Showing papers in "American Journal of Play in 2014"

Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming

Abstract: Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer GamingT. L. TaylorCambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012. Appendix, notes, bibliography, index. 304 pp. $29.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780262017374In Raising the Stakes: E-Sports and the Professionalization of Computer Gaming, author T. L. Taylor examines the ups and downs of a slowly emerging industry, e-sports (electronic sports). The e-sports industry aims to turn real-time video game competition into the next major professional sport-complete with franchises, broadcast tournaments, superstar players, and mogul team and league managers. Those who would make e-sports a success point to South Korea, the only country so far in which the industry has taken hold. Taylor tells us that tournaments like the World Cyber Games draw sponsors like Coca-Cola, Microsoft, and Samsung and that Korean Telecom companies, and even the Korean Navy have-or sponsor-teams. Outside of the promised land of South Korea, however, e-sports have struggled and exist as a generally small, niche industry.Taylor's book does an excellent job of examining e-sports through numerous lenses. Providing historical context, she takes us back to the roots of e-sports, delving into the early days of informal, head-to-head video game competitions around the first computer game, Space War! (1962) and the inclusion of highscore record keeping on arcade machines to arcade-based tournaments (still happening today on the old machines like Pac Man and Donkey Kong and chronicled in the 2007 documentary King of Kong) and the video game-themed Starcade (1982- 1984) television show. She then moves to the emergence of the on-line networked play of Id Software's Doom (1993) and Quake (1996) through today's current live and networked tournaments of firstperson shooters and other video game competitions. Yet Raising the Stakes is not just a historical effort. With her first book, Play between Worlds: Exploring On-Line Game Culture, Taylor established herself as a solid analyst of games as media and community.And Taylor brings those skills to bare on gaming as a sport. For example, in her second chapter, titled "Computer Games a Professional Sport," Taylor guides us through an in-depth, well-reasoned, and documented analysis. She cites the literature on the debates around computer games as play. She examines the modification of rules, and occasionally of systems, of the games themselves for tournament play, judging, and broadcast. She compares the requirements and practices of professional sports and professional athletes (mental and physical training, hours and routines of practice, preferences for specific brands and makes of equipment or insistence on the use of personal equipment) in other sports to those of professional gamers. …

The Elements of Play: Toward a Philosophy and a Definition of Play.

Abstract: Scholars conventionally find play difficult to define because the concept is com- plex and ambiguous. The author proffers a definition of play that takes into con- sideration its dynamic character, posits six basic elements of play (anticipation, surprise, pleasure, understanding, strength, and poise), and explores some of their emotional, physical, and intellectual dimensions. He argues for a play ethos that recognizes play is evolution based and developmentally beneficial. He insists, how- ever, that, at its most elemental, play always promises fun. In this context, any activity that lacks these six elements, he contends, will not fully qualify as play. Key words: definition of play; elements of play; universe of playPlay is a roomy subject, broad in human experience, rich and various over time and place, and accommodating pursuits as diverse as peekaboo and party banter, sandlot baseball and contract bridge, scuba diving and Scrabble. Play welcomes opposites, too. Play can be free-ungoverned by anything more complicated than choosing which stick is best to improvise a light saber-or fixed and codified, as in those instances when soccer players submit to scrupu- lous ?laws.? Play can take active or passive form and can be vicarious or engag- ing-and so we recognize play in both the spectator and the actor. In fact, at play we may even become both spectator and actor, straining with an air-guitar at a concert for example or sympathetically enacting the motions of the quarter- back's long bomb during the big game.1 We have no trouble recognizing play in the premeditated prank or the instant wisecrack. And then play can be solitary or social-as enjoyed by a woodcarver at his bench or a quilter during her bee. We can find play in the spaces in between, too, as children engage imaginary friends without quite being alone or as gamers play together on the Internet without meeting face-to-face.We can take in play at a glance in these instances, following its course and knowing it confidently when we see it, but observation does not automatically bring us closer to refining the concept. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case: the settings change, the play interval varies, the intensity rises and falls, and then intent and other human circumstances shift and morph. The more we look and listen, the more we feel our confidence slip away. But if our eyes fail us, perhaps the mind can compensate. Can we imagine a satisfying definition, one true of play wherever and whenever there are players and however they play? Can we specify ideal, unvarying, dependable attributes of play?Many thinkers have proposed so, noting salient aspects of play. Gordon Burghardt, for example, in his searching The Genesis of Animal Play (2005), identified twelve characteristics of play. And Thomas Henricks, in his thought- ful Play Reconsidered (2006), noted that scholars have tended to isolate volition, pretending, ordering, seclusion, and secrecy.2 Boil the lists down, and five basic qualities emerge: play is apparently purposeless, voluntary, outside the ordinary, fun, and focused by rules. Identifying the attributes of play like this can prove very useful if we understand them as criteria, and once having so identified these criteria, apply them as standards.Thus, first, play exists for its own sake. Players do not aggressively seek out some other purpose to play. In fact, trying to twist play to an end vitiates it, making it seem less and less like play. Second, players play of their own accord. Third, play is special and set apart. Sometimes players reserve a particular setting for playing, and no matter how different from each other, the field, the stadium, the woods, the rink, the court, and the ring all serve as playgrounds. Fourth, play is fun, a criterion not so simple as it sounds because people can find fun in a dizzying variety of activities. And fifth, players play by rules. Rules are not just for organizing games and making them fair, they keep games interesting and keep games going. …

How Play Makes for a More Adaptable Brain: A Comparative and Neural Perspective.

