1–20 of 21
Play as Progress: Play is a way of turning children into adults. Play is valuable because it educates and develops the cognitive capacities of human or animal youth. Examples: All forms of children's play and animal play Play as Fate: Human lives and play are controlled by fate in the form of destiny, gods, atoms…
Picture a child poised excitedly at the starting line of a footrace, ready to run down the track, breathlessly awaiting the starting signal. Rather than giving in to her intense desire to leap from the starting line, she waits for the signal that the race has begun. What's going on here? Why does our player anxiously…
Visual scanning: visual perception, especially scanning the entire screen at once. Auditory discriminations: listening for game events and signals. Motor responses: physical actions a player takes with the game controls. Concentration: intense focus on play. Perceptual patterns of learning: coming to know the…
De Koven’s concept of play is predicated on the idea that play, as a purposeless act, is the means through which we can build community and move closer to living better lives. He ultimately moves away from the idea of playing games and towards a purer idea of play beyond games, play as mastery over nothing in…
The term magic circle is appropriate because there is in fact something genuinely magical that happens when a game begins. A fancy Backgammon set sitting all alone might be a pretty decoration on the coffee table. If this is the function that the game is serving-decoration-it doesn't really matter how the game pieces…
What does it mean to say that games take place within set boundaries established by the act of play? Is this really true? Is there really such a distinct boundary? In fact there is. Compare, for example, the informal play of a toy with the more formal play of a game. A child approaching a doll, for example, can slowly…
The Real Significance of Play.—This scheme is, doubtless, imperfect, as critics of Groos’s book have taken occasion to point out, but the idea which underlies it all is a most suggestive and illuminating one, when rightly understood. In his latest work on the play of man, which has recently appeared, Groos makes clear…
Colozza on Play Phenomena.—The psychology and pedagogy of play form the subjects of a recent volume by Professor G. A. Colozza, whose views may be thus summarised: Play is the superfluity of energy over and above the essential needs of life,—at once the equivalent of accumulated energy and the means of its…
A game, toy or article of manufacture includes a set of rules and at least one model. The model has multiple movable parts, where under the rules of play, the model begins in an assembled configuration. As the model loses points under the rules of play, at least some of the parts are removed from the model, or…
In Memory games, the action of the game has some element that is dependent on players’ memory. This is simple and straightforward enough on its surface, but it becomes interestingly complex when examined in greater detail. What particular parts of memory are being tasked by the game? Some games ask the player to…
Experiences that are well aligned with flow are those that we have no trouble committing to for a long time. We concentrate on them for hours at a time because we’re getting rewarded for that concentration. Even more important, perhaps, is that when we’re playing games, we want to enter that deep state of…
What also went unremarked was how much I was learning by playing these games: basic ideas such as taking turns and developing patience while others completed their turns, the strengthening of simple memory, improved physical coordination, an ability to recognize and act on patterns, the capacity to see what might…
Trump is not behaving as a president who will become master of the White House in a month. He bears no sense of how to lead a superpower. Even the US military did not use the term "steal" to describe the move by the Chinese navy. Trump's second tweet makes people worry that he will treat China-US relations as child's…
The singularity of the human species, 1 the study and defence of which form the plan of this work, stands out principally in the actual characteristics of what we shall call in these pages the Noosphere (or thinking envelope) of the earth. But just because, forming a true singularity (and not a simple irregularity) in…
What follows herein is strictly for the eyes of you, the campaign referee. As the creator and ultimate authority in your respective game, this work is written as one Dungeon Master equal to another. Pronouncements there may be, but they are not from "on high" as respects your game. Dictums are given for the sake of…
I prefer rationalism to atheism. The question of God and other objects-of-faith are outside reason and play no part in rationalism, thus you don't have to waste your time in either attacking or defending.
When I am reading Hamlet I often develop an urge to tell people about it, as if the Melancholy Dane's history had heretofore been classified as a top secret. I am bursting with information about Hamlet, so filled am I by the massive "evidence" presented by Shakespeare. So I sit down at my writing table and begin to…
The fascination of any search after truth lies not in the attainment, which at best is found to be very relative, but in the pursuit, where all the powers of the mind and character are brought into play and are absorbed by the task. One feels oneself in contact with something that is infinite and one finds joy that is…
Ruta Skadi stood. Her white arms gleamed in the firelight; her eyes glittered so brightly that even the farthest witch could see the play of expression on her vivid face. “Sisters,” she began, “let me tell you what is happening, and who it is that we must fight. For there is a war coming. I don’t know who will join…
Change is one of mankind’s most mysterious creations. The factors that operate to cause it came into play when man produced his first tool. With it he changed the world forever, and bound himself to the artifacts he would create in order, always, to make tomorrow better than today. But how does change operate? What…