back to playa reply to malabySebastian DeterdingMAGIC Lab, Rochester Institute of TechnologyDiGRA 2013, Atlanta, August 28, 2013

cb

Highly influential definition of games Sage 2013

Practice-theoretical, process-oriented challenge to formalism, essentialism, exceptionalism in current game studies

a gift to game studies

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games

playseparable: opposite to worksafe: free from consequence

pleasurable: fun, normatively positive

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games

playseparable: opposite to worksafe: free from consequence

pleasurable: fun, normatively positive

games»a semibounded and socially legitimate domain of contrived contingency that

generates interpretable outcomes«

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play»a label for a mode of experience, a way

of engaging the world«

two issues

»Games have a long-running, deep, and habitual association with “play,” itself a shallowly examined term, historically and culturally specific to Western modernity. […] None of [. its] features holds as an intrinsic, universal feature of games when they are examined empirically«

thomas malabybeyond play (2007: 96)

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issue#1

essentializing western »play«

• Play definitions (of Huizinga & Caillois) claim universal features of play not really universal:

• Separable, opposite of work: Not all cultures know Western work/leisure distinction

• Safe, inconsequential: Gambling, goldfarming, soccer championships show material and symbolic consequence

• Pleasurable: Gaming comes with unpleasant experiences – »engaging« is more apt than »fun«

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issue

#1/2

universality of animal & child play

• Play found across species; all mammals play; higher primates, humans most playful species Burghardt 2005

• Object, social, pretend & rule play found across all studied cultures Pellegrini 2009, Konner 2010

• Rule play (= gaming) evolutionarily and developmentally latest emerging form ibid.

• Ethology, developmental psychology, anthropology agree on characteristics of play Burghardt 2005, Pellegrini 2009

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counter

#1/2

actual characteristics of play

• Limited immediate function

• Incomplete, exaggerated, recombined, repeated, metacommunication, e.g. play smile

• Autotelic, means over ends, voluntary

• Happening in »relaxed field«, with no immediate threat present Burghardt 2005, Pellegrini 2009, Konner 2010

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counter

#2/2

actual characteristics of play

• Limited immediate function

• Incomplete, exaggerated, recombined, repeated, metacommunication, e.g. play smile

• Autotelic, means over ends, voluntary

• Happening in »relaxed field«, with no immediate threat present Burghardt 2005, Pellegrini 2009, Konner 2010

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!= separable or inconsequential: activity is not chiefly organized and avowedly done for the sake of an external consequence

counter

#2/2

actual characteristics of play

• Limited immediate function

• Incomplete, exaggerated, recombined, repeated, metacommunication, e.g. play smile

• Autotelic, means over ends, voluntary

• Happening in »relaxed field«, with no immediate threat present Burghardt 2005, Pellegrini 2009, Konner 2010

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!= separable or inconsequential: activity is not chiefly organized and avowedly done for the sake of an external consequence

!= fun, pleasurable:but “autotelic” is primary quality of “flow” activities

counter

#2/2

actual characteristics of play

• Limited immediate function

• Incomplete, exaggerated, recombined, repeated, metacommunication, e.g. play smile

• Autotelic, means over ends, voluntary

• Happening in »relaxed field«, with no immediate threat present Burghardt 2005, Pellegrini 2009, Konner 2010

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!= defined as “safe”:lack of threats facilitates getting into “a playful state of mind”

counter

#2/2

essentializing western »play«?

• Yes: The features (named by Huizinga & Caillois) are part of the modern rhetorics of play as frivolity and the self Sutton-Smith 1997

• But: Good evidence in ethology, anthropology, developmental psychology that play is universal

• Ethology, anthropology, psychology identify different features than Malaby critiques

• The features critiqued by Malaby describe norms of Western cultivation of play & games, not essential characteristics – which allows for norm deviation

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»If by “play,” we are trying to signal a state or mode of human experience (something like Csikszentmihalyi’s […] “flow”)—a way of engaging the world whatever one is doing—then we cannot simultaneously use it reliably as a label for a kind or form of distinct human activity (something that allows us to differentiate between activities that “are play” and those that “are not”). This is consistent with Csikszentmihalyi’s […] investigations, where he was surprised to find situations of “work” just as likely (in fact, more likely) to produce the state of “flow” than so-called “play” activities.«

thomas malabybeyond play (2007: 100)

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issue

#2/2

»Exploration, play, crime […] are not categories of behavior, they are categories of contextual organization of behavior. [... They] do not define the actions which are their content. […] In ordinary parlance, ‘play’ is not the name of an act or action; it is the name of a frame for action.«

gregory batesonmind and nature (1979: 134–8)

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play(fulness): activity or attitude

• Play cannot logically be an attitude toward any activity and one specific activity Malaby 2007

• Work activities give rise to play attitude/flow: play is attitude not activity Malaby 2007, Csikszentmihalyi 1990

• Play, crime, exploration are not definable behaviours, but contexts, frames of behaviours Bateson 1979, Stevens & Bateson 1979

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issue

#2/2

• Formal features of activity and setting don’t determine, but afford playful attitude, flow Csikszentmihalyi 1975, 1990

• Autotelic engagement is core feature of play and flow Csikszentmihalyi 1975, 1990

• There can be playing and gaming as defined types of activity, and playfulness as a mode of engaging Sicart in press, Stenros in press

• Even playfully engaged-in activity needs to be made observably intelligible to others and self as playful: the activity needs to have a signature form Garfinkel 1967

• Playfulness is a not a type of activity, but a type of transformation of activity and attitude: a keying Goffman 1986

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play(fulness): activity or attitude?counter

#1/1

Keyings are »conventions by which a given activity, […] meaningful in terms of some primary framework, is transformed into something patterned on this activity but seen by the participants to be something quite else.«

Erving Goffmanframe analysis (1986: 43–4)

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e.g. A rehearsal

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or playing with chess

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Photo: yeanvm

summary: reinstating play I

• Play is a trans-species phenomenon

• Childhood play is an anthropological universal, rule play its latest developmental stage & the mould for adult gaming

• We never encounter childhood play & adult gaming but in locally cultivated form

• Huizinga and Caillois exemplify the rhetorics of frivolity and self that are part of Western norms of playing and gaming

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summary: reinstating play II

• Playing and gaming are frames = culturally shared contexts organising activity and attitude

• Involving, in today’s Western cultures, conventions of autotelic engagement, limited immediate function, play smile, etc., most of which »show through« features of animal play

• Playfulness is a secondary transformation, keying of already framed activity

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sebastian@codingconduct.cc

@dingstweets

codingconduct.cc

Thank you.