications, a discussion of the research to date, and also provides a vision for the future.
How can live-performed chamber operas be conceptualized as immersive games with interactive features? This artistic study has resulted in a system model through which degrees of immersion may be generated and analyzed from physical, social, and psychical stimuli. A differentiation of immersive modes has been made possible by the framing of opera-making as game design. The findings indicate that so-called ludo-immersive opera could be developed into operatic chamber opera play for self-reliant participants, constituting an intimate and alternate practice in which dynamic game-masters may replace supervising directors. However, this practice is entangled with the question of future training for operatic practitioners outside the mainstream opera format, and beyond both Wagnerian and Brechtian spectatorship. The shift from the traditional audience/performer relationship to a novel form of immersive interaction requires a new mind-set and training for opera practitioners, to encourage autonomy and active participation by individual visitors. Theoretically, the study connects recent innovations in opera to the aesthetic principles of the Apollonian and the Dionysian and positions ludo-immersive opera in relation the these. The principles bridge immersion, opera, and game-playing, articulated by a reinterpretation of Roger Caillois’ taxonomy of play. The issue of immersion as an artistic aim in opera is highlighted. Moreover, artists’ and visitors’ reciprocal participation in ludo-immersive opera is discussed in regard to its historical context of operatic event-making and forms of presentation. The project explores the detailed consequences of perception and performance in chamber opera with ludic and immersive features, primarily inspired by live-action role playing. The main objective has been to investigate how operatic events can be presented as immersive adventures rather than spectacles, and consequences that the integration of playing visitors in professional opera implies for artistic practice. In four operas created during the period 2016–2020, interventions and encounters between artists and visitors in musically driven situations framed by fictional settings have been staged and studied. The artistic researcher has iteratively been engaged in action as opera singer, librettist, dramaturge, and director. Data from the research cycles include field recordings from the productions and reports from the participants in the form of interviews and surveys.
Dijital oyunlar çağımızın en popüler iletişim ortamlarından biri haline gelmiş durumdadır. Genelde oyunlar ve özelde dijital oyunlar sıklıkla belli normları takip eden nitelikleriyle değerlendirilmektedir, ancak tarih boyunca oyunlar ihlallerin de alanı olmuştur. İhlal belirli bir sınırın, limitin geçilmesi, bir kuralın çiğnenmesi anlamına gelmektedir. Bu çalışmada oyunlardaki ve oyunlarla ilgili ihlal biçimleri incelenmektedir. Oyun ve gerçek yaşam ayrımı ihlale konu ilk sınırdır, ancak oyunlarla ilgili tek sınır bu değildir. Oyunların kuralları veya bir bütün olarak oyun alanı da ihlale konu olabilir. Oyunlardaki temsiller üzerinden toplumsal kurallar, yasaklar ve tabularla oynamak bazı oyunların esas öğesidir. Bu çalışma iletişim bilimleri ile kesişen dijital oyun çalışmalarının ve oyun biçimcilik olarak da anılan ludolojinin yöntemlerini kullanarak ihlal biçimleri ve örneklerini ele almaktadır. İhlal biçimlerini anlamlandırabilmek için öncelikle oyunların ihlale imkân veren nitelikleri ve oyun tanımları üzerinde durulmuştur. İhlal biçimleri belirlendikten sonra ihlal sınıflamaları ele alınmış ve var olan çalışmalarda eksik bırakılan bazı nitelikleri içerecek şekilde yeni bir sınıflama önerilmiştir.
In striving to establish a theoretical framework for the academic study of games it is crucial that we, as game researchers, consider carefully the core concepts that pervade our work. Certain metaphors provide the very foundations upon which future research is to be built. If we are to move forward, we have to, as is the case with any developing field of study, take certain concepts as given. These are the tools of our trade. They allow us to progress without having to constantly try to re-invent the proverbial wheel. A great deal of work has recently gone into defining our object of study. Efforts at synthesising and refining previous game definitions undertaken by Juul (2005) and Salen and Zimmerman (2003) have been of great use in this respect. But the conceptual awareness I am advocating here delves deeper than definitions. It strikes at the assumptions that these definitions and other basic concepts that underlie our thinking about games take as given.
