Gaming Cultures:: Spring 2006: LIT 4930:: Homo Ludens
Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Boston: Beacon, 1955.
Mediation on play and its importance to humanity.
1 "Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing."
5 "for some play can be serious indeed."
10 play "creates order, is order."
11 "The player who trespasses against the rules or ignores them is a 'spoil-sport.' The spoil-sport is not the same as the false player, the cheat; for the latter pretends to be playing the game and, on the face of it, still acknowledges the magic circle. It is curious to note how much more lenient society is to the cheat than to the spoil-sport. This is because the spoil-sport shatters the play-world itself. (11)
12 "The play-community generally tends to become permanent even after the game is over. Of course, not every game of marbles of every bridge-party leads to the founding of a club. But the feeling of being 'apart together' in an exce[tional situation, of sharing something important, of mutually withdrawing from the rest of the world and rejecting the usual normas, retains its magic beyond the duration of the individual game."
19 "We found that one of the most important characteristics of play was its spatial separation from ordinary life."
Chapter II: the Play Concept as Expressed in Language
Recess?
Chapter III: Play and Contest as Civillizing Functions
50 "What is 'winning', and what is 'won'? Winning means showing
oneself superior in the outcome of a game."
MMORPGs? Activities?
66 contests of politeness, contests with food
Chapter IV: Play and Law
76 "Contest means play."
82 "Sometimes the legal dispute in archaic society takes the form of a wager or even a race."
Chapter V: Play and War
Chapter VI: Playing and Knowing
riddles; competitions of esoteric knowledge
105 "The questions which the hierophants put to one another in turn or by way of challenge are riddles in the fullest sense of the word, exactly resembling the riddles in a parlour-game but for their sacred import."
Chapter VII: Play and Poetry
Chapter XII: Play-Element in Contemporary Culture
198 "Whether they are games of chance or skill they all contain an element of seriousness."