Abstract: Studies of rats and some primates show that rough-and-tumble play among juveniles improves social competence, cognition, and emotional regulation later in life. Most critically, such play makes animals better able to respond to unexpected situations. But not all animals engage in play, and not all animals that play appear to gain these benefits. Using a model developed by Burghardt (2005), the authors argue that there are enabling conditions-such as how behavior systems develop and the presence of surplus resources-that make play-like behavior possible. Once such behavior emerges, other enabling conditions help transform it into more exaggerated patterns of play that can be co-opted for various functions. For species living in complex social systems with an extended juvenility, play has become a tool to refine the control that the prefrontal cortex has over other neural circuits. Such control permits these animals to have more nuanced responses to a variety of situations. In short, the juvenile experience of play refines the brain to be more adaptable later in life. Key words: comparative studies; developmental benefits of play; play and adaptability; play in the animal kingdomIntroductionThere is growing experimental evidence that play in rats, especially social play, serves an important developmental role. It helps refine social skills (Byrd and Briner 1999; van den Berg et al. 1999), improve the regulation of emotions (da Silva et al. 1996; von Frijtag et al. 2002), and enhance executive functions (Baarendse et al. 2013) by modifying the neural mechanisms that underlie them (Bell, Pellis, and Kolb 2010; Himmler, Pellis, and Kolb 2013). Data on several primate species (e.g., Kalcher-Sommersguter et al. 2011; Kempes et al. 2008), including humans (Lindsey and Colwell 2013; Pellegrini 1995), are consistent with these findings. In essence, the experience of play in the juvenile period pro- vides a context within which young animals can experience loss of control and deal with unpredictable events (Pellis, Pellis, and Foroud 2005), but do so in a rewarding setting (Panksepp 1998; Vanderschuren 2010). This appears to enable animals to train to deal with the unexpected vicissitudes of life (Pellis, Pellis, and Reinhart 2010; Spinka, Newberry, and Bekoff 2001). But before we explore how such play-induced brain changes can help make animals better at dealing with the life's uncertainties, we need to answer a more fundamental question.We should be bear in mind that the animal kingdom consists of about thirty phyla that represent major groupings based on the unique features of each phylum's body plan. Consider the difference in body organization between an insect like an ant and a vertebrate like a dog. The division of body parts, the number and placement of the legs, the location and organization of the ner- vous and circulatory systems all differ in fundamental ways (Tudge 2002). An exhaustive review of the literature has shown that play occurs in only five of the thirty phyla (Burghardt 2005). For example, play appears in many species in the phylum Chordata, which includes people, dogs, and ravens and some species of the phylum Arthropoda, which contains insects (like ants), crustaceans (like shrimp), and arachnids (like spiders). We dot not find play, however, in the phylum Echinodermata, which contains starfish and sea urchins, or the phylum Annelida, which includes earthworms and leeches. Indeed, even in the phyla containing species that play, not all the species in those phyla play. For instance, researchers report that in Chordata only some in the subphylum Vertebrata (those creatures with a vertebral column like humans and fish) play, and among these vertebrates, play seems fairly common in many lineages of mammals, less common but present in some lineages of birds, but rare among other groups like amphibians, reptiles, or fish. In this context, we are left to wonder why play, which seems important to training some animals to be more adaptable and resilient, is so rare in the animal kingdom? …

Aesthetic Theory and the Video Game

Abstract: Aesthetic Theory and the Video GameGraeme KirkpatrickNew York: Manchester University Press, 2011. Images, bibliography, index. 247 pp. $25.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780719077180 Graeme Kirkpatrick's study of aesthetic theory and video games seeks to apply aesthetic theory to what some view as a garish, popularized, and mass-produced cultural form. What do video games have to do with aesthetics after all? Kirkpatrick takes this question head on and argues that video games are a"historically specific instance of an aesthetic form," and as such they should be viewed through the lens aesthetics to be understood (p. 1). Over the course of six chapters, Kirkpatrick discusses the newness of what games bring to aesthetics. For the author, the newness of games is a specific way of approaching the text through the body, as a participant rather than as an audience.Drawing on the work of Markku Eskelinen (a founder of gamestudies.org), Kirkpatrick demonstrates the difference between games and stories. As Eskelinen notes, when we are thrown a ball, we do not expect it to tell us stories. This example becomes Kirkpatrick's starting point for an exploration of games as texts that expect us to play along, take part in, and initiate the progress of the experience. He pushes Eskelinen's comments further by asserting that the act of playing can be meaningful without being subjected to interpretation. The act is its own meaning and its own goal.Despite Kirkpatrick's initial claim that play does not have to be interpreted, he does commit interesting and thoughtprovoking acts of interpretation. For instance, in chapter 5, "Meaning in Virtual Worlds," he interprets the structure of video games as a constant revisiting of loss, and he points to how it is described as a joyless pleasure (p. 187). In this discussion, he demonstrates through strong and engaging analysis the connections between game criticism and the cultural criticism of Walter Benjamin and Frederic Jameson.In Kirkpatrick's chapter called "Ludology, Space, and Time," he positions the ludology (the study of games) of Espen Aarseth and Jesper Juul in the context of traditional aesthetic theory. He weaves the loose ends of structuralist game studies into the aesthetic traditions and understandings that the ludologists originally rejected, claiming that game scholarship was independent of them. These original ludologists did this to avoid having games reduced and understood only in the image of the previous, more static texts dominating the field of literature and aesthetics. Yet while this chapter performs the necessary task of positioning ludology in relation to aesthetic theory, it also leaves a lot to future discussion. …

Video Games: Play That Can Do Serious Good.

Abstract: The authors review recent research that reveals how today’s video games instantiate naturally and effectively many principles psychologists, neuroscientists, and educators believe critical for learning. A large body of research exists showing that the effects of these games are much broader. In fact, some types of commercial games have been proven to enhance basic perceptual and cognitive skills. These effects are significant enough that educators use these games for such practical, real-world purposes as training surgeons and rehabilitating individuals with perceptual or cognitive deficits. Although many individuals may still consider video games nothing more than mindless fun, the authors argue that games serve also as serious tools for good.

Play as Self-Realization: Toward a General Theory of Play.

Abstract: In a wide-ranging essay that reviews the major theories of plays and relates them to significant notions of the self, the author addresses the question of why we play. He does so to argue that play is a biologically driven project of self-understanding and self-realization, one that humans-although they also share the experience with other creatures-have developed most fully as a part of their psychological and social life. Key words: play and self-realization; rhetorics of play; theories of playIn 1973 psychologist Michael Ellis wrote a book called Why People Play in which he addressed that very issue. Like other compendia of play theory before and since, Ellis's summaries manifest the view that there are many ways of thinking about play and many explanations for why it occurs (Millar 1968; Levy 1978; Spariosu 1989; Sutton-Smith 1997; Power 2005; Burghardt 2005; Carlisle 2009). Ellis's book focuses on this multiplicity of approaches before attempting to make them mesh in a few pages at the end.Here, I hope to extend the integration of disparate approaches to play. My thesis is that play can be understood as a project of self-realization, a project humans share with other creatures who play. To develop my thesis effectively, I need first to present a vision of self expansive enough to accommodate various theories of play. I can then discuss the notion of realization in a way that shows how play constitutes a specific strategy for aligning orientations and actions. Play, I-like some others-argue, is a fundamental way creatures make coherent their possibilities for acting in the world. To begin, let me return to the theories of Ellis and the other commentators on play.Play Theory: A Brief SummaryEllis starts with a remembrance of some classic theories of play from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Like scholars of every age, those who produced such theories shared the fascinations of their times. They appreciated Charles Darwin and his ideas about the shared ancestries of living creatures and the ways differences emerged among species. These scholars linked their notions of biological development-at both the individual and species levels-to ideas about social and cultural development and focused especially on the new indus- trial societies then arising. Scholars pondered the mechanisms of stability and change, the prospect that history can be conceived as progress, and the energy needed to carry all these processes forward.In this context, some of the classic theorists claimed that play is an expres- sion of surplus energy (Spencer 1896), a practicing of the instincts (Groos 1898), or a pattern of relaxation from the pressures of an industrial civilization (Patrick 1916). Others maintained the quite different (and, indeed, opposite) view that play is a form of energy restoration or re-creation (Lazarus 1883). Different, too, were the scholars who described play as a sort of recapitulation-in individual development-of earlier stages in the evolution of the species (Hall 1906). Taken as a whole, these classic explanations claim that play not only illustrates indi- viduals' connections to their animal heritage but also connotes their distinctive abilities as a species. In other words, play links us to what has gone before (and to our basic frameworks for acting-in-the-world) at the same time that it frees us from the grip of instinct and manufactures new possibilities of living.During the twentieth century, scholars tried to specify more clearly the psychological and physiological processes inherent to play. They gave special attention to the conditions preceding the play moment. For example, some scholars like Menninger (1960) argued that play is a form of catharsis, a purging of undesired feelings and tensions by expressive action within socially approved formats. This thesis, related to energy build-up and discharge, owes much to Sigmund Freud and, before him, to Aristotle. …

Well Played: The Origins and Future of Playfulness.

