Slides introducing the Miguel Sicart's Play Matters

1. Play Matters
Play and Playfulness
Children's Games
Pieter Bruegel the Elder

2. Sicart’s ontological approach to play
Trying to understand the ESSENCE of play; the
nature of play; the ontology of play
His approach differs from empirical,
psychological, cognitive studies of play
He desires to reclaim play “as a way of
expression, a way of engaging with the world” (5)
“Play is being in the world, through objects,
toward others” (18)
He offers a “portable theory” or a “rhetoric of
play”; “play as a portable tool for being”

4. “To play is to be
in the world.
Playing is a
form of
understanding
what surrounds
us and who we
are, and a way
of engaging with
others. Play is a
mode of being
human.”

5. –Miguel Sicart, Play Matters (p. 4)
“This is not a theory of play through
games. Games don’t matter that much.
They are a manifestation, a form of and
for play, just not the only one. They are
the strongest form, culturally and
economically dominant. But they are part
of an ecology of playthings and play
contexts, from toys and playgrounds,
from political action to aesthetic
performance, through which play is used
for expression.”

6. Children's Games
Pieter Bruegel the Elder

7. To play is to make a world, through objects, with others,
for others, and for us…. Play creates (itself) through
objects, rules, players, situations, and spaces.

9. Play is contextual
Play is carnivalesque (activity in tension
between creation and destruction, order and
chaos)
Play is appropriative
Play is disruptive
Play is autotelic (an activity with its own goals
and purposes)
Play is creative
Play is personal
What is play?

10. What is playfulness?
Functional design:
effective, efficient,
performative,
serious, valuable
Post functional
design: dynamic,
engaging, playful

11. “The main difference between play and
playfulness is that play is an activity,
while playfulness is an attitude. An activity
is a coherent and finite set of actions
performed for certain purposes, while an
attitude is a stance toward an activity—a
psychological, physical, and emotional
perspective we take on activities, people,
and objects” (22)
Play vs. Playfulness

12. Playfulness and…
Ambiguity
Appropriation
Personality
Creativity
Freedom
pp. 28-30

13. “Imagine if the people around you
were in fact playing a game you
were not aware of. Imagine those
multiple worlds being experienced at
the same time” (23).

14. Game Over