From Huizinga to Frasca The Emergence and Establishment of Games

as a Field of Study

Tom von Sydow

Faculty of Arts Department of Game Design Bachelor’s Thesis in Game Design, 15 Credits Programme: Bachelor Programme in Game Design and Graphics Supervisor: Ernest Adams Examiner: Mikael Fridenfalk June, 2017

Abstract Video games, having become a mass market and part of popular culture, has in the last few decades gained increasingly more attention from the academic community. Within the arts, it was not until Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, released in 1938, that games were first considered as anything more than childish pastime and even then, it would take decades before game studies, from a non-mathematical perspective, emerged as a subject. This study examines the major scholars and theories that exist within the game studies community with focus on arts, to gain a deeper understanding of games in general and game studies in particular. According to the findings of this study, most of scholars within this field have contributed with one or more theories that have helped the field’s understanding of games, that there are substantial similarities in the scholars’ definitions, that the major differences are in the vocabulary, as well as that game studies have grown increasingly more independent from other academic fields including game theory. Keywords: definition, game, game scholars, game studies, ludology, play.

Abstrakt Datorspel, som har blivit en massmarknad och en del av populärkulturen, har under de senaste decennierna fått allt större uppmärksamhet från akademiska kretsar. Inom konstnärliga kretsar var det inte förrän Johan Huizingas Homo Ludens släpptes 1938, som spel kom att betraktas som något mer än barnsligt tidsfördriv, och även då skulle det ta decennier innan spelstudier, från ett icke-matematiskt perspektiv, trädde fram som ett ämne. Denna studie belyser de stora forskarna och teorierna som används inom spelstudier med fokus på konst, för att få en djupare förståelse av spel i allmänhet och spelteori i synnerhet. Studiens resultat fann att de flesta av forskarna inom detta fält har bidragit med en eller flera teorier som har hjälpt dem i deras förståelse av spel, att det finns väsentliga likheter i forskarnas definitioner, att de stora skillnaderna finns i vokabuläret, samt att spelteorin som ämne har blivit allt mer oberoende från andra akademiska områden som inkluderar spelteori.

Table of Contents

1 Background .......................................................................................................................1

2 Review ..............................................................................................................................3

2.1 Humanities period (1930’s-1970’s) .........................................................................3

2.1.1 Johan Huizinga..........................................................................................3

2.1.2 Roger Caillois ...........................................................................................4 2.1.3 Elliott M Avadon and Brian Sutton-Smith ...............................................6

2.2 Industrial period (1970’s-1990’s) ............................................................................6

2.2.1 Chris Crawford..........................................................................................7

2.3 Independent period (2000’s-today) ..........................................................................9

2.3.1 Gonzalo Frasca..........................................................................................9

2.3.2 Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman...........................................................10

2.3.3 Jesper Juul ...............................................................................................12

3 Analysis...........................................................................................................................14 3.1 The definitions of games........................................................................................14

3.2 Society derived from games or games derived from society? ...............................16

3.3 Games as simulations or representations? .............................................................17

3.4 A call for independence .........................................................................................18

4 Conclusion ......................................................................................................................20

References .......................................................................................................................21

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1 Background The history of video games is often a confusing subject when compared to that of other cultural medias as it has been described as both very short and very long (Juul 2005: p. 3). It is short because video games as we know them as only existed for some 50 years depending on what is defined as a video game, and is thus one of the youngest forms of culture. However, if we are to think of video games as games in overall – which we have to in order to understand them in any meaningful way – their history stretches back thousands of years into pre-recorded history. Examples of ancient games include the Mesopotamian Game of Ur, dating back to at least 2600 BC (Avedon & Sutton-Smith: p. 21), the Egyptian game senet dates back even further to at least 2686 BC (Juul 2005: p. 4) and the Chinese game of Go from 2000 BC is still played today (Salen & Zimmerman: p. 627). With this in mind games are suddenly astonishingly older than cultural forms like film, television and modern theater. However, it was not until their transformation into electronic form that they would reach their potential as a mass market and even then, it took decades before video games became an established part of popular culture – it was not until the success of Atari’s Pong (1972) that they proved to be commercially successful. After the “golden age of arcade games” towards the end of the 1970’s and the video game market crash of 1983 the home consoles took over as the main platform of choice for playing video games (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, et al 2008: pp. 59-60). Since then, video games have steadily grown in size into the multi-billion dollar industry it is today (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, et al. 2008: pp. 87-88). In the wake of this new industry a new field of research has emerged: game studies. As the market grew, the interest in games as a field of study has grown. Developers, CEOs and market analysts needed to understand them better in order to create better and more profitable games. Several questions in particular arose: What is a game really? What types of games exist? Why do we play them? What is their role in our culture and society? How do we understand them better? Games have to some extent been studied since before the emergence of the video game industry, as we have already stated, as games have existed since ancient times. However, these studies have mainly consisted of research as a means to understand some other aspect of culture, a specific group of people or a mere historical record of games. This changed with Dutch historian Johan Huizinga, who in his 1938 book Homo Ludens argued that the role games played in culture was vastly neglected and called for more research on the study. Since then, Huizinga has been joined by a long list of scholars who have devoted themselves to the study of games: Caillois, Avedon, Sutton-Smith, Crawford, Frasca, Salen, Zimmerman, and Juul, to name a few. In this thesis, study is made of the major works of the aforementioned scholars, their key theories, their contributions to the field and their views on games as they are presented. Comparison is made between the results as an attempt to answer a few key research questions:

- What are the key theories of the scholar in question? - How are games defined? - Why do we play games? - What is the role of games in society?

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By analyzing the development of the field throughout history, I hope to be able to highlight similarities and differences among scholars, important contributions and milestones from the perspective of arts, and give nuanced answers to some of the field’s key issues. Ultimately, the purpose of the study is to gain a greater understanding of games in general and game studies as a field in particular.