Abstract: In this article, the author synthesizes research from several disciplines to shed light on play's central role in healthy development. Gordon builds on research in attach- ment theory that correlates secure attachment in infancy with adult well-being to demonstrate how playfulness might be a lifelong outcome of secure attachment and a primary factor in well-being. She discusses infants enacting the two primary attachment behaviors, attachment and exploration, as protosocial and exploratory play, then shows how these form a foundation for lifelong play and development. She reviews several metaphors for world views that arise from different attachment styles and endure throughout life in ways she claims either enhance or inhibit play- fulness. She explores the notion that adults can earn secure attachment through attuned play and restore what she sees as their innate playfulness and well-being. Key words: attachment theory; attuned play; broadening-and-building theory; exploratory play; happiness set point; internal working models (IWM); playful- ness and well-being;Even though scholars first began taking play seriously nearly a century ago, the majority of scientists studying health and well-being have largely ignored the field. Because the study of well-being encompasses the social, economic, psychological, spiritual, and physical state (in other words, the overall condition of an individual or group), the absence of play is a serious omission.This omission becomes even more striking when we consider how much careful research exists establishing the many and varied benefits of play. Natural scientists have identified numerous adaptive advantages for play that include training for the unexpected (Spinka, Newberry, and Bekoff 2001), skills for cooperation (Spinka et al. 2001), and the ability to interpret ambiguous social cues (Pellis 2010; Spinka et al. 2001). In addition, social scientists have identi- fied a host of affective, cognitive, social, and motor capacities that accompany play, including the ability to find meaning in experiences, or meaning making (Bruner 1990); metacommunication, or communication about communication (Bateson 1976); affect-regulation, or emotional stability (Berk, Mann, and Ogan 2006; Vygotsky 1986); self-transformation, or flexible identity and the ability to pretend (Garvey 1977; Schwartzman 1978); symbolic representation (Piaget 1962); the ability to communicate coherent narratives (Nicolopoulou 2005); the ability to be a peaceful, productive member of community (Sutton-Smith 1997); the social competence it takes to get along with others (Connolly and Doyle 1984); divergent thinking (Baer 1993); the ability to express oneself cre- atively (Singer and Singer 1998); and even the origin of culture itself (Huizinga 1955; Winnicott 1972).Yet, despite these impressive credentials, play remains on the margins of the broader professional discourse about health and well-being and, as a result, has remained widely unappreciated, drastically underfunded, and tragically underprioritized. There are many reasons for this situation. Although Western science has been studying well-being since Aristotle first reflected on "the good life" over twenty-five hundred years ago, the topic of play emerged as a serious focus of study only in the last century (Huizinga 1955). As ubiquitous as play is, it remains notoriously difficult to define and although an effective working definition for play behavior does exist (Burghardt 2001, 2005, 2010b), it has yet to be applied very broadly. Because there are so many varied forms of play, it is also difficult to isolate play as a discrete activity with specific and measurable outcomes. For example, while physical activity, social interaction, and creativity can all be aspects of play, they can also be studied separately and not necessar- ily under the rubric of play. Hence, we can easily miss the significance of play.In an attempt to bring an understanding and appreciation of play's con- tribution to well-being to the front of play science and more fully into the discourse on well-being itself, I seek, in this article, to synthesize and build on well-established research on well-being from several disciplines. …

The Well-Played Game: A Player's Philosophy

Abstract: The Well-Played Game: A Player's Philosophy Bernard De Koven Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013. Foreword, new preface, original preface, descriptions, appendix. 148 pp. $24.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780262019170For a while now, my search for the per- fect reading to introduce new students to games involved defining games as objects, as constructed things. Games are created activities bound by rules that allow only particular actions by their players, who are all trying to get somewhere, to win or to score big, or otherwise to succeed. There are ways to define games, however, that do not focus on constraints and goals. Instead, they focus on the activity of play, the interaction between players and games and gaming communities, and all the stuff around games, not the stuff of games. Yet for some reason, I never let go of my ten- dency to categorize and label and objectify when first introducing games. And in fail- ing to let go of these formal definitions, I may have been introducing games to my students as decontextualized objects that stand apart as inert things, waiting to be explored and prodded. But no. That is not what games are. They do not exist except in the enactment.And then I read the new edition of Bernie De Koven's The Well-Played Game: A Player's Philosophy and saw this line: "The only thing that makes a game real is that there are people playing it" (p. 57). I had heard about the first edition of this book and DeKoven's work from several well-respected games scholars, so I was expecting to find a typically academic work. Instead, I found no citations, few references to other scholars, and no pre- sentation of research or thoughts about different play theories. De Koven does not mention Johan Huizinga's "magic circle," ludology, or even rule systems. He does not discuss affordances or play as human development, nor does he examine gam- ing culture and practice through the lens of French philosophers. None of that. I was put off at first. How could this book be so audacious, existing in a weird bubble where all these other works do not exist? How could this new edition not be revised to allow for digital games and all the new scholarship around them? And to top it off, it seems to be written as if you are just talking to the author. And yet . . . by the time I finished reading the first chapter, I knew The Well-Played Game is something extraordinary. The meanings found in this book are layered and deep and require multiple readings. This is a book to live with, live by, and live through for the rest of your life.The book is laid out as one long con- versation: each chapter extends the train of thought from previous chapters. First, De Koven takes time to explain precisely what a well-played game is: "Our success in the search for the well-played game can only be measured in terms of how well we have been able to play together," De Koven explains. "Either we achieve it together or we don't achieve it at all. It is not measured by the score, it is not measured by the game, it is measured by those of us who are playing it" (p. 5). For De Koven, to be "well-played" depends on so much more than just being a system of rules. And most of the responsibility for finding what it is rests with the players, not the game. …

Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual Performance

Abstract: Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual PerformanceKiri MillerNew York: Oxford University Press, 2012. Notes, references, index. 272 pp. $27.95 paper. ISBN: 9780199753468From Double Dutch to limbo competitions, games that meld music, performance, and play are easy to find. In more recent years, the rise and spread of digital technologies have given way to a whole new, and ever-widening, range of practices that combine, recombine, and expand upon this tradition. This is particularly true of digital games (video games, arcade games, and computer games) in which music has long fulfilled a core function, both in terms of adding significantly to games' narratives and aesthetics, as well as providing an intuitive way of giving feedback to players. Some of the early arcade games had soundtracks that contained hidden clues about the right time to make a particular move or that forewarned players they were running out of time or were about to experience a change of speed. More recently, rhythm games, such as PaRappa the Rapper (1996) and Dance Dance Revolution (1998), have incorporated beat as a core component of their game-play mechanics-where a player's moves are only successful if made in musical time. As digital games have become more social (and more socially acceptable), events such as weekly Rock Band competitions at the local pub and sharing a musical creation made in the game Sound Shapes (2012) with thousands of other players online are increasingly common.Kiri Miller's Playing Along: Digital Games, YouTube, and Virtual Performance is a timely and important work that tackles multiple aspects of the complex intermingling of music, performance, and play that is currently taking place within digital culture. The book features a range of relevant examples and draws important linkages between contempo rary and traditional leisure practices. The results of the author's own research in this area-which includes interviews with players, ethnographic fieldwork and firsthand experimentation with the games and practices involved-are described in close detail in three parts, divided by the case study or practice examined. Part 1 examines the highly popular and controversial single-player console game Grand TheftAuto: San Andreas (2004), in which music plays an integral role not only in setting the tone for game play, but also within the players' own in-game identity performance and role-play experiences. Part 2 focuses on music-performance games Guitar Hero (2005) and Rock Band (2007) and delves into some of the uncomfortable questions these games arguably raise about issues of authenticity (playing music) and consumerism (playing at playing music). Last, part 3 considers some of the ways leisure activities are learned and taught through YouTube and other social media, as well as how such tools are increasingly used to establish new, leisure-based communities of practice. Playing Along also comes with a companion website, which features a series of audio and video clips of some of the interviews with players and online videos discussed in the book.To help the reader navigate this, at times, dauntingly diverse range of topics, Miller supplies an eloquent and wellgrounded theoretical framework at the book's outset. The concepts and questions Miller lays out in the introductory chapter not only provide a useful way to map and make sense of the research laid out in parts 1 to 3, but they also help establish the interdisciplinary approach that Miller adopts in both her research and in the book itself. …

Validating the Adult Playfulness Trait Scale (APTS): An Examination of Personality, Behavior, Attitude, and Perception in the Nomological Network of Playfulness

Abstract: The authors discuss the Adult Playfulness Trait Scale (APTS), a measurement that they developed along with a conceptualization of playfulness based on a synthesis of personality research and play literature. They assert the research they conducted, which examined the nomological network of playfulness and involved relevant constructs of personality (self as entertainment), behavior (playing), attitude (goal attainment), and perception (leisure boredom), empirically validates the APTS. They present data from two studies to show correlations between the APTS and measures of theoretically related constructs to support their claims. In particular, they use results from known-group comparisons to illustrate that the APTS can successfully and effectively distinguish individuals with different levels of playfulness. They hope thereby not only to establish the validity of the APTS but to encourage its wider application in research on play. Key words: Adult Playfulness Trait Scale; APTS; nomological network of playfulness; personality research; play; playfulness; play research; reliability studies; validating research instrumentsWE HAVE DEVELOPED the Adult Playfulness Trait Scale (APTS), a new measurement of playfulness that assesses an individual's disposition for unin- hibited and spontaneous fun. We base our theory for the APTS on a new, inte- grated review of three major paradigms of personality research, namely the trait approach, social-cognitive theories, and the interactionist approach. We propose that, instead of considering traits as both internal psychological qualities and phenotypic states (i.e., the summary view of traits), we should focus on the internal dispositional qualities and strictly distinguish these from corresponding overt behavioral manifestations (i.e., a latent dispositional view of traits; Shen, Chick, and Zinn 2014).The summary view dominates the development of many trait inventories, including most playfulness studies (Barnett 1990; Glynn and Webster 1992, 1993; Lieberman 1977). Despite its popularity, the summary-trait concept lends itself to circular reasoning, especially when researchers use it to explain behavior, as we discuss in our review of the literature. The missing distinction between internal qualities and external state manifestations also commonly causes a "conflating" of "characteristics of playful behavior with dispositional qualities of the player" in playfulness research (Shen, Chick, and Zinn 2014). By contrast, the latent- disposition view avoids such circular reasoning by excluding the behavioral component from the trait conceptualization, making it theoretically tenable both to examine the relationship between the trait and behavior and to intro- duce a third component-situations-critical to studying trait-environment interaction in producing behaviors (i.e., the interactionist approach, Bowers 1973; Lewin 1936; Magnusson 1999)We derive the other important tenet of the theoretical framework for APTS from the network view emphasized by social-cognitive theories (Cervone and Shoda 1999, Mischel and Shoda 1995, 1998). Shen, Chick, and Zinn (2014) propose that, instead of an individual, nonreducible quality, a trait can be more appropriately considered a unique combination of interrelated cognitive quali- ties, qualities that often function together to drive a particualr type of behavior. This view acknowledges that a trait can often be multifaceted yet remain itself distinctively a trait.These two ideas define the latent-network trait conceptualization that guided the development of our concept and measuring instrument. Based on an extensive review of the literature, we proposed a hierarchical conceptual model of playfulness consisting of three levels and several subdimensions (figure 1). We then employed a multistudy, multimethod design to develop, refine, and validate a self-report measurement. APTS, the final instrument, consists of nineteen items and three subscales, each designed to measure one of the three cognitive qualities essential to playfulness. …

Play in the Early Years

Abstract: Play in the Early YearsMarilyn FleerNew York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. References, vignettes, photographs, glossary, indices. 261 pp. $94.00 paper. ISBN: 9781107640221In Play in the Early Years, Marilyn Fleer communicates the importance of play in young children's early education and development. Focusing primarily on the role of play in the Australian government's Early Years Learning Framework (a curriculum for children from birth to age five), she uses a variety of theoretical perspectives to develop a schema to help the reader understand children's play. Her schema considers the setting (such as school, home, playground) in which play takes place and the nature of play. She encourages readers to reflect on their own personal memories, perspectives, and expectations of play to become aware of the value of children's play. Fleer also describes a systematic analysis of teaching based on children's play in early-childhood education. She demonstrates the ways in which others have understood play in different eras, cultures, and early-childhood education settings (such as child care, family child care, schools, and community groups). The book discusses a wide range of topics, including perspectives on play from different individuals such as infants, children, teachers, families, communities, classrooms, and various early-childhood settings; different theories of play including classical, developmental, and postdevelopmental; integrating play into the early-childhood education curriculum; promoting children's play development; using cultural technologies in children's play; using play for assessment purposes; and advocating for play.In her first chapter, she introduces the different perspectives on play from personal memories, early-childhood education teachers, and theorists. Fleer provides an important discussion on the teachers' beliefs about children's play, which determines how they implement play in their classroom. At the end of each chapter, Fleer includes glossaries to assist students to relate their understanding of important concepts to ideas. She also presents vignettes and real-life examples to assist students with making the transition from theory to practice. Throughout the book, she underscores children's play experiences in various ways. Every chapter highlights numerous instances of play based on young children's interviews and observations. These interviews and observations focus on important concerns and on children's resourcefulness and interests during their play.Play in the Early Years appears to be a valuable resource primarily for practitioners and undergraduate students of early-childhood education at Australian universities. …

A Behavioral Investigation of Preference in a Newly Designed New Zealand Playground.

