Week four

Huizinga states that play is very important to humanity.
The characteristics of play according to him are
play is voluntary
play is outside ordinary life
play has fixed boundaries
play promotes social groups.

“The formal characteristics of play might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside “ordinary” life as being “not serious, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means.”(Homo ludens, p13)

The time and space boundaries, social groupings who stress their difference create a magic circle. A safe are. An enchanted zone were special rules apply. When you are playing a game you are entering the magic circle.
As Huizinga mentioned: there is no material benefit. no profit can be gained by playing games. Deciding to play a game to choose to enter the magic circle requires a certain attitude.
The Lusory attitude is where a player must enter a state of mind that allows them to play the game. You accept the rules and limitations, to gain pleasure from a game.
When I was playing Fishy I had to accept that I was a fish and wanted to eat small fish. I also had to accept that I did not have much space to swim in.
When I was playing Doom I had to accept that I had to kill people, or could be killed myself And that I could only go into certain corridors and rooms. And by accepting these conditions I could both enter into my fishy- and my Doom magic circle.