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2 Review

The literature on which this study is based is exclusively from scholars with years of experience studying games and, in the case of more recent scholars, developing games. I have chosen to divide the history of games studies into three periods, each with specific scholars, ideas and events in the world of games. Note that this is no formal distinction. It is simply meant to assist the reader’s navigation of this paper and help them correlate the scholars and their ideas to the state of the game industry. 2.1 Humanities period (1930’s-1970’s) The first period spans roughly from the 1930’s (specifically from the release of Huizinga’s Homo Ludens) up until the emergence of the video game industry in the 1970’s. Common themes are the role of games in society and their function for humans from a sociological, anthropological and historical perspective. The major scholars during this period were Johan Huizinga, Roger Caillois, Elliott M. Avedon, and Brian Sutton-Smith. 2.1.1 Johan Huizinga A first major turning point for game studies is typically attributed to the work of Dutch historian Johan Huizinga (Caillois 1961: p. 3, Juul 2005: p. 10, Salen & Zimmerman 2004: p. 32). His book Homo Ludens, originally published in 1938, has been referred to as a first major effort to study games in detail from an artistic prespective, rather than using them as a tool to understand something else or a mere historical recount of their development. That Homo Ludens is brought up as a milestone for game studies is no surprise considering Huizinga’s main thesis. Instead of analyzing games as a parenthesis in cultural expression or an occasional form of human behavior, as was the case before him, Huizinga argues on the contrary: games (or rather, play) are essential to culture and even predate society as a whole (Huizinga 1949). His arguments for this are many and speculative, basing his views on the works of other historians, anthropologists and psychologists rather than his own field research. Several of his observations about games and play have come to be both accepted and debated in the academic community since. It is worth noting that Huizinga speaks mainly of play rather than games per se. While the two concepts are closely related and most of what Huizinga says about play can be applied to games (and has been for the last several decades by other scholars), the reader may want to keep in mind that this may not have been Huizinga’s original intent. This includes Huizinga's definition of play which is frequently used as a definition of games and as an early example of the problems surrounding such a definition (Juul 2005: pp. 30-37, Salen & Zimmerman 2004: p. 75). It is as follows: “...a free activity, standing quite consciously outside “ordinary” life, as being “not serious”, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner.” (Huizinga 1949: p. 13). A key contribution Huizinga made to game studies is the concept of the magic circle (Huizinga 1949: pp. 9-13). The magic circle is the physical or mental space in which the given rules of a game apply. Standing outside the circle, the rules and goal of a game are meaningless. Inside it, the rules are all that matters and the player exercise great effort to follow them. An example of this would be the football field, where scoring a goal according

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to the sports rules is all that matters to the players, while outside the field the goal is just a suspended net and the ball may be picked up with the hands at wish. Note that the magic circle is also limited to time, as Huizinga’s definition of a game indicates: once the judge’s whistle blows, the match is over and the players may pick up the ball again. While Huizinga himself rarely uses the exact term magic circle, it is a concept he returns to throughout Homo Ludens and something that has been used by several scholars since (Juul 2005: pp. 164-167, Salen & Zimmerman 2004: pp. 93-99). Huizinga describes it as “All play moves and has its being within a playground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course [...] Inside the playground an absolute and peculiar order reign.” (Huizinga 1949: p. 10). The idea of play being an essential part of society, Huizinga argues, is based on the fact that man (and animals) has played games since prehistoric times and that certain institutions of play have become a part of civilized society in a way that masks its true identity. He names examples such as religious rituals, which he argue contain several similarities with play but that this is overlooked due to the fact play is seen as something trivial while rituals are of utmost seriousness (Huizinga 1949: pp. 14-27). He asserts his claim by quoting Plato, who supposedly was of the opinion that playing is to submit oneself to god and thus is of utmost importance. Huizinga summarizes “The Platonic identification of play and holiness does not defile the latter by calling it play, rather it exalts the concept of play to the highest regions of the spirit.[...] In play we may move below the level of the serious, as the child does; but we can also move above it - in the realm of the beautiful and the sacred.” (Huizinga 1949: p.19). 2.1.2 Roger Caillois Roger Caillois’ book Man, Play and Games, originally published in French in 1958 and translated to English in 1961, has much like Huizinga’s Homo Ludens been described as a milestone in game studies literature (Juul 2005: p. 10, Salen & Zimmerman: p. 82). Caillois’ work is in many ways a continuation of Huizinga’s work. Caillois echoes Huizinga’s thesis that play and games have a remarkably overlooked role in society and that the studies that had been made on games thus far had generally detracted them as insignificant pastimes and childish behaviour (Caillois 1961: p. 3, pp. 57-61). Even though he does not use the exact term, Caillois also stresses the importance of the concept of Huizinga’s magic circle (Caillois 1961: pp. 6-7). Caillois definition of a game is divided into six statements rather than a single formulation. He defines games as an activity which is: 1. Free, i.e., playing is non-obligatory, 2. Separate, i.e. it’s circumscribed within limits of space and time, 3. Uncertain, i.e., the course of it cannot be predetermined, 4. Unproductive, i.e., property may be exchanged but no goods are produced, 5. Ruled, i.e., under conventions that suspend ordinary, 6. Make-believe, i.e., accompanied by a special awareness of a free unreality (Caillois 1961: pp. 3-10). It is worth noting that Caillois argues that games are either rules or make-believe; although the definition is written to be formal and be applicable to any game, Caillois means for the games to apply to only one of the fifth or the sixth aspect. His most famous contribution to the field however, is his classification of games. Caillois identifies four categories of games, defined by the player’s role in the given game, called agôn, alea, mimicry and ilinx. Furthermore, the game can be placed on a spectrum between the concepts of ludus and paidia according to how structured it is. However, Caillois notes that “To the degree that I will try to establish the classification to which I am committed, each

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concept chosen will not relate to directly with concrete experience, which in turn is to be divided according to an as of yet untested principle.”, giving the impression that he does not mean for this classification to be what today is known as the different genres of games, but rather as a method to help understand why we play games (Caillois 1961: p. 13). As for the categories themselves, they each encompass a particular set of games played for similar reasons (Caillois 1961: pp. 11-35). Agôn is defined as games as competition, such as football, billiards and chess. It is arguably the most obvious category as most games are focused on competing rivals. The formal definition Caillois provide of competition is “like a combat in which equality of chances is artificially created, in order that the adversaries should confront each other under ideal conditions, susceptible of giving precise and incontestable value to the winner’s triumph.” (Caillois 1961: p. 14). Equality is of utmost importance to games of agôn, every player must have the same opportunity to triumph and nothing is left to chance. The purpose is to remove any factor that may interfere with the results except for the player’s own physical or mental skills “so that in return the victor’s superiority is beyond dispute” (Caillois 1961: p. 15). Alea is in direct opposition to agôn – games of chance such as dice games, lotteries and card games (Caillois 1961: pp. 17-19). Contrary to agôn games’ focus on establishing a non-arbitrary test of the skills of the individual, alea games are “based on a decision independent of the player, an outcome over which he has no control, and in which winning is the result of fate rather than triumphing over an adversary.” (Caillois 1961: p.17). The player is passive, unable to influence the outcome, and all benefits from training, experience, patience, work and merit are removed. The player is submitted entirely to the hand of fate and the result is either total disgrace or absolute favour. Mimicry is Caillois’ term for games as simulations, defined by “...the temporary acceptance [...] of a closed, conventional, and, in certain respects, imaginary universe.” (Caillois 1961: pp. 19-23). Examples include masquerades and acting. In relation to the absolutism of agôn and alea, mimicry is a means to escape them by applying their results to an alternative world or character. Ilinx is the “attempt to momentarily destroy the stability of perception and inflict a kind of voluptuous panic upon an otherwise lucid mind” (Caillois 1961: pp. 23-26). Amusement parks and acrobatic tricks are examples of ilinx. Caillois is not clear as to the purpose of this type of game, but emphasizes that it is the vertigo, the will to sudden panic and special disorder that is the attraction of ilinx games. He also notes that there is a “vertigo of moral order”, a normally repressed drive for disorder and destruction that may be found in the excitement of smashing glass, setting something on fire, or the intoxication that is experienced in the military (Caillois 1961: pp. 24). Furthermore, Caillois identifies the concepts of paidia and ludus, two categories that a given game can be identified with beyond the categories just listed. These two are, briefly summarized, a description of the amount of structure a game contains, paidia being the free-form play we associate with children’s games and ludus being more structured, rule-based games (Caillois 1961: p. 13, pp. 27-35). Caillois (1961) writes, “At one extreme an almost indivisible principle, common to diversion, turbulence, free improvisation, and carefree gaiety is dominant. It manifests a kind of uncontrolled fantasy that can be designated by the term paidia. At the opposite extreme, this frolicsome impulsive exuberance is almost entirely absorbed or disciplined by a complementary, and in some respects inverse, tendency to its