During the last 5 years, the similarity between role-playing games and rituals has been mentioned in numerous articles and online discussions. This article examines that connection by using data gathered over several decades in library and information science, studies of religion, and the cognitive sciences. The authors place particular emphasis on the similarity between social information phenomena present in both ritual and pretence, and the way those affect cognition—the seemingly “magical” interface that makes shared experiences possible. The authors show the implications of that pattern to the design of games and discuss its uses and limitations in games and experiences created for educational purposes.
Huizinga's concept of a 'magic circle' has been used to depict computer games and gaming activities as something separate from ordinary life. In this view, games are special (magical) and they only come to life within temporal and spatial borders that are enacted and performed by the participants. This article discusses the concept of a 'magic circle' and finds that it lacks specificity. Attempts to use the concept of a magic circle create a number of anomalies that are problematic. This is not, as has been suggested earlier, primarily a matter of the genre of the game, or a discussion of what an appropriate definition of a 'game' might be. Rather, in this study with hardcore gamers, playing computer games is a routine and mundane activity, making the boundary between play and non-play tenuous to say the least. This article presents an alternative theoretical framework which should be explored further.
An abstract is not available.
In an effort to stimulate and guide research on exploration and play, a brief review and outline of the concepts "exploration" and "play" is presented. A broadly conceived discussion (including various organisms, ages, and disciplines) considers future research direction. It is concluded that exploration and play behaviors lend themselves to simple observations, manipulations, experimental designs, and methods of analysis. Real understanding of these behaviors may be based on consideration of (a) a wider diversity of behavioral manifestations of exploration and play, (b) a multivariate set of determinants, and (c) their association with internal mental and affective states. (31/2 p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The past decade has seen phenomenal growth in the development and use of virtual worlds. In one of the most notable, Second Life, millions of people have created online avatars in order to play games, take classes, socialize, and conduct business transactions. Second Life offers a gathering point and the tools for people to create a new world online. Too often neglected in popular and scholarly accounts of such groundbreaking new environments is the simple truth that, of necessity, such virtual worlds emerge from physical workplaces marked by negotiation, creation, and constant change. Thomas Malaby spent a year at Linden Lab, the real-world home of Second Life, observing those who develop and profit from the sprawling, self-generating system they have created. Some of the challenges created by Second Life for its developers were of a very traditional nature, such as how to cope with a business that is growing more quickly than existing staff can handle. Others are seemingly new: How, for instance, does one regulate something that is supposed to run on its own? Is it possible simply to create a space for people to use and then not govern its use? Can one apply these same free-range/free-market principles to the office environment in which the game is produced? "Lindens"-as the Linden Lab employees call themselves-found that their efforts to prompt user behavior of one sort or another were fraught with complexities, as a number of ongoing processes collided with their own interventions. In Making Virtual Worlds, Malaby thoughtfully describes the world of Linden Lab and the challenges faced while he was conducting his in-depth ethnographic research there. He shows how the workers of a very young but quickly growing company were themselves caught up in ideas about technology, games, and organizations, and struggled to manage not only their virtual world but also themselves in a nonhierarchical fashion. In exploring the practices the Lindens employed, he questions what was at stake in their virtual world, what a game really is (and how people participate), and the role of the unexpected in a product like Second Life and an organization like Linden Lab.
A study of Everquest that provides a snapshot of multiplayer gaming culture, questions the truism that computer games are isolating and alienating, and offers insights into broader issues of work and play, gender identity, technology, and commercial culture.
