Games as Social Play - Ch 28

1st level: social interaction is within magic circle, as product of formal system of a game.

- internally derived

2nd level: social roles brought into the game from outside the magic circle,

- externally derived

-Playing a game generates meaning for the players which reproduce social interaction.
-Game is a symbolic system players use to communicate with each other.
-Player is given a role upon entering the game, not a character to play, but a role in the social network of the game.
Sutton-Smith model: internally derived social interactions
actor - counteractor, both construct the experience in the game
motive of play: abstraction of games mechanic
e.g. Role of actor: to catch
Motive of Play: chase
Role of Counteractor: to outdistance, dodge

Bartle’s model: externally derived social interactions, outside the magic circle
Achievers (points gathering and rising in levels are most important to them),

Explorers (try progressively every possible action in the game, interesting features, etc), Socializers (interested in people and what they have to say), and

Killers (attack other players to kill their personae)

Difference between Sutton-Smith model and Bartle model:
Bartle is looking less at the social core mechanics of the game and more higher levels social roles

Bounded Commities
A play community arises out of the operation of a game.
-emerges from play
-function of the rules of the game,
-personalities of the players,
-interactions between the players
-the larger social context
Paradoxical relationship between a game and play community:
-play community is an effect of the game
-game depends on the community
-Open vs Closed Systems:

As Rules, games are closed systems

As Culture, games are open systems

As Play, games can be open or closed

A play community can be bounded or not bounded

A bounded community is a closed system, takes place withing the space of the game
Not bounded community is an open system, includes group of players across number of games.
Bounded community is more artificial because it has no interaction with the outside world, it is in the magic circle.
Bounded community of a game has a social contract:

-consisting of the rules that determine how players interact with each other. Members of the community maintains this contract till the end, providing integrity within the magic circle. Rule-breakers can damage this frame.

-commitment to the set of behaviors and values

-a social frame

-acts against the uncertainty

-safety and trust: necessary to comfortably enter into social space of the game

-trust: shared way of understanding the rules, the way games are played

* Another paradox: social space is artificial, however, rules players know as a sense to trust belong to real world.

Implicit rules here connects these two: artificial space of the game and the social context in which the game is played.

Piaget’s stages of children progress, within the game rules:

1. child doesn’t understand the fixed rules

2. child comes to know that three are rules

3. child understands that games have social contracts

So child develops the understanding of the rules, as well as the social contract.

Transformative Social Play:
players use the game to transform social relationships.

ideal rules: official regulations of the game, printed on the package of the game

real rules: codes and conventions held by a play community - how the game ought to be played.

Gaming the game: playing the game by expressing player’s social being, not playing a game but gaming the game. Players play with the interpretations of the rules and proporse their own variations.

Forbidden play: free within the limits set by rules
allows behaviors not normally permitted between players

Metagame: relationship between artificiality of the game and social reality:game beyond the game
Garfield’s divides manifestations of the metagame into four categories:
1- what a player brings to a game
2- what a player takes away from a game
3- what happens between games
4- what happens during a game other than the game itself