“Each person defines games in his own way – the anthropologists and folklorists in terms of historical origins; the military men, businessmen, and educators in terms of usages; the social scientists in terms of psychological and social functions. There is overwhelming evidence in all this that the meaning of games is, in part, a function of the ideas of those who think about them.”
– E.M. Avedon in “The Structural Elements of Games” in “The Study of Games”, Sutton-Smith and Avedon, Eds., New York 1971, p.438
«A voluntary activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy, and the consciousness that it is different from ordinary life.»“
– Johan Huizinga (1938), Homo Ludens.
“Play is a subset of voluntary behaviour involving a selective mechanism which reverses the usual contingencies of power so as to permit the subject a controllable and dialectical simulation of the moderately unmastered arousals and regulations of everyday life, in a way that is alternatively vivifying and euphoric.”
– Brian Sutton-Smith: “Die Dialektik des Spiels”, 1977, S.64
“Play is that voluntary action which has a dialectical structure and which potentiates reversible operations.”
– Brian Sutton-Smith: “Die Dialektik des Spiels”, 1977, S.98
“A game is: A closed, formal system that Engages players in structured conflict and Resolves its uncertainty in an unequal outcome.”
– Tracy Fullerton (2008), “Game Design Workshop. A Playcentric Approach to creat innovative Games.” p.43
“I’m less interested in the details of the game than in the game play itself; the unfolding of the answers IS the narrative that has me hooked
… a meta-narrative”
– Barry Joseph in Jane McGonigal (2003) “‘This Is Not a Game’: Immersive Aesthetics and Collective Play”
«Play can be recognized by the more or less large-scale change in the relation of equilibrium between the reality relation and the ego. One could thus say: if adaptive activity and thought produce an equilibrium between assimilation and accommodation, then play begins at the point at which assimilation begins to dominate accommodation. (…) Play is thus practically pure assimilation.»
– J. Piaget: Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 5: “Nachahmung, Spiel und Traum”, quoted in Claus Pias:”Action, Adventure, Desire”
[Accomodation: Changing your impression from the world according to new experiences. Assimilation: Interpreting the world according to your experiences and attitudes.]
“(…) while Piaget was certainly mistaken in suggesting its progressive disappearance, it is however true that the frequency and nature of playful activitiesdo change among adults. (…) it is important to point out three significant patterns in adult play (…):
– Marginalization of social symbolic play: while social pretence is attested to some extent also among adults (Kleiber, 1999; Göncü and Perone, 2005), its frequency is not very significant, at least in overtly playful forms, due to a variety of factors (among others, scarcity of time, social inhibitions, fear of ridicule, lack of suitable occasions).
– Decline of rule changing in games with rules: the stage of rule changing is somehow transient in children’s games, while adults show a tendency to avoid it in most cases, except within very restricted communities (e.g., fans of specific games, profes- sional game authors, pedagogues applying play as educational support; Sutton-Smith, 1979; Fine,
1983; Giuliano, 1997; Farné , 2005).
– Predominance of codified games without rule changing: participation in games with pre-codified systems of rules is by far the most common playful activity among adults, who might show various degrees of passion and mastery in their craft – from absolute beginners and absent-minded amateurs, to devoted scholars and renowned champions (Caillois, 1961; Goffman, 1961; Sutton-Smith, 1997).”
– Fabio Paglieri (2005), “Playing By and With the Rules: Norms
and Morality in Play Development”, p.154-155
«A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.»
– Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman (2004), “Rules of Play – Game Design Fundamentals” p.96
«A game is a form of art in which participants, termed players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal.»
– Greg Costikyan (1994), “I have no words & I must design”
«A game is a rule-based system with a variable and quantifiable outcome, where different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels attached to the outcome and the consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable.»
– Jesper Juul (2005), “Half-Real. Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds”, p.37
“When you strip away the genre differences and the technological complexities, all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.”
– Jane McGonigal (2011), “Reality is Broken”, p. 29
“The philosopher James P. Carse once wrote that there are two kinds of games: finite games, which we play to win, and infinite games, which we play in order to keep playing as long as possible.”
– Jane McGonigal (2011), “Reality is Broken”, p. 34
“Many, if not most, computer and video games today are structured this way. Players begin each game by tackling the obstacle of not knowing what to do and not knowing how to play. This kind of ambiguous play is markedly different from historical, predigital games. Traditionally, we have needed instructions in order to play a game. But now we’re often invited to learn as we go. We explore the game space, and the computer code effectively constrains and guides us. We learn how to play by carefully observing what the game allows us to do and how it responds to our input.”
– Jane McGonigal (2011), “Reality is Broken”, p. 35
“A good game is a unique way of structuring experience and provoking positive emotion. It is an extremely powerful tool for inspiring participation and motivating hard work. And when this tool is deployed on top of a network, it can inspire and motivate tens, hundreds, thousands, or millions of people at a time.
Anything else you think you know about games, forget it for now. All the good that comes out of games—every single way that games can make us happier in our everyday lives and help us change the world—stems from their ability to organize us around a voluntary obstacle.”
– Jane McGonigal (2011), “Reality is Broken”, p. 43
“Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.”
– Bernhard Suits (1978), “The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia”
“Jedes spielende Kind benimmt sich wie ein Dichter, indem es seine eigene Welt erschafft oder, richtiger gesagt, die Dinge seiner Welt in eine neue, ihm gefällige Ordnung versetzt. Es wäre dann unrecht zu meinen, es nähme diese Welt nicht ernst, es verwendet große Affektbeträge darauf. Der Gegensatz zum Spiel ist nicht Ernst, sondern Wirklichkeit. Das Kind unterscheidet seine Spielwelt sehr wohl, trotz aller Affektbesetzung, von der Wirklichkeit und lehnt seine imaginierten Objekte und Verhältnisse gerne an greifbare und sichtbare Dinge der wirklichen Welt an. Nichts anderes als diese Anlehnung unterscheidet das ‘Spielen’ des Kindes noch vom ‘Phantasieren’.
