This document summarizes a workshop on revising Johan Huizinga's book "Homo Ludens" for modern game studies. It discusses two main points: 1) Professor Jos De Mul proposes that games inherently involve "ambiguities" or ironic dualities, like freedom within rules, that account for their unique nature. He believes appreciating games requires accepting two opposing experiences at once. 2) This challenges the field's search for consensus by showing games defy binary definitions. Embracing ambiguities, as Mul and Tavinor suggest, may provide a more productive path for a unified theory of game studies.

1. インターネット工学研究室: ゲーム研究
研究進捗
クリス
2013年10月18日

2. 順序
 GDC 2014 Proposal
 Homo Ludens 2.0 Workshop (10/16)
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3. GDC 2014 Proposal
 Collaboration w/Prof. Fujita
 Research findings:
 Emergent Narrative is experiencing a period of
rapid growth/involvement
 Embedded Narrative methods are multiplying
without coalescing into a model or consensus
 The link between Emergent and Embedded
Narrative is still significantly unclear
 The findings represent research problems that
will require much more time to present
meaningfully
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4. Workshop: “Homo Ludens 2.0” (1)
 Speakers:
 Prof. Jos De Mul
 Erasmus Univ.
 http://www.demul.nl
 Prof. Hiroshi Yoshioka
 Kyoto Univ.
 http://www.iamas.ac.jp/~yoshioka/SiCS/index.html
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5. Workshop: “Homo Ludens 2.0” (2)
 Homo Ludens (Huizinga 1955)
 Oft-referenced in Game Studies
 Provides first and still-mostly-feasible
definitions for:
 Games
 Play
 Relationship with Culture and Humanity
 Mul’s revision of the original
 Objective: understand the “Ambiguities”
present in Homo Ludens
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6. Workshop: “Homo Ludens 2.0” (3)
 Ambiguities: “Ironic Dualities”
 Freedom vs. Force
 Simulation vs. Reality
 Etc
 Such Ambiguities are present, but not
accounted for in Huizinga’s work
 Mul proposes that such Ambiguities and
their inherently-opposite natures existing
simultaneously is the anomaly that
accounts for the phenomenon of games
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7. Workshop: “Homo Ludens 2.0” (4)
 Ambiguities arise out of the interactive
nature of games
 ie. Achieving escapism through willful
participation in a rule-based construct, or more
simply, “seeking and attaining freedom by
willfully agreeing to be a member of a
structured society.”
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8. Workshop: “Homo Ludens 2.0” (5)
 Aesthetic Appreciation of Games cannot
occur without these Ambiguities
Analysis:
Immersion:
Objective appreciation
of the form and
function of the work
True and complete
appreciation and belief
in the story
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9. Workshop: “Homo Ludens 2.0” (6)
 Aesthetic Appreciation of Games cannot
occur without these Ambiguities
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10. Workshop: “Homo Ludens 2.0” (7)
 Aesthetic Appreciation of Games cannot
occur without these Ambiguities
Analysis:
Immersion:
Objective appreciation
of the form and
function of the work
True and complete
appreciation and belief
in the story
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11. Workshop: “Homo Ludens 2.0” (8)
 Aesthetic Appreciation of Games cannot
occur without these Ambiguities
Aesthetic
Appreciation:
Analysis
The ability to enjoy
the work from
inside it while
retaining your
awareness of the
outside world
Immersion
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12. Workshop: “Homo Ludens 2.0” (9)
 In many ways, this is like thinking of things
that are not logically feasible (and
accepting them) such as:
 1 + 1 = 2 (TRUE)
 1 + 1 = 3 (TRUE)
 Both are simultaneously true
 This is obviously not feasible in the culture
of cold calculations
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13. Workshop: “Homo Ludens 2.0” (10)
 But for the realms of Aesthetics and
Philosophy, the idea of simultaneous,
double experiences that are both the very
form and function of a medium actually
goes a long way to reconciling or at least
indicating in some way, why Game
Studies of digital games cannot come to a
consensus, or settle on a model
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14. Workshop: “Homo Ludens 2.0” (11)
 Thinking in a binary fashion about Games
will inevitably lead to there being a
sufficiently large number of anomalous
cases which break any tentative
theoretical models
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15. Workshop: “Homo Ludens 2.0” (12)
 However, as Mul suggests, reframing the
argument to being a simultaneously ironic
duality (akin to Tavinor’s inclusive defintion
of the medium) AND considering that the
tension created by those simultaneouslyexisting forces IS the very essence of the
phenomenon of Games (especially in the
digital modern world) can potentially be a
very productive path towards a unified
theory of Game Studies.
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16. Workshop: “Homo Ludens 2.0” (13)
 So what?
 I am not entirely certain about how best to use
this great Lego piece for my Masters Thesis
 But, it reverberates in the mind like an idea
about to bear fruit
 What’s in the soup?
 Embedded/Emergent Narrative phenomena
 4th Wall/Magic Circle relationship and effect
 Inclusive nature of Tavinor’s defintion and
Mul’s philosophy of Ambiguities
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17. 今後の課題
 GDC Proposal feasibility (Prof. Fujita)
 PAX East 2014 (Boston)
 http://east.paxsite.com/
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