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arbitrary, imperative, and purposely tedious conventions, to oppose it still more by ceaselessly practicing the most embarrassing chicanery upon it, in order to make it more uncertain of attaining its desired effect. This latter principle is completely impractical, even though it requires an ever greater amount of effort, patience, skill or ingenuity. I call this second component ludus.” (Caillois 1961: p. 13). Note that Caillois means for games to be “...placed on a continuum of two opposite poles” – a game is not strictly either paidia or ludus, but may be placed somewhere on a spectrum between the two. 2.1.3 Elliot M. Avedon and Brian Sutton-Smith The book The Study of Games was written by play theorists Brian Sutton-Smith and Elliott M. Avedon in 1971 as a historical record on that time the current state of game studies. While an extensive study and a useful reference point for many future studies, the book contains some of the problems Huizinga and Caillois had identified: focusing on categorizing historical games and analyzing them from the perspective of other fields. However, the writers make the observation that the then current state of the field was divided into two schools of thought: the psychogenic and the sociogenic (Avedon & Sutton-Smith 1971: pp. 429-433). The psychogenic scholars are, as the name suggests, influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis theories and explain games in terms of the player’s antecedents and childhood experiences. This is evident in the common notion that one plays games to relieve tensions, to escape reality and move from being passive to active. The authors refer to an analysis of rugby and soccer as an example. The analysis states that soccer symbolically treats the ball as something dirty and dangerous by forbidding the player to handle it with their hands, supposedly indicating a taboo or control associated with the paternal, while rugby encourages the player to hold and value the ball which may be interpreted as maternal symbolism (Avedon & Sutton-Smith 1971: pp. 430). The sociogenic approach aims to understand games in terms of what they do for society, with particular focus on the preparatory value for the individual and practical usefulness. Examples include research regarding the use of games to prepare students for their given fields of study and the possible correlation between play and children’s ability to develop social capabilities and moral values (Avedon & Sutton-Smith 1971: pp. 432-433). Avedon and Sutton-Smith’s definition of games is “an exercise of voluntary control systems in which there is an opposition of forces, confined by a procedure and rules in order to produce a disequilibrium outcome.” (Avedon & Sutton-Smith 1971: p. 7). The first part of this definition is derived from Avedon and Sutton-Smith’s own definition of play; “an exercise of voluntary control systems” (Avedon & Sutton-Smith 1971: p. 6). The rest are additions to distinguish the more structured nature of games as opposed to play. The opposition of forces is an example of conflict as an essential part of games – a recurring theme when defining them. The rules and outcome are also part of this opposition to play, as Avedon and Sutton-Smith argue that while play is ambiguous and open-ended in terms of outcome, games systemize these aspects to create predictability. 2.2 Industrial period (1970’s-1990’s) The second period spans the 1970’s up until the late 1990’s and is shaped by the advent of the video game industry. Here, games are studied in the wake of a booming market that moves from arcade halls to home consoles to having an evident place in popular culture. Game developers research ways to make better games to capture their audiences with while

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sociologists and psychologists study this new medium’s effect on the player. Crawford is the single most important scholar within the field of game studies from this period. 2.2.1 Chris Crawford Chris Crawford marks our step into the world of the video game industry, being an accomplished game developer with titles such as Eastern Front (1941) and Balance of Power and a founder of the Game Developer’s Conference. More importantly for us, he wrote the book The Art of Computer Game Design from 1984, one the earliest examples of literature regarding game design, specifically and particularly on the artistic design of computer games. Furthermore, the view of games as forms of art is championed by Crawford and is a viewpoint of which he has come to be known for (Crawford 1984: pp. 1-4). Crawford’s definition of a game is, like Caillois’, divided into four basic elements; representation, interaction, conflict and safety (Crawford 1984: pp. 7-15). Representation is described by Crawford as “a closed formal system that subjectively represents a subset of reality” (Crawford 1984: p. 7). By this he means that games are complete and independent as a structure, that there are explicit rules governing a system and that they are subjective representations. There is something more at play in games than can be objectively observed – as Huizinga puts it; “Objectively speaking, the result of the game is unimportant and a matter of indifference.” (Huizinga 1949: p. 49). Furthermore, the representation is a subset of reality, by which Crawford means that a game may only represent a certain part of reality as no game could include all of reality without being reality itself. If a game represents a too large part of reality it will diminish the focus of the game, which Crawford argues is essential to a game’s appeal (Crawford 1984: p. 9). Interaction is an aspect of games presented by Crawford as opposed to traditional media. These, he divides into static media that represent something frozen in time (paintings, sculptures) and dynamic media that show a change over time (film and music). Crawford argues that one wants to explore how something changes over times and see its cause and effect relationships. He writes “Thus, the highest and most complete form of representation is interactive representation. Games provide this interactive element, and it is a crucial factor in their appeal.” (Crawford 1984: p. 10). Conflict, Crawford claims, arise naturally when the player pursue a goal with obstacles preventing them from advancing towards it (Crawford 1984: p. 13). He notes that not all challenges are game-related conflicts – in athletic or puzzle challenges for example, the obstacles are static. However, once the obstacles respond to the player’s actions, the challenge becomes a game (granted the other defining traits are met). Furthermore, he notes that some have attempted to create “nice” games without conflicts but that these have failed since removing the conflict reduce the interactivity. Safety is a factor somewhat related to Huizinga's magic circle in that it defines games as a secluded space. Crawford notes that because games feature conflict, they risk harm, and harm is undesirable. Games solve this by restricting any result of actions to the game itself, instead of having any effect on the real world – the player may fight monsters or drive recklessly for hours on end without having to risk their own health. Crawford notes that this does not mean games are completely devoid of consequences – at the very least a sense of defeat follows a loss. But the financial, material or emotional cost of said loss in the game world is almost

