My DiGRA 2013 talk presenting a critical reading of Thomas Malaby's 2007 paper "Beyond Play".

1. back to playa reply to malaby
Sebastian Deterding
MAGIC Lab, Rochester Institute of Technology
DiGRA 2013, Atlanta, August 28, 2013
c b

2. 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
2

3. 3
games
play
separable: opposite to work
safe: free from consequence
pleasurable: fun, normatively positive

4. 4
games
play
separable: opposite to work
safe: free from consequence
pleasurable: fun, normatively positive

5. games
»a semibounded and socially legitimate
domain of contrived contingency that
generates interpretable outcomes«
5
play
»a label for a mode of experience, a way
of engaging the world«

6. two issues

7. »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 malaby
beyond play (2007: 96)
7
issue
#1

8. 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«
8
issue
#1/2

9. 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
9
counter
#1/2

10. 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
10
counter
#2/2

11. 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
11
!= separable or inconsequential:
activity is not chiefly organized
and avowedly done for the sake of
an external consequence
counter
#2/2

12. 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
12
!= 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

13. 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
13
!= defined as “safe”:
lack of threats facilitates getting
into “a playful state of mind”
counter
#2/2

14. 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
14

15. »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 malaby
beyond play (2007: 100)
15
issue
#2/2

16. »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 bateson
mind and nature (1979: 134–8)
16

17. 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
17
issue
#2/2

18. • 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
18
play(fulness): activity or attitude?
counter
#1/1

19. 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 Goffman
frame analysis (1986: 43–4)
19

20. e.g.A rehearsal
20

21. or playing with chess
21
Photo: yeanvm

22. 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
22

23. 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
23

24. sebastian@codingconduct.cc
@dingstweets
codingconduct.cc
Thank you.