In Play Between Worlds, T. L. Taylor examines multiplayer gaming life as it is lived on the borders, in the gaps—as players slip in and out of complex social networks that cross online and offline space. Taylor questions the common assumption that playing computer games is an isolating and alienating activity indulged in by solitary teenage boys. Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), in which thousands of players participate in a virtual game world in real time, are in fact actively designed for sociability. Games like the popular Everquest, she argues, are fundamentally social spaces.
Taylor's detailed look at Everquest offers a snapshot of multiplayer culture. Drawing on her own experience as an Everquest player (as a female Gnome Necromancer)—including her attendance at an Everquest Fan Faire, with its blurring of online—and offline life—and extensive research, Taylor not only shows us something about games but raises broader cultural issues. She considers "power gamers," who play in ways that seem closer to work, and examines our underlying notions of what constitutes play—and why play sometimes feels like work and may even be painful, repetitive, and boring. She looks at the women who play Everquest and finds they don't fit the narrow stereotype of women gamers, which may cast into doubt our standardized and preconceived ideas of femininity. And she explores the questions of who owns game space—what happens when emergent player culture confronts the major corporation behind the game.
An exploration of the way videogames mount arguments and make expressive statements about the world that analyzes their unique persuasive power in terms of their computational properties.
Videogames are an expressive medium, and a persuasive medium; they represent how real and imagined systems work, and they invite players to interact with those systems and form judgments about them. In this innovative analysis, Ian Bogost examines the way videogames mount arguments and influence players. Drawing on the 2,500-year history of rhetoric, the study of persuasive expression, Bogost analyzes rhetoric's unique function in software in general and videogames in particular. The field of media studies already analyzes visual rhetoric, the art of using imagery and visual representation persuasively. Bogost argues that videogames, thanks to their basic representational mode of procedurality (rule-based representations and interactions), open a new domain for persuasion; they realize a new form of rhetoric. Bogost calls this new form "procedural rhetoric," a type of rhetoric tied to the core affordances of computers: running processes and executing rule-based symbolic manipulation. He argues further that videogames have a unique persuasive power that goes beyond other forms of computational persuasion. Not only can videogames support existing social and cultural positions, but they can also disrupt and change these positions themselves, leading to potentially significant long-term social change. Bogost looks at three areas in which videogame persuasion has already taken form and shows considerable potential: politics, advertising, and learning.
Games studies writers want to slay the mythical Magic Circle Jerk -- a person who espouses an overly formalistic view of play, they suggest. But does this person really exist? Original formulator of the concept, Eric Zimmerman, discusses.
Due to the popularity of social media networks and the games played on those platforms interest in the so-called social games has piqued. This article looks at those games in the context of general social aspects of game play. By approaching game play as an activity, it is possible to distinguish between different kinds of social interaction: the sociability players engage in around the game and the social play contained and mediated by the game. In charting the social space of playing, this article shows the inherent social aspects of single-player games – and the solitary aspects of social games.
Games have intruded into popular, academic, and policy-maker awareness to an unprecedented level, and this creates new opportunities for advancing our understanding of the relationship of games to society. The author offers a new approach to games that stresses them as characterized by process. Games, the author argues, are domains of contrived contingency, capable of generating emergent practices and interpretations, and are intimately connected with everyday life to a degree heretofore poorly understood. This approach is both consistent with a range of existing social theory and avoids many of the limitations that have characterized much games scholarship to date, in particular its tendency toward unsustainable formalism and exceptionalism. Rather than seeing gaming as a subset of play, and therefore as an activity that is inherently separable, safe, and pleasurable, the author offers a pragmatic rethinking of games as social artifacts in their own right that are always in the process of becoming. This view both better accords with the experience of games by participants cross-culturally and bears the weight of the new questions being asked about games and about society.
Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) constitute social jurisdictions governed by rules of play. When we consider the work of Johan Huizinga and subsequent theorists of human play activities, we find that ludic rules differ from legal rules in important ways. The goals of play also differ from the goals of law. In applying law to MMORPGs and other virtual worlds, it is important to recognize that jurisdictions of play are structured in ways that are fundamentally different from the ways traditional legal rules are structured.