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always insignificant compared to if what would happen if the game was real (Crawford 1984: pp. 14-15). Crawford argues that the fundamental motivation to play games is learning, followed by several secondary categories of motivation (Crawford 1984: pp. 16-24). Like Huizinga, he is of the standpoint that games presuppose society as forms of play can be found even among animals. Crawford notes that lion cubs play with each other in order to learn the skills needed to hunt and survive once they grow up, not to indulge in meaningless pastime. His view is that play is the natural way of learning and that this applies to animal and human alike, writing, “In light of this, the question, "Can games have educational value?" becomes absurd. It is not games but schools that are the newfangled notion, the untested fad, the violator of tradition.” (Crawford 1984: p. 16). While the secondary motivations for game playing may temporarily overshadow the learning aspect, it is always there – the desire to learn may be unconscious. The first secondary motivation Crawford describes is fantasy/exploration. This motivation is identified by narrative and aesthetic elements meant to help the player escape their ordinary life. Crawford also stresses that because games are interactive, they are potentially superior in this aspect to traditional mediums although he does not motivate this claim in any great detail. Nose-thumping is a motivation that Crawford identifies as a means for the player to indulge in behaviour that is not socially (or legally) acceptable in real life. Most notably, Crawford discusses the issue of violent games in which the player may wreak havoc and mass murder without any real-life consequences. However, nose-thumping is also a motivation for playing games that does feature socially acceptable behaviour, but of which the player may be unable to participate in due to their real life situation – be a formula one driver in a racing game or a wealthy real estate tycoon, for example. Proving oneself is a motivation that Crawford argues is found in all games in one form or the other. Very similar to Caillois concept of agôn, Crawford holds the view that players motivated by this factor normally prefer games that “...allow their skill to be properly brought to bear, so they tend towards games in which chance plays a minimal role.” (Crawford 1984: p. 19). Crawford also argue that “sharks” (highly competitive players) are not merely playing a given game to win, but to beat the opponent, preferably someone of their own or higher skill level. If these players engage players with a playful style, the latter tend to be disengaged due to their feeling of games as a safe space being compromised, turning the game into a conflict. The playful player may then prefer a games with bigger focus on chance, in which winning is more arbitrary (Crawford 1984: p. 19). Social lubrication removes much focus from the game and instead motivates the player by the social interactions that occur when playing it with others. Games of this motivational category are used as icebreakers and team building exercises, enabling the players to get to know each other better (Crawford 1984: p. 20). Exercise may be either physical or mental training. Players of this category find games to be an entertaining way to stay in shape. Crawford also notes that the exercise must be at an appropriate level, suggesting that tic-tac-toe may not be adequate training for a chess player, and a player finding tic-tac-toe challenging will not get much exercise from playing chess.

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The need for acknowledgement may be summarized as a cross between the motivations of proving oneself and social lubrication – it is the crave for recognition of one's personality. Crawford argues that an interaction between individuals is always preferable when the individuals refer to each other’s personalities or problems, and that people will go out of their way to obtain it. Furthermore, he writes that a good game must allow the player to express themselves through its gameplay and respond to each other’s actions, effectively enabling them to understand each other better through playing the game together (Crawford 1984: p. 20). 2.3 Independent period (2000’s-today)

The third and final period starts around the turn of the millennium, continuing up until today. It is featured by a growing desire to research games as a field of their own instead of using theories and methodology from other fields. It also marks an increasing amount of organization of both the game industry and the academic community, with more conferences, scientific journals and education dedicated to games. 2.3.1 Gonzalo Frasca Gonzalo Frasca is an Uruguayan game scholar and developer with a PhD in video game studies from the IT University of Copenhagen and who cofounded the game studio Powerful Robot Games, who developed serious games for over ten years. He is also famous for the game September 12, an early example of what Frasca calls a newsgame, a game created in the wake of a real event to raise awareness and inform the public about it. His most famous role in the game studies community however, is as the originator of the concept of ludology. In his Narratology meets Ludology: Similitude and differences between (video)games and narrative and several other papers published between 1999-2003, he presents his view that games need to be studied as an academic field independent from others, particularly narratological theories from film, literature and other “traditional” cultural media (Frasca 1999, Frasca 2001, Frasca 2003a). This is echoed by Espen Aarseth in the first issue of the first academic journal dedicated to (computer) games, Game Studies, where Aarseth warns about “colonization” of game studies by other academic fields (Aarseth 2001). While Frasca is the only of the scholars in this study that does not provide a formal definition of games, he discusses the terms paidia and ludus proposed by Caillois and alters these for use as a two-way definition of game (Frasca 1999: p. 2-3). The reason is, just as Caillois proposed, to establish a formal distinction between games as rule-based play and games as unstructured, spontaneous play. However, Frasca makes the interesting observation that the difference between the two is not that ludus contain rules and paidia does not, contrary to what Caillois proposed. Frasca notes that a child that plays an airline pilot would by Caillois fall under the paidia category, but the child does abide to a certain set of rules: to act like a pilot and not say, a doctor or a policeman. Instead, the difference is in the results, were ludus games determine a winner and a loser and paidia does not. Frasca’s definition of games is thus divided into 1. “Paidia: Prodigality of physical or mental activity which has no immediate useful objective, nor defined objectives, and whose only reason to be is based in the pleasure experimented by the player”, and 2. “Ludus: an activity organized under a system of rules that defines a victory or a defeat, a gain or a loss”. Frasca is of the view that games are the first mass-market cultural medium to be simulational rather than representational and that this implies a paradigm shift in our understanding of

