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Introducing Meaningful Play
Johann Huizinga is one of the greatest scholars of play in the twentieth century. His groundbreaking book, Homo Ludens, is a unique investigation of the role of play in human civilization. The title is a play on Homo Sapiens, and translates as Man the Player. According to Huizinga, play and games, which have been maligned in recent history as trivial and frivolous, are in fact at the very center of what makes us human."Play is older than culture," as Huizinga puts it, and Homo Ludens is a celebration of play that links the visceral, combative nature of contest directly to war, poetry, art, religion, and other essential elements of culture. Homo Ludens is, in many ways,an attempt to redefine and elevate the significance of play. Huizinga's vision of play offers a perfect point of departure for the development of the concept of meaningful play. We begin with a close reading of one section of the opening passage from Homo Ludens:
It [play] is a significant function-that is to say, there is some sense to it. In play there is something "at play" which transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts meaning to the action. All play means something.[1] Huizinga emphasizes the fact that all play means something, that there is "sense" to play, that it transcends. The idea that "all play means something" is a wonderfully complex statement we can interpret in a variety of ways.In fact, all of the following are possible readings of the text: These are complex and multi-layered questions, lacking definitive answers. In some sense, each of the interpretations posed are implied in Huizinga's statement, and all of them point to key aspects of play and play's participation in the creation of meaning. These important questions, and their possible answers, contain all of the main themes of this book.We will, in the pages that follow, investigate the intricate relationships among game design, play, and meaning.
Huizinga says that play is a significant function. Does this mean that play is an important (and possibly unrecog nized) force in culture-that it is significant in the way that art and literature are? Or does he mean that play sig-nifies-that it is a symbolic act of communication?
He mentions that there is some sense to play.Does he mean that play isn't soley chaotic, but is instead an event that can be understood and analyzed if one looks closely enough? Or is he implying that sense itself (the opposite of nonsense) is something intrinsically related to play?
There's the complex statement: In play there is something "at play." Does Huizinga mean that there is always some thing deeper "at play," which constitutes any instance of play we observe in the real world? Or that in play some thing is always in motion, never fixed, and in a constant state of transformation?
This "at play" quality of play transcends the immediate needs of life. Does the word "transcend" imply something spiritual? Or does Huizinga simply mean that play creates an artificial space beyond that of ordinary life?
The same "at play" characteristic of play imparts meaning to the action. Does the fact that play is always "at play" relate to the meaning of the action? Or does it imply that play must be understood as one element of a more gen eral system out of which meaning grows?
The passage concludes with the sentence, All play means something. But what does play mean? To who or what is it meaningful? What is the process by which meaning emerges from play?
[1]Johann Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), p. 446.
