Magic Circles and Rules, Play, and Culture

Writing in Virtual WorldsCody Reimer

Purdue, Fall 2010

Huizinga’s Magic Circle

• “The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc. are all in form and function play-grounds, i.e. forbidden spots, isolated, hedged around, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart” (Homo Ludens 10; my emphasis)

Bogost’s Gap in the Circle

• “But if all games are both ideological and extrinsically subjective, then the magic circle cannot maintain its status as a hallowed, isolated safe place, at least not entirely” (Unit Operations 134).

• “There is a gap in the magic circle through which players carry subjectivity in and out of the game space.” (135).

Nardi’s Partial Separation

• “Play does not, and cannot, exist in an imperturbable magic circle; it is always in dynamic relations of tension to other activities in which a player might engage” (My Life as a Night Elf Priest 108).

Persistence of the Circle

• “But the feeling of being ‘apart together’ in an exceptional situation, of sharing something important, of mutually withdrawing from the rest of the world and rejecting the usual norms, retains its magic beyond the duration of the individual game” (Homo Ludens 12).

• “This suggests that the magic circle of the game world ruptures into the material world, but yet it does not disappear entirely” (Unit Operations 134).

Circle as Ephemeral

• “The magic circle is both a prerequisite and an effect of play. It is a robust context for the exhilarating experiences of game play. But it is similarly fragile, and vanishes quickly when a game ends” (Rules of Play 450).

Immersive Fallacy

• Suspension of disbelief• Escapism/Immersion• Huizinga’s definition• Elena Gorfinkel: Immersion is not a property

of a game or text but an effect of it• Immersive fallacy: Fun comes from

transportation to simulated reality

Fine’s 3 Layer Model

• “Fine’s three-layer model is an extension of the double-consciousness of play. Players always know that they are playing, and in that knowledge are free to move among the roles of person, player, and character. Players of a game freely embrace the flexibility of this movement, coming in and out of moments of immersion, breaking the player and character frames, yet all the while maintaining the magic circle” (Rules of Play 455).

•Ignoring the problem that players don’t always know whether they’re actually playing a game…

•Salen and Zimmerman’s assertion holds some interesting ideas about what makes games fun

•They ask ‘what would happen if game developers switched from striving for immersion and instead worked towards double-consciousness?’

•The result, they say, would be “games that emphasize metagaming, or that connect the magic circle so closely with external contexts that the game appears synchronous with everyday life” (455).

Rules, Culture, Play

• “As RULES, games are closed systems, as CULTURE, games are open systems, but as PLAY, we can frame games as either closed or open systems, depending on which aspects of the experience we highlight” (Rules of Play 471; original emphasis).

• Explained by Bogost’s procedural rhetoric, culture is seen in the rules of the game when the game is played

Ideal and Real Rules

Metagaming

• “Metagaming refers to the relationship between the game and outside elements, including everything from player attitudes and play styles to social reputations and social contexts in which the game is played” (Rules of Play 481).

• Metagaming is an act or result of osmosis between the contents of the magic circle and the outside world

Game Over