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What Is Play?
As psychologist J. Barnard Gilmore notes in Child's Play, "Certainly everyone knows what play is not even if everyone can't agree on just what play is."[chapter 7, we posited two possible relationships between games and play:
the act of creating music, such as playing the radio or playing a musical instrument
pretending: playing at being angry, playing the fool
activating a process: putting something into play
taking a risky action: playing fast and loose
the course of events or fate: letting things play out, playing into the hand of fate
stalling: playing for time
being joking or not serious: just playing around, playing tricks
gambling: playing the horses
a subtle effect: a smile playing on the lips, the play of light on the wall
the loose space between gears or cogs: the play of a car's steering wheel
fooling or deceiving someone: playing someone for all they're worth, playing on someone's feelings, playing up to someone
being artful, clever, or youthfully jubilant: dressing in a playful style, engaging in wordplay and, of course,
playing with toys or playing a game
Games are a subset of play: Games constitute a formalized part of everything we might consider to be play. Playing catch or playing doctor are play activities that fall outside our definition of games (a contest of powers with a quantifiable outcome, etc.). However, although not all play fits the category of games, those things we define as games fit within a larger category of play activities. Play is an element of games: In addition to rules and culture, play is an essential component of games, a facet of the larger phenomenon of games, and a primary schema for understanding them. Neither one of these two relationships is more correct than the other. The first is a descriptive distinction that places the phenomenon of games within a larger set of real-world play activities. The second is a conceptual distinction that frames play as an important facet of games. However, the common uses of "play" in English point to other understandings of the concept, which fall completely outside these two framings of "game" and "play." Making a playful gesture, for example, or the play of the waves on the beach—these examples don't seem to have anything at all to do with games. Or do they? Looking over all of the ways that play manifests, we can group them into three categories of "play:" Game Play
This form of play is a narrow category of activity that only applies to what we defined already as "games." Game play is the formalized interaction that occurs when players follow the rules of a game and experience its system through play. Ludic Activities
The word ludic means of or relating to play and like the title of Huizinga's book Homo Ludens, it is derived from ludus, the Latin word for play. Ludic activities are play activities that include not only games, but all of the non-game behaviors we also think of as "playing:" a kitten batting a ball of yarn, two college students tossing a Frisbee back and forth, children playing on a jungle gym. Being Playful
The third category of play is the broadest and most inclusive. It refers not only to typical play activities, but also to the idea of being in a playful state of mind, where a spirit of play is injected into some other action. For instance, we are being playful with words when we create nicknames for friends or invent rhymes to tease them. We might dress in a playful way or deliver a critique of a sibling in a playful tone. In each case, the spirit of play infuses otherwise ordinary actions.
Each of the three categories of play is successively more open and inclusive. As a category, ludic activities includes game play, and the category being playful includes both of the previous two. Game play is really just a special kind of formalized ludic activity. Similarly, ludic activities are formalized, literal ways of being playful.
[1]J. Barnard Gilmore, "Play: A Special Behavior." In Child's Play, edited by R.E. Herron and Brian Sutton-Smith (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1971), p. 311.[2]Ibid.