A philosophical analysis of play and games is undertaken in this paper. Playful gaming, which is shown to be a synthesis of play and games, is utilized as a category for undertaking the examination of play and games. The significance of playful gaming to education is demonstrated through analyses of Plato's, Dewey's, Sartre's, and Marcuse's theories of play. An analysis of the learning of norms and values in political and educational socialization games also is made. (DB)
The author begins his classic book with "I want to talk about video games--yes, even violent video games--and say some positive things about them." With this simple but explosive statement, one of America's most well-respected educators looks seriously at the good that can come from playing video games. In this revised edition, new games like "World of War Craft" and "Half Life 2" are evaluated and theories of cognitive development are expanded. The author looks at major cognitive activities including how individuals develop a sense of identity, how everyone grasps meaning, evaluate and follow a command, pick a role model, and perceive the world. Contents include: (1) Introduction: 36 Ways to Learn a Video Game; (2) Semiotic Domains: Is Playing Video Games a "Waste of Time"?; (3) Learning and Identity: What Does It Mean to Be a Half-Elf?; (4) Situated Meaning and Learning: What Should You Do after You Have Destroyed the Global Conspiracy?; (5) Telling and Doing: Why Doesn't Lara Croft Obey Professor Von Croy?; (6) Cultural Models: Do You Want to Be the Blue Sonic or the Dark Sonic?; (7) The Social Mind: How Do You Get Your Corpse Back after You've Died?; (8) Conclusion: Duped or Not?; and (9) Appendix: The 36 Learning Principles.
"This is the classic work upon which modern-day game theory is based. What began more than sixty years ago as a modest proposal that a mathematician and an economist write a short paper together blossomed, in 1944, when Princeton University Press published Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. In it, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern conceived a groundbreaking mathematical theory of economic and social organization, based on a theory of games of strategy. Not only would this revolutionize economics, but the entirely new field of scientific inquiry it yielded--game theory--has since been widely used to analyze a host of real-world phenomena from arms races to optimal policy choices of presidential candidates, from vaccination policy to major league baseball salary negotiations. And it is today established throughout both the social sciences and a wide range of other sciences. This sixtieth anniversary edition includes not only the original text but also an introduction by Harold Kuhn, an afterword by Ariel Rubinstein, and reviews and articles on the book that appeared at the time of its original publication in the New York Times, tthe American Economic Review, and a variety of other publications. Together, these writings provide readers a matchless opportunity to more fully appreciate a work whose influence will yet resound for generations to come.
Discusses 3 aspects of playing: multiple realities, dark play, and generating performances. It is suggested that work and daily activities continuously feed on the underlying ground of playing, using the play mood for refreshment, energy, insights, and looseness (i.e., unfocused attention). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Games are created through the act of gameplay, which is contingent on player acts. However, to understand gameplay, we must also investigate contexts, justifications, and limitations. Cheating can be an excellent path into studying the gameplay situation, because it lays bare player's frustrations and limitations. It points to ludic hopes and activities, and it causes us to question our values, our ethics. In comparison, the concept of the magic circle seems static and overly formalist. Structures may be necessary to begin gameplay, but we cannot stop at structures as a way of understanding the gameplay experience. Because of that, we cannot say that games are magic circles, where the ordinary rules of life do not apply. Of course they apply, but in addition to, in competition with, other rules and in relation to multiple contexts, across varying cultures, and into different groups, legal situations, and homes. One evening in the central city of Jeuno, in the world of Vana'diel, individuals of various races, ages, and genders were gathered by the auction house to buy and sell items of great and little value. It was a normal evening, filled with the usual chatter related to battles, monsters, and socializing, barring one exception. An individual was being taken to task by many others, who slapped, poked, and shouted at him, complaining that he (Kofgood) was ruining the economy of the world with his (and his associate's) activities. No one defended him, and Kofgood himself said nothing, calmly completed his transactions, and then left. Yet, talk about Kofgood and his ilk continued and certainly did not end when he or other individuals left Jeuno.