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cultural objects (Frasca 2001). The difference between representation and simulation lies in the latter’s ability to model the behaviour of the portrayed object or system in question; a representation may show the components and outcome of something, but only simulations can show how these fit together in a meaningful way. He argues that historically, we have been using representation through narrative and images to portray objects and systems but that the arrival of the computer will greatly increase the potential of simulations. Interestingly, this both contradicts and supports Crawford’s definition of a game, as Crawford emphasized both interactivity and representation. We will discuss this later in this paper. This is also the basis of Frasca’s argument that game scholars need to abstain from using narratological theories as a primary means to understand games - as narrative is a form representation, the theories that are used to understand them are not necessarily applicable to the simulational games. This has (most probably unintentionally) started the “narratology versus ludology” debate among game scholars, in which one side argues that narrative is an important aspect of games and thus narratology is applicable and the other support Frasca’s claim that games need to be analyzed as games using their own theories. The debate has been controversial and not many are convinced it has contributed much to the game studies community (Salen & Zimmerman 2004: pp. 379-380, Murray 2005, Juul 2005: pp. 16-17). Frasca has since posted a new paper titled Ludologists love stories, too: notes from a debate that never took place, where he assures that he does not fully reject narratology or the importance of narrative in games, but only that game studies must develop their own theories and models to gain deeper understanding of their medium (Frasca 2003b)). In many ways, this mirrors the call from both Caillois and Huizinga some 50 years earlier, although it is a call for independence from representation and narratology instead of sociology, psychology, anthropology and economics. The controversial nature of this debate seem to have caused game scholars to avoid using the term ludology when talking about game studies – a Google search on “Ludology” currently yields roughly 145 000 results while searching for “Game studies” yields almost 13 million results. Nevertheless, Frasca’s concept of game studies as an independent field in need of institutionalization seem to have been approved, even if the term ludology was rejected in the wake of the narratology versus ludology debate. In the years following the start of the new millennium several academic online journals dedicated to game studies were started, conferences and summits grew in size and the number of game educations increased (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, et al 2008: p. 7-8, p. 88). 2.3.2 Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman are both experienced game designers and scholars, having taught at several educational institutions, written books and papers on various subjects within the sphere of game studies and developed both commercial and experimental games. Together they have written the book Rules of Play, an extensive book that overlap the practical side of game design with the theoretical side of game studies. In it, they propose to analyze games through three game design schemas: rules, play and culture (Salen & Zimmerman 2004: pp. 102-105). Undoubtedly affected by the ongoing formalization of game studies Salen and Zimmerman aim to organize the knowledge about game with these schemas, albeit in a less strict way - they are clear to emphasize that the schemas are “encyclopedic” rather than “definitional”(Salen & Zimmerman 2004: pp. 102-103).

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Salen and Zimmerman’s definition of a game is built on the definitions presented by several other scholars before them after a lengthy discussion of them. They conclude with the definition “A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome” (Salen & Zimmerman 2004: pp. 71-83). Most aspects of this definition is expectedly similarity to the other definitions; rules, conflict and quantifiable outcome have all been touched upon previously. The one new addition in Salen and Zimmerman’s definition is perhaps the word “artificial”. This is to stress the importance of the magic circle; “Games maintain a boundary from so-called “real life” in both time and space. Although games obviously occur within the real world, artificiality is one of their defining features” (Salen & Zimmerman: p. 80). Rules are described as a formal schema, focusing on “the intrinsic mathematical structures of games” (Salen & Zimmerman 2004: pp. 103-104, pp. 116-287). The rules are argued to be the most prominent schema as it is what sets games apart from other cultural mediums. They are described as the formal schema as it has a greater analytical and quantifiable ability compared to the two other, who are more prone to turn subjective, and because rules are the most fundamental parts of any game. Furthermore, the authors identify three “levels” of rules: constitutive rules, operational rules and implicit rules (Salen & Zimmerman 2004: pp.127-139). The constitutive rules are the mathematical, underlying rules that govern a game and essentially allows the player to play the same game even if it was stripped of all thematic context. For example, a first person shooter set in a science fiction could have all of its art assets replaced with assets from a wild west setting and still be played the same way. The operational rules are described as “the printed-out ‘rules’ that accompany board games” – the instructions for the player on how to play the game (Salen & Zimmerman 2004: p.130). If we were to keep to our science fiction/wild western first person shooter example, replacing the theme would need us to change a possible prompt to “Defend the space station from the aliens!” to “Defend the bank from the bandits!”. The last level of rules are the implicit rules, the unwritten rules and examples of etiquette and good sportsmanship of a given game. For example, if our science fiction game turned out to be a multiplayer game, players might find the laser cannon so powerful that it ruins the game and thus using it is frowned upon. The implicit rules are notably not enforced by the game itself, and often lack consequences of “breaking” them. This blurs the line between intrinsic and operational rules somewhat, as in some cases intrinsic rules are enforced (such as by judges in professional gaming) and then moves towards becoming operational rules. Play is the experiential schema, aiming to understand games through the player’s experience of it (Salen & Zimmerman 2004: p. 104, pp. 301-501). Salen and Zimmerman note that while rules are the “inner essence” of the game, they cannot be fully understood in terms of their formal systems. Designers and scholars must analyze the players behaviour and reactions from playing a game for deeper sense into the subject. The authors also note the confusing relationship between the words play and game (as many scholars before them), and divide them into two possibilities; games as a subset of play or play as a subset of games. However, they argue that this distinction is of little importance as it is either a descriptive distinction or a conceptual (Salen & Zimmerman 2004: p. 303). What is of importance however, is their three categories of play: game play, ludic activities and being playful (Salen & Zimmerman: pp. 303-310. Game play is defined as the most structured form, when the player is abiding to rigid rules set by a game. It is thus a form of play that only applies to games. Ludic activities are more free form of play that still retain minor rules or goals and include but do not exclude games. Examples include bouncing a ball against a wall or two children tossing a frisbee back and forth. Being playful is most inclusive and less structured category, referring more to a

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general state of mind than an actual form of play. It is the application of play unto other actions, such as using slang or a funny voice when talking or tossing a crumpled piece of paper into the trash bin from across the room. Culture is the schema meant to examine games in terms of their cultural context (Salen & Zimmerman 2004: pp. 104-105, pp. 502-587). More specifically, it concerns what happens outside the magic circle of a given game as Salen and Zimmerman makes the observation that while the rules of a game only applies inside the circle, intrinsic rules are affected and established outside it. They argue that all games are culture, because they all reflect the historical, religious, political or economic situation of the society of which in they were created in some way (Salen & Zimmerman 2004: p. 507). Culture is therefore an aspect one must consider when analyzing a game. The authors also note the concepts of transformative play and reflective play (Salen & Zimmerman 2004: p. 305, pp. 507-508). As the name suggests the concepts are related to the play schema, and concerns the way play and culture may affect one another. Salen & Zimmerman argues that all play is reflective: that they reflect the culture in which it is played in one way or another. However, some forms of play may become so established that they affect culture at large, becoming examples of transformative play. Examples of the latter includes football teams generating traditions and disputes among supporters or terms originating in games becoming part of the language. 2.3.3 Jesper Juul Jesper Juul is a Danish game scholar and a self-described ludologist (a game researcher, specifically one who concur with Frasca’s views). In his book Half-Real: Video games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds he discusses the state of game studies and his thesis that games take play in fictional environments but that the rules the player abide to are real. Juul also gives brief descriptions of ongoing debates in the game studies community, presents some of the arguments from each side and at some (but not all) gives his opinion on the matter (Juul 2005: pp. 11-20). These conflicts are games versus players (do we study games or the players who play them?), rules versus fiction (most scholars agree that rules are an essential part of games and fiction is not, so why bother with the latter?), games telling stories (the ludology versus narratology debate initiated by Frasca), games or the broader culture (do we study games as part of the general media ecology or focus on the games themselves?) and game ontology or game aesthetics (do we focus on what games are or what they should be?). The classic game model is Juul’s term for his extensive discussion on defining games (Juul 2005: pp. 23-54). His stated goal of the model is to include not only video games (of which the rest of the book is focused on) but all gaming dating back millennia. He writes “If we think of video games as games, they are not successors of cinema, print literature, or new media, but continuations of a history of games that predate these by millennia. [...] Therefore, the question is not whether video games are old or new, but how video games are games, how they borrow from non-electronic games and how they depart from traditional game forms.” (Juul 2005: pp. 3-4). After comparing the definitions of seven earlier scholars (most of which have been featured in this paper) Juul notes that there are more similarities than differences and presents his own definition of a game according to the results (Juul 2005: pp. 29-43): “A game is a rule-based system with a variable and quantifiable outcome, where the different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels

