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Overview
This is the problem of the way we get into and out of the play or game…what are the codes which govern these entries and exits?-Brian Sutton-Smith, Child's Play
What does it mean to enter the system of a game? How is it that play begins and ends? What makes up the boundary of a game? As we near the end of our first Unit, we need to address one last set of key concepts. These concepts are embedded in the question raised by Sutton-Smith:"How do we get into and out of the play or game?" At stake is an understanding of the artificiality of games, the way that they create their own time and space separate from ordinary life. The idea that the conflict in games is an artificial conflict is part of our very definition of games. Steve Sniderman, in his excellent essay "The Life of Games," notes that the codes governing entry into a game lack explicit representation. "Players and fans and officials of any game or sport develop an acute awareness of the game's 'frame' or context, but we would be hard pressed to explain in writing, even after careful thought, exactly what the signs are. After all, even an umpire's yelling of 'Play Ball' is not the exact moment the game starts." [1]He goes on to explain that players (and fans) must rely on intuition and their experience with a particular culture to recognize when a game has begun. During a game, he writes, "a human being is constantly noticing if the conditions for playing the game are still being met, continuously monitoring the 'frame,' the circumstances surrounding play, to determine that the game is still in progress, always aware (if only unconsciously) that the other participants are acting as if the game is 'on.'"[2]
The "frame" to which Sniderman alludes has several functions, which we will cover in later chapters. For now, it is sufficient to note that the frame of a game is what communicates that those contained within it are "playing" and that the space of play is separate in some way from that of the real world. Psychologist Michael Apter echoes this idea when he writes, In the play-state you experience a protective frame which stands between you and the "real" world and its problems, creating an enchanted zone in which, in the end, you are confident that no harm can come. Although this frame is psychological, interestingly it often has a perceptible physical representation: the proscenium arch of the theater, the railings around the park, the boundary line on the cricket pitch, and so on. But such a frame may also be abstract, such as the rules governing the game being played.[3]
In other words, the frame is a concept connected to the question of the "reality" of a game, of the relationship between the artificial world of the game and the "real life" contexts that it intersects. The frame of a game creates the feeling of safety that is part of Chris Crawford's definition of a game explored in Defining Games. It is responsible not only for the unusual relationship between a game and the outside world, but also for many of the internal mechanisms and experiences of a game in play. We call this frame the magic circle, a concept inspired by Johann Huizinga's work on play. [ >.
[2]Ibid. p. 2.[3]Michael J. Apter, "A Structural-Phenomenology of Play, " in Adult Play: A Reversal Theory Approach, edited by J. H. Kerr and Michael J. Apter (Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger, 1991), p. 15.
