Tag Archive for week 2

Professional Games and Spectating

Of particular interest to me in this week’s readings were Huizinga and Parlett’s claims that professionalized play, especially sports, tend to fall outside the definition of play. Certainly simple participation in “ball-games,” as Huizinga calls them, falls under the category of play, but does this change if the game becomes big business and one signs…

Week two reading response, Huizinga

Reading through Huizinga’s work I became very distraught at times due to what he was saying about play and he wouldn’t always clarify what he meant to ease my worries. Huizinga mentions the seriousness of play and said that it is naturally not serious and that humans made it seriousness with games such as chess,…

1/22 Reading Response

Most of the texts we read for the first week did not leave a lasting impression. It wasn’t until I started reading “Homo Ludens,” by J. Huizinga that I found sentences that left me thinking about games and history. The first one was when Huizinga stated, “Play only becomes possible, thinkable and understandable when an…

Reading Response

Homo Ludens by J. Huizinga was an interesting read that I gained a lot of information from as well as interested on how he referred to and defined ‘play.’ The fact that he did not limit play to a human characteristic and acknowledged that animals ‘play’ as well was intriguing. Huizinga also states that ‘play’…

Post 1

When I signed up for this class, I was confused as to how a class could be centered around games and play. And after the first day meeting I was worried we would be mostly talking about videogaming and board games. After starting on the first article I realized that there was an entire background…

Reality and Games

Are games really separate from reality, are they purely a fantasy? All four readings seem to suggest this, and even go so far as to make this distinction between reality and games essential to the definitions of “game” and “play”. “Real play comes to an end when its players report back to the real world” (The Art…

Reading Response Numero Uno

After reading this week’s articles, I realized just how much the concept of “play” is overlooked in our daily lives. Before switching back into history, I was a psychology major. To separate the psychological and scientific concepts of play from the more abstract and contextual ideas of it as seen in a more historical manner…

On the Cusp of Being a Game

Out of all the articles, the one that stuck me most was actually Juul’s The Game, the Player, the World. It offered a distinct and specific method to quantify games, but more interestingly it also acted as a framework with which to remove the game label from various entities. The Sims is used as the…

Response

I thought the readings were eye-opening, fascinating, and yet complex. I always thought games and play was something that did not need a thought process. However, after reading these articles I realize that I am wrong. I enjoyed the Miguel Sicart piece, Play Matters, because I love his honesty about play, games, and sports. I love how…

Reading Response I

I found Huzinga’s reading particularly frustrating when considering my own philosophical perspective on games. I disagree with how he characterizes games as irrational, and strictly a social construction. When I think of games, and how they function in the daily lives of people, I consider the work of neuroscientists like David J. Linden. Linden has…