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emotionally attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are negotiable”. Juul notes several aspects of the different definitions to come to these conclusions. First of all, scholars agree that games are rule-based since many of the other aspects depend on them. Secondly, Juul divides the recurring aspect of a set goal into three components: quantifiable outcome, valorization of the outcome and player effort to influence the outcome. This is to emphasize the player’s attitude to the game rather than an explicit goal as games such as The Sims and SimCity lack the latter. Related to this is the negotiable consequences, which state that a game may optionally have real-life consequences. This aspect is based in Caillois’ argument that in games “property is exchanged, but no goods are produced” (Caillois 1961: p.5), which in turn is a response to Huizinga’s argument that games have “no material interest, and no profit can be gained from it” (Huizinga 1949: p.13). Huizinga base his argument on his view that games are “safe” within the magic circle, while Caillois argues that this excludes gambling. However, as Juul points out, even Caillois’ argument that games are unproductive is problematic due to the fact that gambling is a huge industry. Half-Real, the title of Juul’s book is the same term he uses to describe the complicated relationship between rules and fiction in games. In his introduction, Juul writes “video games are real in that they consist of real rules with which players actually interact, and in that winning or losing a game is a real event. However, when winning a game by slaying a dragon, the dragon is not a real dragon but a fictional one. To play a video game is therefore to interact with real rules while imagining a fictional world, and a video game is a set of rules as well as a fictional world.” (Juul 2005: p. 1). An advantage of this relationship is that rules and fiction may reinforce each other by cuing the player into learning about one aspect through the other (Juul 2005: pp. 176-177). For example, a fictional world in where the player plays as a bird may cue the player into understanding they are not limited to the ground, while a rule stating that the player may fly might cue them into believing they are some sort of winged creature. However, Juuls also points to examples of when rules and fiction in games appear contradictory of each other, despite seeming dependent on each other. One such is when the representation of the fiction in a game is misleading, causing the player to misinterpret the rules (Juul 2005: pp. 177-183). For example if, in a racing game, one car is depicted as a high speed racing car and the other an old farming tractor the player may interpret one faster than the other while the rules state that they are actually just as fast. In addition to this complex relationship of matching and contradicting aspects, Juul observes that there is an overlap in rules and fiction in games – space (Juul 2005: pp. 188-189). In games where space plays a role, level design enables fiction and rules to be essentially the same: the shape of a given level is both a statement of the game’s fiction through the environmental design and its rules through the player’s ability to navigate and interact with it. Lastly, an important note about the relation between rules and fiction is that of stylized simulations: simplifications of aspects of real life to fit the player’s experience better (Juul 2005: pp. 170-172). As Juul writes “Game fictions and rules are not perfect and complete simulations of the real world; they are flickering and provisional by nature. But stylization is an expressive device that games can use.” (Juul 2005: p. 170). For example, most action games allow the player’s avatar to sustain damages that would be fatal in reality to increase the game’s accessibility and a strategy game in which real life construction times for buildings was used would take years, or even decades, to finish.

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3 Analysis After having reviewed the major works of a selected number of game scholars, let us examine some of the most interesting findings: the definitions of games, games predating society or society predating games, games as simulations or representations and the call for independence. 3.1 The definitions of games The definitions of games within the field of arts, as we have already observed, is an debate that has gone without a final conclusion since Huizinga first proposed his definition over 70 years ago. I have no hope to resolve the matter in this paper, but rather collect the similarities and differences in a number of definitions presented through the years. Let us list the definitions in question. Johan Huizinga: “...a free activity, standing quite consciously outside “ordinary” life, as being “not serious”, but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner.” Roger Caillois: “an activity which is: 1. Free, i.e. playing is non-obligatory, 2. Separate, i.e. it’s circumscribed within limits of space and time, 3. Uncertain, i.e. the course of it cannot be predetermined, 4. Unproductive, i.e. property may be exchanged but no goods are produced, 5. Ruled, i.e. under conventions that suspend ordinary, 6. Make-believe, i.e. accompanied by a special awareness of a free unreality.” Elliott M. Avedon and Brian Sutton-Smith: “an exercise of voluntary control systems in which there is an opposition of forces, confined by a procedure and rules in order to produce a disequilibrium outcome.” Chris Crawford: A game consists of 1. Representation: a closed formal system that represents a subset of reality, 2. Interaction: a game may be manipulated by the player, 3. Conflict: the player pursues a goal that is prevented by obstacles, 4. Safety: a secluded space in which real life consequences are limited. Gonzalo Frasca: “Games are divided into 1. Paidia: Prodigality of physical or mental activity which has no immediate useful objective, nor defined objectives, and whose only reason to be is based in the pleasure experimented by the player, and 2. Ludus: an activity organized under a system of rules that defines a victory or a defeat, a gain or a loss. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman: “A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.” Jesper Juul: “A game is a rule-based system with a variable and quantifiable outcome, where the different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels emotionally attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are negotiable.”