Abstract: Playgrounds with spaces that attract children increase the likelihood children will use them, the authors note, and playgrounds offer an opportunity for children to experience the risks of outdoor play. The authors used natural observation to study the children at play in a newly built New Zealand playground where such an important kind of behavioral learning was possible. In five-minute intervals over 615 minutes, they observed children of various ages and genders using the playground equipment. They discovered that swinging, spinning, and climbing-all at speeds and heights that made them risky-were the most popular activities overall for children. They discuss the important implications of these and their other findings for playground designers and for those worried about the decreasing time children spend playing outdoors. Key words: children, children's play preferences; playgrounds, safe play, risky playOUTDOOR PLAY OFFERS children unique physical, psychological, and social development opportunities (Clements 2004; Little and Eager 2010). The special equipment and open space available on outdoor playgrounds permit active play (Stephenson 2002; Trawick-Smith 2010), which has benefits for children's health and well-being. Children who attend schools with larger outdoor areas have lower body-mass indexes than those whose outdoor areas are smaller (Ozdemir and Yilmaz 2008). Being physically active outdoors increases oxygen intake, which aids the growth of muscles and neuromuscular coordination and assists sleep and relaxation (Adesina 2012).Additionally, outdoor play fosters more interaction with peers than indoor play (Trawick-Smith 2010). Playgrounds provide a meeting space open to all children. It is easier for children to join groups outdoors, which makes the groups in general bigger and more fluid (Stephenson 2002). Outdoor areas present opportunities for greater variability, unpredictability, and open-endedness in children's play, giving them a sense of freedom (Stephenson 2002). Opportunities to "swing, climb, slide, run . . . provide a satisfying range of physical challenges" (Stephenson 2003, 40). Once learned, many of the benefits of outdoor play, such as physical risk taking and learning to accept challenges, generalize to indoor settings (Little and Wyver 2008).Children's participation in safe outdoor play proves particularly impor- tant in urbanized areas (Clements 2004; Little and Eager 2010). Mothers from sixteen different countries reported that, although their children spent most of their free time watching television, they were happiest when playing outside at playgrounds or parks (Singer et al. 2009).To design playgrounds that attract children, we must determine the kinds of play children prefer, yet rarely do we consult them (Thomson 2007), despite the fact that we know children have different views about the spaces they inhabit than do adults (Matthews 1998). In our study, therefore, we investigate whether the play provided by a newly built playground in a small town in North Island, New Zealand, attracted the children for whom it was built.One aspect of public playgrounds that may attract children is the poten- tial for risk. Risk occurs when individuals make choices about behaviors with uncertain outcomes (Little and Eager 2010), such as engaging in play that may result in injury (Stephenson, 2003). In fact, Sandseter (2009) defines risky play for children as "thrilling and exciting forms of play that involve a risk of physical injury" (3). Others distinguish risk from hazard, a situation involving a source of harm that has a high probability of causing serious injury or death (Little and Eager 2010; Stephenson 2003). A playground may present both risks and hazards. For example, a slide affords a risk represented by height that children may choose to take. A slide may also present a hazard, for example from over- heating, that a child cannot easily choose to avoid. Thus, children understand a risk, which they may choose or not, but they have difficulty assessing a hazard, which will almost certainly to lead to injury (Greenfield 2003). …

Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900-2000

Abstract: Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900-2000 Juliet Kinchin and Aidan O'Connor New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2012. Images, credits, notes, index, further reading. 263 pp. $60.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780870708268Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900-2000, by curator Juliet Kinchin and curatorial assistant Aidan O'Connor and published by the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), accompanies the ambitious and introspective exhibition of the same title that opened at MOMA in New York 2012. This book resembles other coffeetable books-beautiful color and blackand-white photographs fill the pages and the content presents a broad survey of the subject-and proves a noteworthy source for general readers interested in learning more about the convergence of twentiethcentury material culture and childhood.MOMA describes Century of the Child as an overview of the "modernist preoccupation with children and childhood as a paradigm for progressive design thinking." The curators found inspiration in Swedish reformer and social theorist Ellen Key's 1909 book of the same title, in which she proclaimed that the recognition of children's needs would define social, political, psychological, and aesthetic reform. Key also proclaimed that the spaces a child occupies contributes significantly to her emotional and physical well-being. Kinchin and O'Connor's catalog complements the MOMA exhibit and documents that many modernists did, indeed, produce innovative and creative designs to enhance the physical, intellectual, and emotional development of children. The authors provide short but useful descriptions of the contributions of a number of last century's leading educators and the ways they influenced popular thinking about the distinct needs of children.From discussions of the new century to avant-garde playtime, from wartime propaganda to domestic landscapes, Century of the Child focuses on twentieth-century models of play and on the international social and political agendas that inspired designers to create works for children. The authors introduce several prominent figures and theories affiliated with progressive education. "The Kin-dergarten Movement: Building Blocks of Modern Design," an aptly named subtopic of the first section, provides a detailed summary of Friedrich Froebel's contributions to progressive education. His "gifts," a set of abstract design activities, fostered a child's ability to recognize and appreciate harmony in design. The authors briefly discuss the post-World War II Reggio Emilia pedagogical approach first made popular in Italy. Educators recognized that children learn in diverse ways and that the physical environment contributed to a child's capacity to engage in creative thinking. Classrooms designed to accommodate the Reggio Emilia approach provided visual stimulation and included open spaces with child-scaled structures intended to encourage interaction. Photographs of the Diana Municipal Preschool in Reggio Emilia, Italy, illustrate a welldesigned Reggio Emilia space. …

