{"id":267,"date":"2009-01-12T17:00:26","date_gmt":"2009-01-12T16:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bijt.org\/wordpress\/2009\/01\/12\/bernie-dekoven-on-play-communities-and-game-communities\/"},"modified":"2009-01-12T17:10:01","modified_gmt":"2009-01-12T16:10:01","slug":"bernie-dekoven-on-play-communities-and-game-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bijt.org\/wordpress\/2009\/01\/12\/bernie-dekoven-on-play-communities-and-game-communities\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernie DeKoven on Play Communities and Game Communities"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Funsmith’ Bernie DeKoven wrote a post<\/a> on his site Deepfun<\/a> about the differences between game communities<\/em> and play communities<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The post consists of the usual little snippets of well-worn wisdom about play and game (play is informal and open-ended, games are formal and rule-based; game are competitive, play is more about spontaneity and shared fun). As also noted on another blog<\/a>, this largely coincides with James P. Carse’s distinction between finite and infinite games<\/a> (1986). Or even the paidia vs ludus distinction<\/a> which we find with Roger Caillois (1958), and which has been extended and adapted by many contemporary game researchers. But what makes this useful, I guess, is that DeKoven connects the game\/play distinction with ‘community’. Thus, games and play become prime organizing principles of technologically mediated communities:<\/p>\n

\n

It is no coincidence that the Internet, though it serves both kinds of community (play and game), is so easily characterized as a play community, dependent on openness and trust shared by its players, succeeding to the degree in which it can respond to their constantly evolving, individual and collective interests.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

People are increasingly active on various online\/mobile\/hybrid social networks. See my earlier post<\/a> on online social networking as a game, in particular this quote: “Social networks offer a revolutionary way for people to play with friends and communities that have meaningful value to them in their real life”. Such a communal view on identity-formation is a nice addition to the more individualistic view, in which identity as a project of choosing and building a self involves ‘playful’ experiments and (re)configurations on a personal level (‘playing oneself’).<\/p>\n

The question remains: does sharing the same play experiences with other people logically lead to self-understanding in terms of ‘play’? Metaphors (play\/game) become ‘real’ when they account for people’s sense of similarity and belonging. The metaphor then becomes a medium. It seems such a powerful line of reasoning in favor of the ‘playful identities’ thesis: when former fixed essences and circumscribed narratives of identity are debunked, unmasked, or simply no longer believable, playing together is a very powerful way of reconnecting (‘re-ligare’) to a larger body of people.<\/p>\n

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‘Funsmith’ Bernie DeKoven wrote a post on his site Deepfun about the differences between game communities and play communities. The post consists of the usual […] Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"mf2_syndication":[],"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2,5],"tags":[154,156,24],"class_list":["post-267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-identity","category-play","tag-identity","tag-play","tag-social-networking"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peQgW-4j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bijt.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bijt.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bijt.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bijt.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bijt.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bijt.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":270,"href":"https:\/\/www.bijt.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions\/270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bijt.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bijt.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bijt.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}