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As both Juul and Salen and Zimmerman has noted, there seem to exist more similarities than differences among scholars – the difficulty rather arises in the fact that they use different vocabulary for similar aspects (Juul 2005: pp. 29-31, Salen & Zimmerman 2004: pp. 79-80). Furthermore, some scholars build their definitions on others but make small adjustments which even further spreads out the defining aspects of a game over an inconsistent vocabulary (Frasca 1999: p. 3). Still, if we allow ourselves the liberty to interpret some of the used terms we can point out several common aspects. Rules are a defining aspect that all scholars we have studied use in their definitions in one way or another. It is also the only one for which the same exact term is used. Crawford is the only one who do not explicitly state rules as one of his four defining traits, but rather they are included in the representation aspect as this includes the game being governed by a “formal system”. They are designed to be limiting for the player, defining what they may or may not do. More importantly, rules are absolute and above discussion - without them the game is meaningless (Juul 2005: p. 31, Salen & Zimmerman 2004: p 80). Outcomes, also called goals, are an aspect closely related to the rules and should probably in fact fall under that category since it is the rules which define the goal of the game. However, since the outcome is defined as separate from the rules in most cases I find it valuable to highlight them as such. This aspect is one of the most diffuse from scholar to scholar however: most do not state their significance specifically in their definition, but imply it through the other aspects or in other places of their literature. Caillois, for example, does not mention either outcome or goal in his definition, though he does write “An outcome known in advance,with no possibility of error or surprise, clearly leading to an inescapable result, is incompatible with the nature of play.”(Caillois 1961: p. 7). He argues that the important aspect is that players and spectators cannot predict how the game is going to end else it loses all appeal. However, he clearly means for games to have an outcome. Voluntary participation is an aspect that has been prevalent since Huizinga’s first definition, but interestingly enough has lost its significance in later scholars. Since Homo Ludens, both Caillois and Avedon and Sutton-Smith defined games as voluntary but none of our later scholars do. Not even Frasca, who bases his definition on Caillois’ concepts of ludus and paidia mentions voluntary participation. We will not linger on this issue for long, as it is essentially a part of the bigger existential question of what free will really is. However, I would like to support Juul’s opinion on the issue, namely that games are autotelic: that is to say, they “are played for their own sake and not an external purpose” (Juul 2005: p. 33). Conflict is an aspect first voiced by Avedon and Sutton-Smith as “opposition between forces”, and later augmented by Crawford as the term we use today. Salen and Zimmerman echo Crawford’s view of conflict as essential to games (Salen & Zimmerman 2004: p. 250). Juul does not use the term conflict in his definition but instead argues for “player effort” in combination with outcome, which naturally raises a conflict even if it is not explicitly stated. The general idea is the same however: games feature an objective to be obtained and obstacles (whether part of the game as a system or another player) that prevents the player from reaching that objective, thus creating a conflict. Crawford further mentions that the obstacle must be able respond to the player’s actions. Otherwise it is to be seen as a puzzle or obstacle course (Crawford 1984: p. 13). Separate from reality, safe, or artificial are all terms proposed in definitions as a way to emphasize the complex relationship games have with real life. Whether it is Juul’s concept of

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games as half-real or Huizinga’s magic circle, the aspect aims to establish that the rules of a game only apply to the game itself and that the game is a safe environment in which real life consequences are limited. The most convenient way to phrase this aspect in a game definition would simply be as “magic circle”. However, as the magic circle itself is defined as “the designated space in which a given game is played”, such a definition would be paradoxical and ultimately useless. Interaction, player effort or decision-making are recurring aspects meant to establish the player’s ability to manipulate a game’s components. Although only Crawford use the exact term interactivity, it is without doubt an aspect many scholars hold as essential to games (Crawford 1984: pp. 9-13, Salen & Zimmerman 2004: p. 80). An interesting observation to be made on the views of how the player interact with the game is that some authors define games as an activity (Huizinga, Caillois, Avedon & Sutton-Smith, Frasca) while others define them as systems (Crawford, Salen & Zimmerman, Juul). The two are not necessarily mutually excluding, but they are certainly not synonymous - one emphasize a behaviour, the other an object. It is possible that this distinction as in so many other cases is a result of the language issue. One could use the word game as in “Let us play a game!”, which refers to game as an activity, or one could use it as “Can you set up the game?”, which refers to game as an object or system. I would however argue that the reason is much more simple: the scholars describing games as systems have a background as software developers, while those describing games as an activity are sociologists and historians. The only exception is Frasca in the latter group. though this is fully understandable as his definition is based on Caillois work. It is thus likely that the choice of word is a habitual occurrence of the scholars academic background rather than a rational process. 3.2 Society predating games or games predating society? “Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing. We can safely assert, even, that human civilization has added no essential feature to the general idea of play.” (Huizinga 1949: p.1). Johan Huizinga’s opening statement in Homo Ludens very much captures the nature of his thesis. Games, or rather play, is an ancient feature of human history and has always been prevalent in our societies. This recognition was a dramatic change from the at the time established view of games as pastime best left to children which essentially were degraded versions of other cultural aspects (Caillois 1961: p. 57). Caillois supports Huizinga’s claim, and further argues that the confusion regarding which precede the other, stems from the play-elements in culture that are so integral in society that they are hard to recognize (Caillois 1961: pp. 57-61). Caillois gives examples of masks and rituals, which contain play-elements, and how these have transcended into a seriousness not usually associated with games but that “their social function changed, not their nature” (Caillois 1961: p. 59). Crawford goes even further and argues that games not only predate society, but mankind altogether; “We must reach not thousands but millions of years into the past to find the earliest games, for games predate not just history, but all of mankind. They are not a human invention.” (Crawford 1984: p. 16). Avedon and Sutton-Smith are the only of our scholars who explicitly argue the opposite: that games are derived from culture. They cite “empirical evidence” that indicates that some cultures do not have competitive games and that these can be divided into either cultures who

