لطفا منتظر باشید ...
Temporary Worlds
What lies at the border of the game? Just how permeable is the boundary between the real world and the artificial world of the game that is circumscribed and delimited by the magic circle? Huizinga calls play-worlds "temporary worlds within the ordinary world." But what does that mean? Does the magic circle enframe a reality completely separated from the real world? Is a game somehow an extension of regular life? Or is a game a just a special case of ordinary reality? Let us return to the concept of a system. We have already established that games are systems. As systems, games can be understood as being either open or closed. In his definition of systems, Littlejohn informs us that "a closed system has no interchange with its environment. An open system receives matter and energy from its environment and passes matter and energy to its environment." [5]So what does this have to do with the magic circle? The question at hand has to do with the boundary between the magic circle of a game and the world outside the game. One way of approaching that question is to consider whether that boundary is closed, framing a completely self-contained world inside; or whether it is open, permitting interchange between the game and the world beyond its frame. As Bernard DeKoven notes in The Well-Played Game, "Boundaries help separate the game from life. They have a critical function in maintaining the fiction of the game so that the aspects of reality with which we do not choose to play can be left safely out-side." [6]Moreover, the answer to the question of whether games are closed or open systems depends on which schema is used to understand them: whether games are framed as RULES, as PLAY, or as CULTURE. RULES: Games considered as RULES are closed systems. Considering games as formal systems means considering them as systems of rules prior to the actual involvement of players. PLAY: Considered as PLAY,games can be either closed systems or open systems. Framed as the experience of play, it is possible to restrict our focus and look at just those play behaviors that are intrinsic to the game, ignoring all others. At the same time, players bring a great deal in from the outside world: their expectations, their likes and dislikes, social relationships, and so on. In this sense, it is impossible to ignore the fact that games are open, a reflection of the players who play them.
CULTURE: Considered as CULTURE,games are extremely open systems. In this case, the internal functioning of the game is not emphasized; instead, as a cultural system the focus is on the way that the game exchanges meaning with culture at large. In considering the cultural aspects of professional Football-political debates over Native American team mascots, for example-the system of the game is opened up to expose the way that it interfaces with society as a whole. Is it a contradiction to say that games can be open and closed systems at the same time? Not really. As with many complex phenomena, the qualities of the object under study depend on the methodology of the study itself. The answer to the question of whether games are closed or open systems, whether they are truly artificial or not, depends on the schema used to analyze them. We return to this important question many times over the course of this book. [5]Stephen W. Littlejohn, Theories of Human Communication, 3rd edition (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company, 1989), p. 41.[6]Bernard DeKoven, The Well-Played Game (New York: Doubleday, 1978),