The Philosophy of Play

Abstract: The Philosophy of Play Emily Ryall, Wendy Russell, and Malcolm MacLean, eds. New York: Routledge, 2013. Contents, bibliographies, index. 216 pp. $145 cloth. ISBN: 9780415538350In April 2011, the inaugural Philosophy at Play conference brought together academics, play-sector workers, policy advocates, and analysts, among others, to make play the subject of philosophical inquiry and practice. The Philosophy of Play, edited by Emily Ryall, Wendy Russell, and Malcolm MacLean, is a collection of essays that arose from that conference. According to the editors, the objective of the collection is "to provide a richer understanding of the concept and nature of play, its relation and value to human life" and to provide "a deeper understanding of philosophical thinking and to open dialogue across these disciplines" (p. 2).Drawing on a range of philosophical traditions including the works of Plato, Wittgenstein, Gadamer, Nietzsche, Sartre, Burke and Deleuze, the collection-like the ubiquitous concept of play itself-is vast in scope, made up of sixteen chapters varying slightly in length and depth. No specific overarching questions or themes dominate the purpose for each chapter, nor are the chapters organized thematically. Putting together an anthology in this way would be especially challenging given the breadth of the subject; however, by accommodating various metaphysical, epistemological, ontological, and ethical perspectives on play, the editors have done an excellent job illustrating the expansiveness of the field while still highlighting a number of specific issues relevant to contemporary philosophies of play. In a way, the collection contains something for anyone interested in the subject of play: whether it be children's play, game play, or language play, it is a kind of "grab-bag" containing numerous short, yet thoughtful, and well-written philosophical explorations of play.Upon closer reading, the reader will find that some reoccurring themes relevant to contemporary discussions of play do emerge. In particular, several essays examine the common assumption that a defining and necessary characteristic of play is that it is "free" or autotelic and that play must be for play's sake, as illustrated by the early works of play scholars such as Johan Huizinga, Roger Caillois, Bernard Suits, and others. In the opening chapter, Randolph Feezell aims to generate a "pluralist, non-reductive account of play" (p. 11). Challenging Suits's definition of play, he raises an excellent point that "even if autotelicity is necessary for play it's not clear why an activity that has some external end couldn't also be desired for its own sake" (p. 19). In a similar vein of inquiry, authors Emily Ryall (chapter 3) and David Egan (chapter 4) examine definitions of play, suggesting that the essence of play lies in its openness. …

Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America

Abstract: Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters: The Struggle over Segregated Recreation in America Victoria W. Wolcott Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012. Notes, index, images. 310 pp. $25.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780812244342Victoria Wolcott's study of urban rec- reation and the civil-rights movement begins with an epigraph from Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" that describes the tears of his daugh- ter upon being told that Funtown, an amusement park in Atlanta, was "closed to colored children." The quote effectively introduces Wolcott's central argument, which asserts that the struggle against the segregation of recreational facilities, primarily swimming pools, roller skating rinks, and amusements parks, played an important role in the history of the civil- rights movement. Wolcott's history of "rec- reation riots," what she defines as "racial conflicts in spaces of leisure," covers both well-known events like the Orangesburg massacre, which stemmed from efforts by students at South Carolina State College to desegregate a local bowling alley, to a series of lesser-known, but significant struggles at recreation sites ranging from Cincin- nati's Coney Island amusement park to the Skateland rink in Cleveland and the public pools and beaches of Baltimore. The work both complements and extends the recent historiography of race relations and urban history in the United States by criticizing the "myth of Southern exceptionalism," calling attention to the long battles over the enforcement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and emphasizing the fundamental role that white violence played in sustain- ing segregation.The book begins with an examina- tion of the early decades of the twentieth century, a "tarnished golden age" when commercial leisure spaces were racialized and segregated by a combination of legal and extralegal means, despite black resis- tance. During the 1940s, the rise of racial liberalism and the renewed efforts of black activists produced very uneven outcomes. The successful integration of places like Detroit's Bob-Lo Island Amusement Park was offset by growing white resistance in the form of increased and overt violence against African Americans agitating for change and the proliferation of strategies to avoid desegregation, most notably by making public recreational facilities pri- vate to avoid legal entanglements and by simply closing them down altogether.Although Wolcott's analysis cov- ers events from around the country, it is perhaps strongest in her middle chapters, which focus specifically on the efforts of a committed group of activists to chal- lenge segregation at Coney Island outside of Cincinnati and the impact of a 1956 recreation riot on the city of Buffalo and the Crystal Beach Amusement Park. She explores the complicated political coali- tions and legal maneuvering that so often characterized the desegregation strug- gle, while also highlighting the bravery of individual activists and citizens like Juanita Morrow and Marian Spencer. Wolcott underscores the power that both real and threatened white violence had in dictating the pace of change and the very gradual integration of Coney Island. …

To Think without Thinking: The Implications of Combinatory Play and the Creative Process for Neuroaesthetics.

Abstract: The author considers combinatory play as an intersection between creativity, play, and neuroaesthetics. She discusses combinatory play as vital to the creative process in art and science, particularly with regard to the incubation of new ideas. She reviews findings from current neurobiological research and outlines the way that the brain activates various regions when creative, combinatory play uses conscious and unconscious cognitive and emotional processes. Key words: combinatory play, conscious and unconscious cognitive playful manipulation; creativity; stages of the creative process; neuroaestheticsThe rapid advances in neuroscience imaging and research have opened up opportunities for interdisciplinary investigation and the cross-pollination of many fields. The relatively new field of neuroaesthetics offers a particularly rich example. British neurobiologist Semir Zeki introduced the term in 1999 to describe research into the neurobiological and psychological bases and correlates for aesthetic experience.1 The aesthetic experience includes, for example, the perception of works of art, the emotional responses to and judgments of beauty (and ugliness), and the evolutionary roots of art making. Because creativity and play are inherent to the larger concept of aesthetics, the field of neuroaesthetics reenvisions both their roles with regard to aesthetics. The new developments also raise questions about the neurobiology of the kind of thinking involved in the creative process.Combinatory play describes the conscious and unconscious cognitive play- ful manipulation of two or more ideas, feelings, sensory experiences, images, sounds, words, or objects. In combinatory play, players experiment with hypoth- eses, they play with possible outcomes, and they adjust to unexpected results and even "failures." These players compare, contrast, synthesize, and break apart disparate elements or constructs in the service of reenvisioning a larger whole. This kind of mental play uses both unconscious and conscious thinking: scan- ning various stimuli and information, perceiving patterns and clear or hidden similarities between things or ideas, and playing with their interconnections, relationships, and links. We owe the term "combinatorial creativity" to the British cyberneticist Margaret Boden, who explores creativity in her influential study The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms.2The essence of curious creative thinking and problem solving, combina- tory play provides a fertile field for neuroaesthetic investigation into the direct link between play, imagination, creativity, and empathy. Understanding this link is important because imaginative combinatory play becomes a critical part of many artistic creations.It is also easy to observe combinatory play at work in the history of inven- tions, innovations, and discoveries in mathematics, science, and technology. In the world of science, for example, Albert Einstein concluded that "combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought-before there is any connection with logical construction in words or other kinds of signs which can be communicated to others. . . . Conventional words or other signs have to be sought laboriously only in a secondary stage, when the mentioned associative play is sufficiently established and can be reproduced at will."3Play is also a crucial component of other aspects of creativity such as thoughtful risk taking, perspective taking, agency, curiosity, wonder, joy in exploration and discovery, questioning assumptions, and seeing mistakes as opportunities to learn. Psychologist Steven Brown and philosopher Ellen Dis- sanayake claim that explaining aesthetics necessitates exploring the neurobiology of creating, perceiving, and participating in and receiving art-the universal drive to take pleasure in "making ordinary reality extraordinary" that is observ- able in song, ritual chants, and the sing-song playful exchange between a mother and infant. …