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never had games or cultures who have lost them through the ages (Avedon & Sutton-Smith 1971: pp. 3-4). They write “If competitive games are not universal then they must be cultural inventions and relate to levels of cultural development. Therefore, when we discuss games, we are not discussing certain biologically inevitable occurrences, though may be ethologically probable.” (Avedon & Sutton-Smith 1971: p. 4). Though I have not been able to access the study in question, Avedon and Sutton-Smith’s claim is certainly an interesting one if it is true. It would indicate that, as Avedon and Sutton-Smith says, games are not a an intrinsic human behaviour and many of the major theories presented would have to be reworked. However, I find it important to consider the possibility that this is a construct of the confusing issue of play and games as terms. Games and play are problematic terms in English since they are both nouns and verb, frequently overlap and both lack a clear definition. When the definitions of several different scholars are used to refer to the same issue, the risk for misconceptions are high. Huizinga, for example, talks quite specifically about play while Avedon and Sutton-Smith are more focused on games. Furthermore, Avedon and Sutton-Smith only briefly mentions games as derived from culture and the empirical evidence in question, while the role of play in culture is the key issue of Huizinga’s and Caillois’ works. 3.3 Games as Simulation or Representation Another clash among the scholars the reader may have noticed in our presentation of their views is that of games as representations by Chris Crawford as opposed to games as simulations by Gonzalo Frasca (Crawford 1984: pp.7-9, Frasca 1999, Frasca 2001). Both Frasca and Crawford are clear on the fact that the two forms are mutually exclusive. Indeed, the paragraphs in which the authors discuss the issue are titled “Games versus Simulations” and “Simulation versus Representation” respectively (Crawford 1984: p. 8, Frasca 2003a: p. 2). Interestingly enough, the two never debate each other directly: Frasca never refers to Crawford’s views on the subject and Crawford could never have done the same seeing as The Art of Computer Game Design was released almost 20 years earlier. Huizinga also describes games as representation, stating that the two basic functions of play is “a contest for something” or “a representation of something”. The representation here refers to the display or performance of something (Huizinga 1949: pp. 13-15). Avedon and Sutton-Smith likewise briefly discuss games as simulation, although as an experimental and educational means rather than a defining aspect (Avedon & Sutton-Smith: pp. 288-289). Frasca, as we know from earlier, is of the opinion that games must be considered simulations to understand them fully: representations are able to describe something on different levels, but only simulations allow the user to manipulate and understand how these fit together. Crawford however, argues that both representation and interaction are defining aspects of a game. The first is based on that games represent something subjectively to the player. Any form of representation has a subjective side and an objective side, and games emphasize the first more than the latter (Crawford 1984: p. 8). Crawford gives the example of a game where defeating aliens is of utmost important to the player, but objectively speaking the outcome is a matter of insignificance (note the similarity to Juul’s concept of games as half-real). As for the interaction, Crawford clearly states it is of utmost importance (Crawford 1984: pp. 9-10). Of interest to us however, is his categorization of interaction within representation. Crawford divides representation into three categories: static, dynamic and interactive. Static representations are frozen in time, such as images and text. Dynamic representation may show change over time with examples including music and film. Interactive is the only one

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that allows the audience to manipulate the representation. The only example Crawford gives are games, but I would personally argue that certain forms of theater would fall under this category. He describes this as “the highest and most complete form of representation is interactive representation” (Crawford 1984: p. 10). An instance of representation can thus be placed within either of these three categories as well as somewhere between objectivity and subjectivity, games being subjective interactive representation. Lastly, Crawford argues that games cannot be described as simulations due to the contradictory purpose of them: a simulation is meant to be as accurate as possible while games are simplified to increase the player’s experience. “A simulation bears the same relationship to a game that a technical drawing bears to a painting.”, as Crawford summarizes (Crawford 1984: p. 9). I disagree. If the purpose of a simulation is to reach maximum accuracy at all costs, the user would simply be advised to use the actual system being simulated instead. A level of abstraction is required in both simulations and games: I would like to refer to Juul’s remarks on stylized simulations, a recurring concept in games. Furthermore, Frasca emphasize that simulations and games are not the same but rather that “games are just a particular way of structuring simulation, just like narrative is a form of structuring representation.” (Frasca 2003a: p. 3). 3.4 A call for independence Moving away from the differences between scholars, there are many similarities of which to discuss. As we noted in our discussion of the definitions, there seems to be more similarities as opposed to differences regarding what the defining aspects of a game are. There is also a unison view of games as important to culture. In our analysis of whether games or society predate the other we noted that Avedon and Sutton-Smith were the only scholars arguing that society predate games, but they are just as convinced that they hold an important function as the other scholars (Avedon and Sutton-Smith 1971: pp. 9-17). The most prevalent standpoint however, seems to be the call for game studies as an artistic field of study in their own right. Ever since Huizinga’s initial call for play to be recognized as the essential feature it is to culture, this notion of game studies as an independent field has grown. It did not happen suddenly and would take decades before it gained notable momentum. Huizinga himself most probably did not mean for games to “break away” as a totally separate field within the arts: as a historian, his concern was of the neglected view of games in society. As Caillois writes “His work is not a study of games, but an inquiry into the creative quality of the play principle in the domain of culture” (Caillois 1961: p. 4). While I am inclined to disagree with Caillois on the first part (Homo Ludens is in every respect a study of games, even though it is done in the context of culture), he is right that Huizinga never dissects games in any great detail. This is attributed to Caillois himself, as Man, Play and Games is cited as an example of an early categorization and in-depth analysis of games effects on the players (Juul 2005: p. 10, Salen & Zimmerman: p. 82). His division of games and play into the categories paidia and ludus has helped scholars understand games better and provided a vocabulary for use within the game studies community. Frasca’s “ludology papers” from the turn of the millennium would mark the culmination of this increasingly more established view. Clearly frustrated with the amount of studies spent analyzing games from psychological and narratological perspectives, he proposed the term

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ludology to refer to the study of games and called for research focused on establishing new methodology and theories to understand games better. As this call eventually erupted into the controversial ludology versus narratology debate the word ludology lost much of its original meaning and instead came to be affiliated with an ideological belief that games should be analyzed solely in terms of their mechanics (Murray 2005, Klevjer 2002). Still, Frasca’s call seem to have gotten an answer in every regard except for the term ludology. Today it is hard to deny that game studies is an established academic field with conferences and organizations like DiGRA, GDC and IGDA, journals like gamestudies.org and gamasutra.com and more educational institutions dedicated to the field than ever before (Egenfeldt-Nielsen, et al 2008: p. 7-8, p.88).

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4 Conclusion From the humble beginnings of studying games as a tool for understanding something greater, through Huizinga’s breakthrough observations in Homo Ludens, Caillois’ and Crawford's further structuralization of games to Frasca’s call for ludology up until today I think it is fair to say that there has been a great deal of development in the artistic field of game studies only in the last hundred years. We have studied a number of major theories: Huizinga’s magic circle and the notion of games as essential to culture, Caillois’ structure of games, Crawford’s player motivations and Juul’s classic game model to name a few. We have also analyzed and discussed some conflicting views, such as whether games predate society or vice versa and games as simulations or representations. Furthermore, we found and analyzed the game definitions from a pure artistic point of view, presented by major scholars: one of our key research questions. We observed that there existed many common traits among these and that the greatest disagreements were in the formulation and vocabulary rather than the actual content. The most prevalent of these traits were that games featured rules, outcomes, conflicts, interaction, were separate from reality and voluntary (or rather autotelic). While the definition of games within the context of game studies is certainly still open to debate, I would like to highlight the fact that, with the exception of Juul’s, the definitions are steadily shrinking in length: perhaps a sign that the game studies community is growing increasingly more certain of the fundamental aspects of games and thus closer to a formal definition. Last but not least, we noted that the field has become more and more independent from other fields. From Huizinga to Frasca, the recurring call for game studies as a subject in its own right has yielded results in the form of an established academic field among conferences and institutions over the world.

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