– Sigmund Freud, “Der Dichter und das Phantasieren.” In Gesammelte Werke Bd. VII, S.214
“To play a game is to engage in activity directed towards bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by rules, where the rules prohibit more efficient in favor of less efficient means, and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity.”
– Bernard Suits (1978), “The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia”
“I perceive four common factors: representation ["a closed formal system thta subjectively represents a subset of reality"], interaction, conflict, and safety ["the results of a game are always less harsh than the situations the game models"].”
– Chris Crawford (1982), “The Art of Computer Game Design”
“At its most elementary level then we can define game as an exercise of voluntary control systems in which there is an opposition between forces, confined by a procedure and rules in order to produce a disequilibrial outcome.”
– E.M. Avedon and Brian Sutton-Smith (1981), “The Study of Games”
“(…) the preceeding analysy permits play to be defined as an activity which is essentially:
1. Free: in which playing is not obligatory; if it were, it would at once lose its attractice and joyous quality as diversion;
2. Separate: circumscribed within limits of space and time, defined and fixed in advance;
3. Uncertain: the course of which cannot be determined, nor the result attained beforehand, and some latitude for innovations being left to the player’s initiative;
4. Unproductive: creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind; and, except for the exchange of property among the players, ending in a situation identical to that prevailing at the beginning of the game;
5. Governed by rules: under conventions that suspend ordinary laws, and for the moment establish new legislation, which alone Counts;
6. Make-believe: accompanied by a Special awareness of a second reality or of a free unreaiity, as against real life.”
– Roger Caillois (1958), “Man, Play and Games”
“A game is a form of recreation constituted by a set of rules that specify an object to be attained and the permissible means of attaining it.”
David Kelley (1988), “The Art of Reasoning.”, p.50.
“Unlike symbols, rules necessarily imply social or inter- individual relationships. In a mere sensory-motor ritual such as touching every pale of a fence as one goes along, there are no rules, since there is no compulsion. At the most it implies a sense of regularity [. . .]. Rules are a regulation imposed by the group, and their violation carries a sanc- tion. [. . .] [I]n the rule, there is in addition to regularity an idea of obligation which presupposes at least two individuals.”
– Piaget, 1962: pp. 112–113, 142 in Fabio Paglieri (2005)
“law = human + religion
fun = human + sex
games = law + fun (UNLOCKS EXTRAS SECTION)”
– Walkthrough for the game “Doodle God”
“Die Kultur des Menschen besteht darin, seinen sinnlichen Trieb vor seinem Freiheitswillen und seinen Freiheitswillen vor seinem sinnlichen Trieb zu schützen, das heißt beiden Trieben ihre Grenzen anzuzeigen. So der Literat Friedrich Schiller, der daraus eine Beschreibung unseres Spieltriebs ableitet, in dem Formtrieb und sinnlicher Trieb in lebender Gestalt zusammenwirken. Die Kultur ist jenes Geschenk des Himmels, in dem wir uns als mit uns unversöhnbar erfahren, ohne doch je die Hoffnung auf Versöhnung aufgeben zu müssen.”
– Dirk Baecker (2010), “Was ist Kultur”
“Der sinnliche Trieb will, daß Veränderung sei, daß die Zeit einen Inhalt habe; der Formtrieb will, daß die Zeit aufgehoben, daß keine Veränderung sei. Derjenige Trieb also, in welchem beide verbunden wirken (es sei mir einstweilen, bis ich diese Benennung gerechtfertigt haben werde, vergönnt, ihn Spieltrieb zu nennen), der Spieltrieb also würde dahin gerichtet sein, die Zeit in der Zeit aufzuheben, Werden mit absolutem Sein, Veränderung mit Identität zu vereinbaren.
Der sinnliche Trieb will bestimmt werden, er will sein Objekt empfangen; der Formtrieb will selbst bestimmen, er will sein Objekt hervorbringen; der Spieltrieb wird also bestrebt sein, so zu empfangen, wie er selbst hervorgebracht hätte, und so hervorzubringen, wie der Sinn zu empfangen trachtet.”
– Friedrich Schiller (1795), “Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen”, “14. und 15. Brief”
“(…) der Mensch spielt nur, wo er in voller Bedeutung des Worts Mensch ist, und er ist nur da ganz Mensch, wo er spielt.”
– Friedrich Schiller (1795), “Über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen”, “14. und 15. Brief”
“Play is the free space of movement within a more rigid structure. PIay exists both because of and also despite the more rigid structures of asystem.”
– Eric Zimmerman (2004) “Narrative, Interactivity, Play, and Games: Four naughty concepts in need of discipline“, in Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardup-Fruin (eds., 2004) “First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game”, pp. 154-164
“The concept of gaming as it is used in the following pages goes beyond games, in the same way that learning goes beyond the configuration of a classroom. Gaming constitutes the sum total of activities, literacies, knowledge, and practices activated in and around any instance of a game. Gaming is play across media, time, social spaces, and networks of meaning; it includes engagement with digital FAQs, paper game guides, parents and siblings, the history of games, other players, as well as the games themselves. It requires players to be fluent in a series of connected literacies that are multimodal, performative, productive, and participatory in nature. It requires an attitude oriented toward risk taking, meaning creation, nonlinear navigation, problem solving, an understanding of rule structures, and an acknowledgment of agency within that structure, to name but a few.”
– Katie Salen (ed.)(2010), “The Ecology of Games”, p.9