Designing the Creative Child: Playthings and Places in Midcentury America

Abstract: Designing the Creative Child: Playthings and Places in Midcentury America Amy F Ogata Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2013 Introduction, images, notes, bibliography, index 229 pp $3495 cloth ISBN: 9780816679614In Designing the Creative Child: Playthings and Places in Midcentury America, Amy F Ogata shows how a cultural preoccupation with childhood creativity leftits mark on American material life While the idea of the child as naturally creative first emerged in the eighteenth century and grew steadily during the nineteenth, it was only in the twentieth century that it took root across America The belief that children were naturally creative, and that their creative sensibilities could be further nurtured and expanded by exposing them to stimulating environments and objects spread rapidly during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, particularly among middle- and upper-class AmericansOgata explains that childhood creativity became a subject of pervasive concern because of social tensions related to America's Cold War with the Soviet Union During that era, many social commentators investigated the effects of child rearing on political culture For instance, anthropologist Margaret Mead suggested that Soviet children were trained to accept ideology without question, whereas American boys and girls had greater liberty of thought Mead was not alone, and many experts believed that the key to winning the Cold War was to ensure that the rising generation was flexible, innovative, and open to exploration The creative child also offered a comforting alternative to sociologist William Whyte's "Organization Man," the embodiment of conformity and conventional living Child-rearing experts proposed that with proper training and encouragement, youth might develop into something other than the herd-like creatures of David Riesman's "lonely crowd" And, some hoped, creative children, who could find new ways to amuse themselves and who were trained to think independently, might be able to resist the seductive lure of American mass culture that played incessantly on their television screensOgata's book is well researched, well written, and beautifully illustrated-and truly innovative in its depiction of how a generation of toy designers, architects, and museum curators gave shape to their faith in youthful creativity Whether it was the flexible, bendable Gumby, the simple and unadorned wooden toys of Playskool, the school designs of Saarinen and other midcentury architects, the playrooms and spaces enshrined in many newly built houses, or the children's art carnivals put on by the Museum of Modern Art, the goal of fostering youthful creativity was embodied in an array of objects, buildings, and installations that still exist today Often we take for granted these designs, giving scant consideration to their pedagogical and psychological goals, yet undergirding them were larger hopes for the development of an intellectually agile and inventive citizenry …

Understanding Young Children's Learning through Play: Building Playful Pedagogies

Abstract: Understanding Young Children's Learning through Play: Building Playful PedagogiesPat Broadhead and Andy Burt New York: Routledge, 2012. References, index, images. 170 pp. $47.95 paper. ISBN: 9780415614283Play, Learning, and Children's Development: Everyday Life in Families and Transition to SchoolMariane Hedegaard and Marilyn Fleer New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. References, index, images. 231 pp. $99.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781107028647Pat Broadhead and Andy Burt's Understanding Young Children's Learning through Play is an insightful analysis of openended, free-choice play in the Early Years Unit (part of the United Kingdom's Early Years Learning Framework curriculum) for children aged three through five at a primary school in York, England. The book consists of a series of vignettes that include interviews with staffmembers and the children's interpretations of events as they watched themselves on video. Book chapters focus on the role of adult involvement, what can be learned from risk and conflict, and the ways in which children progress from new child to master player.Although the book discusses play throughout this early-childhood program, an outdoor play area dubbed "the whatever you want it to be place" becomes the centerpiece for the study. This area lacked traditional play equipment, but teachers stocked it with such loose parts as milk crates, boards, barrels, cable reels, ropes, tarps, and tubing that children could turn into whatever they wish. Given that the indoor space had direct access to the outdoors, the inside area also began gradually to evolve into a "whatever you want it to be space" through the addition of netting to create a den, curtains to form a stage, and gallery space for the display of artwork. Through observing the children and participating where appropriate, staffhelped facilitate the development of the children through their play.Broadhead and Burt also provide a brief history of the British National Curriculum (1988) and the effect of the standards movement on the way the English typically incorporate play into earlychildhood programs. Their research shows how much children learn when teachers build on children's free play rather than dominate it. As a result, early-childhood practitioners and researchers will find this book a useful read. Practitioners will gain ideas for open-ended materials to spark initiative in children as well as ways to learn from and become involved (but not overly involved) in children's play. Researchers can also learn from the authors' innovative methodology of video recording children's indoor and outdoor play as the school moved from teacherdominated children's play toward a model in which the children's play guided the teachers. The authors showed these videos to the children and teachers to get their interpretations.In Play, Learning, and Children's Development: Everyday Life in Families and Transition to School, authors Mariane Hedegaard and Marilyn Fleer explore play and routines in the lives of four families- two in Denmark and two in Australia- with young children. Each of the book's four sections compares issues confronting several families and draws on the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, and psychology to interpret them.The authors, one in Denmark and the other in Australia, worked with research assistants who visited the families over the course of ten to twelve months. …

Clinical Intuition at Play

Abstract: A clinical psychologist and consulting psychotherapist discusses how elements of play, inherent in the intuition required in analysis, can provide a cornerstone for serious therapeutic work. She argues that many aspects of play-its key roles in human development, individual growth, and personal creativity, among others-can help therapists and patients alike tap into matters unique, salient, and vital to analysis. She recommends therapists take advantage of this intuitive aid play offers by experimenting with embodied perception and response through the use of guided imagery. Creating a sense of play in clinical conditions, she holds, makes it safe for patients to try out new ways of feeling, thinking, being, and behaving, all of which can lead to a deeper self-awareness and to healthy change. Key words: clinical psychology; guided imagery; play in psychotherapy; self-awarenessEVERY PSYCHOTHERAPIST relies on clinical intuition-whether in the form of flashes, hunches, gut feelings, body experiences, or behavioral impulses-to fill the gap between theory and practice. Clinical intuition is the means by which therapists perceive and respond to relational patterns during psycho- therapy. Intuitive faculties are also critical in patients if they are to be open to experimentation, emotional risk taking, and novelty. Clinical intuition involves a right-brain, fully embodied mode of perception and response that is necessary for deep change. On the other side of the couch, intuition is crucial for patients as well-as a means of opening up, finding spontaneity, and exploring novelty in the context of a caring relationship.To be effective as a psychotherapist means, in part, to honor the mystery of irreducible uniqueness. Although psychotherapists can, in theory, overlook radical uniqueness, they cannot overlook it in practice. Even allowing for devel- opmental history and cultural background, empirical validation based on nor- mative statistics cannot guarantee that any given method will work with any given patient and any given therapist at any given moment within any given relational and historical context. No matter how popular generalized treatment regimens or manual techniques may be and no matter how much they may quell our anxiety in the face of the unknown, we need to understand their limitations from the start. Prefabricated methods must always be supplemented with a per- sonal touch that is available only through an intuitive feel for things grounded in present-centered awareness.Immersed in the moment-to-moment thick of sessions, psychotherapists intuitively follow the natural flows of emotion, energy, and information with their patients. The more the perceptions and responses of psychotherapists ema- nate implicitly and intuitively from the central core of their being, the more attuned they can be to their own inner truths and to those of their patients. The ideal, intuitive therapist moves flexibly between implicit and explicit modes, between bottom-up sensory, somatic, and emotional primary experience and top-down modes of deliberation and creative insights. We must integrate it all if we want to effect therapeutic change.Although clinical intuition cannot be directly taught, it can be cultivated. Very much like plants in a garden, even the most natural facilities and talents possess wilder aspects that need refinement to be of greatest value and service to others. To tend to one's own intuitive gardens involves what Dan Siegel refers to as self-attunement (2007, 2010). When psychotherapists attune to themselves, they redirect inward toward themselves the interest, empathy, and care they ordi- narily extend outward to others. When patients pay more attention to embodied intuitive faculties, they create a network of feedback loops that enhance self- awareness and develop unique perspectives. Whether therapists or patients seek and discover different channels of knowing that are singularly their own, people cultivate individual relational styles that contribute uniquely to the interpersonal chemistry of their relationships. …

