ETEC 565D

IP4 – Theoretical Foundations of Play

Marlis Enders

For those who are reading Huizinga and Caillois for the first time (i.e NOT the summer institute
folks), for this activity you will do a 20 minute or so observation of play — animal play, kids play,
play with your friends, online play — and draw direct and meaningful connections from those
observations to the theoretical conceptualizations of game and play advanced by both Huizinga
and Caillois. No more than 600 words.

For this exercise, I and my husband played a game called ‘Air Hockey Challenge’ on a
tablet. The game involves trying to propel a moving target into a specific target goal on the
opponent’s side of the screen. The objective is to score 7 goals before your opponent does.
Caillois would classify this as a ‘competition’ game or ‘agon’. As I played this game, I went
through a variety of emotions from pleasure, frustration, joy, ambivalence, and dejection, all part
of the competitive nature of this game, and the competitive spirit with which this was played.
Agon, as described by Caillois implies equality of rivalry between the parties involved, however,
my husband had an advantage as he mentioned that he had played air hockey often as a child.
In their definitions of ‘Play’, both Huizinga and Caillois assert that play must be voluntary.
In the strictest sense of the word, this activity was not entirely voluntary as it was not
spontaneously initiated for the pure sense of entertainment, however, it was a ‘source of joy and
amusement’ (Caillois). Caillois also defines play as “…an occasion of pure waste: waste of time,
energy, skill, and often of money…”, a concept that I would argue with, as I believe that anything
that has a beneficial element cannot be deemed a ‘waste’. The psychological and relational
benefits of play cannot be argued. Huizinga states that “…play naturally contributes to the well-
being of the group, but in quite another way… than the acquisition of the necessities of life”.
There is a purpose to the element of play.
Both Huizinga and Caillois also state that play (games) has boundaries of time and/or
space. This was evident in the game we played. It had a very definite space (my tablet screen),
and the time was limited (one game equals the first to reach 7 points). Because of these
limitations, there was a strong element of frustration and competitiveness. As my husband won
many more games than I did, the frustration won out over the joy and amusement. The element
of ‘seriousness’ took over as Huizinga describes.
I find the concept of the ‘cheat’ vs the ‘spoil sport’ interesting. Both writers mention that
a person who ‘cheats’ doesn’t spoil the game, but rather the person who spoils the illusion of the
‘magic circle’. Huizinga calls this person the ‘spoil sport’ and Caillois calls him the ‘Nihiist’. I
found it interesting that a moral and ethical concept came up while playing our game – the
concept of cheating. Could my competitive nature drive me to circumvent the rules? Would that
spoil the game for my husband? Perhaps only if he was aware. But then, it also ruins the
element of play for me because as Caillois puts it, “An outcome in advance with no possibility of
error or surprise, clearly leading to an inescapable result, is incompatible with the nature of
play.”. Cheating robs one of this ‘surprise’ and therefore robs one of the element of play.
Both authors have similar ideas when it comes to defining the element of play, however,
Caillois delves more into the concept of play in terms of games, whereas Huizinga waxes more
philosophically extending play into the realms of cultural ritual and religious concepts.