This paper explores the problem space of forbidden games: games not only on the border of games and reality, but explicitly referencing the double-coded nature of that boundary—in other words, games that use their status as "only a game" as a strategic gesture. It asks three key questions: what does it mean to be a forbidden or "brink" game, what is the function of these works, and, perhaps most importantly, to what extent do they have critical potential. To answer these questions, a methodological approach is drawn from functional systems theory, as read primarily through the work of Niklas Luhmann. Through this approach, I demonstrate the importance of these games in relation to the separation of games and reality, and suggest the strength of such works lies in their ability to both observe and critique everyday life.
From a cultural history and game theoretical perspective my work focuses on the relationship between the fantasy subculture, fantasy role-playing games and the daily life of their participants in the Netherlands. Main research themes are the construction of game/play space and identities. Within this context I elaborate in this paper on the usefulness of the term magic circle (Johan Huizinga). I will argue why in game research the current use of the term magic circle is problematic. We can understand the term differently when returning to the context in which Huizinga introduced the magic circle as ritual play-ground. According to him ritual is play and play is ritual. Referring back to his work Homo Ludens (1938) I will discuss the various relationships between role-play and ritual performance. I will argue that fantasy role-playing consists of collections of performances or ritual acts, in which players construct the game/play space, identities and meaning.
From EverQuest to World of Warcraft, online games have evolved from the exclusive domain of computer geeks into an extraordinarily lucrative staple of the entertainment industry. People of all ages and from all walks of life now spend thousands of hoursâand dollarsâpartaking in this popular new brand of escapism. But the line between fantasy and reality is starting to blur. Players have created virtual societies with governments and economies of their own whose currencies now trade against the dollar on eBay at rates higher than the yen. And the players who inhabit these synthetic worlds are starting to spend more time online than at their day jobs. In Synthetic Worlds, Edward Castronova offers the first comprehensive look at the online game industry, exploring its implications for business and culture alike. He starts with the players, giving us a revealing look into the everyday lives of the gamersâoutlining what they do in their synthetic worlds and why. He then describes the economies inside these worlds to show how they might dramatically affect real world financial systems, from potential disruptions of markets to new business horizons. Ultimately, he explores the long-term social consequences of online games: If players can inhabit worlds that are more alluring and gratifying than reality, then how can the real world ever compete? Will a day ever come when we spend more time in these synthetic worlds than in our own? Or even more startling, will a day ever come when such questions no longer sound alarmist but instead seem obsolete? With more than ten million active players worldwideâand with Microsoft and Sony pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into video game developmentâonline games have become too big to ignore. Synthetic Worlds spearheads our efforts to come to terms with this virtual reality and its concrete effects. âIlluminating. . . . Castronovaâs analysis of the economics of fun is intriguing. Virtual-world economies are designed to make the resulting game interesting and enjoyable for their inhabitants. Many games follow a rags-to-riches storyline, for example. But how can all the players end up in the top 10%? Simple: the upwardly mobile human players need only be a subset of the world's population. An underclass of computer-controlled 'bot' citizens, meanwhile, stays poor forever. Mr. Castronova explains all this with clarity, wit, and a merciful lack of academic jargon.ââThe Economist âSynthetic Worlds is a surprisingly profound book about the social, political, and economic issues arising from the emergence of vast multiplayer games on the Internet. What Castronova has realized is that these games, where players contribute considerable labor in exchange for things they value, are not merely like real economies, they are real economies, displaying inflation, fraud, Chinese sweatshops, and some surprising in-game innovations.ââTim Harford, Chronicle of Higher Education
Guía de referencia para el diseño conceptual de un videojuego, donde se ofrecen los marcos teóricos para construir el juego como un sistema de información que necesita administrar los datos estratégicamente para crear una experiencia de juego (historia, placer, simulación y sentido) en el usuario.
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