Play’s Republic

here are random thoughts which ideally should have been posted separately and written more coherently - but I am playing catch-up.

Thought #1  I will take another crack at convincing you that you don’t create magic circles, you just enter someone else’s - or in other words, we live in a world of concentric magic circles. There is a pretty big circle - the social contract - and it keeps going from there. While each of their definitions differed a bit Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau all explained society vs. our agreement to play by certain rules to escape a life that is less than ideal. Human interaction is ruled by continuous creation of magic circles - which operate within each other…which means that they are bounded within the rules of the larger circle, which seriously brings in to question your ability to create one that is outside the bounds of society, culture, family, etc…..

Thought #2  Speaking of institutions - Caillois and Hezigna’s frameworks do not address institutional boundaries within which games are created - well. Or rather are overshadowed by them. Agon and Mimicry emphasise the dominant institutional framework by creating what it is that we aspire to - defining what is best and what is worth mimicking. Alea serves to create false hope that we may be able to beat the system - even though we won’t be able to in the end. Ilinx - the dangerous one - is the only time during which institutions or rules are challenged. I realize that I was privileging science as a framework in class but that is the focus of Caillois’ definition of ilinx - i.e. vertigo.

Thought #3  I realize this brings in the whole notion of Agency - I leave that discussion to another time.

Last Thought decided to run play, game and stake (idea which should also be developed further because it is larger than just agon or $$ in alea) the visual thesaurus for fun:

Game

Stake