Architecture on the Carpet: The Curious Tale of Construction Toys and the Genesis of Modern Buildings

Abstract: Architecture on the Carpet: The Curious Tale of Construction Toys and the Genesis of Modern BuildingsBrenda Vale and Robert ValeLondon: Thames & Hudson, 2013. Notes, images, acknowledgements, index. 208 pp. $27.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780500342855Professors of architecture and experts in sustainable design, Brenda Vale and Robert Vale place new foundations in the field of twentieth-century toys with their most recent book Architecture on the Carpet: The Curious Tale of Construction Toys and the Genesis of Modern Buildings. The authors take a nuanced approach that leads to few outright conclusions about the subject but rather to more questions about whether architecture inspires the toy or vice versa, about how toys inform child development, and about the extent to which consumer society influences toy design.Ranging from Richter's stone blocks (actually, a composite of chalk, sand, and linseed oil) to plastic LEGOs (acrylonitrile butadiene styrene), the authors capture a broad spectrum of the types of construction and materials common to these toys. Through this survey, they make some innovative observations: Lincoln Logs "mimicked how such buildings are fundamentally constructed" (p. 80); "the Dutch [Mobaco] is an elegant system that makes models only superficially similar to buildings children would see, whereas the English [Bayko] is a complex and rather pragmatic system that makes quite accurate replicas of very familiar buildings" (p. 92); and Castos were a "model of the process of making concrete" (p. 144). Thus, toy design has to balance accuracy with assembly.Throughout the book, the authors supply facts gleaned from playing with the objects. For example, it is impossible to build higher than ten units in Playplex, and it is difficult not to bend the rods in constructing with Bayko. Because they draw primarily from their personal collection, it is easy to spot the toys that inspired them. Despite relying heavily on their own collection, they do mention the National Building Museum's collection, but they overlook collections at other cultural institutions, such as that at The Strong museum; they prefer citing collectors rather than curators, insisting that bayko.org.uk or brickfetish.com are veritable encyclopedias.The book skillfully weaves materials and visual items, such as the boxes and instruction manuals of the toys, together with physical architecture and information from trade journals. Fourteen roughly chronological chapters follow a formula that makes the book accessible to readers interested in a single construction toy or a quick read. Each short chapter begins with a toy, gives a physical description and its design history, then reveals the toy's role in an issue important to the current architectural profession, such as industrialization, everyday architecture, Cold War architecture, suburbia, and sustainability. For instance, the authors use Wenebrik to explore the rarity of metal buildings and, according to them, how it quickly ages in both toys and buildings.Using artifacts as starting points allows the authors to explore an array of cultural and architectural topics in a way familiar to material culture studies. But the informal style of the book avoids typical academic tools, like a literature review or a methodological description, so whether the authors actually intended to employ a material culture approach remains unclear. The book might well have offered a timely contribution to children's material culture, given the resurgence of scholarship through events like Juliet Kinchin's 2012 Museum of Modern Art exhibit, Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900-2000, or Amy Ogata's 2013 Designing the Creative Child: Playthings and Places in Midcentury America. …

Service Games: The Rise and Fall of SEGA/The History of Sonic the Hedgehog

Abstract: Service Games: The Rise and Fall of SEGA Sam Pettus CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012. Acknowledgements, images. 396 pp. $17.99 paper. ISBN: 9781463578473The History of Sonic the Hedgehog Pix'n'Love Ontario, Canada: UDON Entertainment Corp., 2012. Images, bibliography. 297 pp. $49.99 cloth. ISBN: 9781926778563By now, the ty pical digital gamer has become so familiar with the words "con- sole war" that he or she scarcely bats an eye when someone invokes them. Still, in the aftermath of the 2013 Electronic Enter- tainment Expo and the ongoing struggles between console manufacturers to capture consumer dollars and loyalty, we should remember how the competition evolved over more than thirty years of video game marketing. As we rapidly approach the eighth generation of the home-console war, and current titans Sony and Microsoft vie for attention, reviewing the landscape is both interesting and illuminating. Sam Petus's Service Games: The Rise and Fall of SEGA offer a history lesson from a for- mer console contender about the way the world of digital games has changed.SEGA (a n acronym for "Ser v ice Games") remains a household name in the gaming industry, although the company is less prominent than in the past. Once an industry standard for home gaming hardware, SEGA now focuses primarily on software production for multiple hard- ware platforms. Pettus's book serves an in-depth introduction to the SEGA Cor- poration, offering chapter-length descrip- tions organized chronologically for each individual generation of console hard- ware. Each chapter offers less a focused argument than a detailed account of hardware components and technical specs. But the work also explores the relationship between title licensing and the successful generation of a marketable public image.I find compelling the attention the book pays to the culture of the advertising of each generation, sporadic as that atten- tion is. Petus focuses on the frequently euphemistic rhetoric in advertisements such as "The more you play with it the harder it gets!" (pp. 66-67) and offers an analysis of SEGA as growing an "anti- establishment image" that better resonates with younger Western gamers. He outlines how other companies and console manu- facturers have ultimately used this strategy since to displace SEGA and capture mar- ket shares. Here, perhaps the book shines most, looking closely at both the advertis- ing of games and consoles and the specific titles that hardware systems offer to com- mand attention or generate a marketable rebel image. The reader quickly draws parallels to the current game market, and the advertising rhetoric used to distinguish console manufacturers into the buyable- identity commodities of fan culture.Pix'n'Love's The History of Sonic the Hedgehog also attempts to characterize the growth and popularity of the SEGA brand but does so by focusing on the evolution of its highly popular mascot. From an organi- zational perspective, the attempt to chron- icle the history of a character as prolific as Sonic is complicated. Rather than sticking to a strict chronology, the editors instead frame the story as an evolution of the char- acter from a technology demo in 1990 (p. 35) to Sonic's current game stardom across multiple consoles. Doing so allows them to consider the development of the SEGA console hardware and to discuss the need for the emerging game company to estab- lish a rival for Nintendo's Mario character. …

Making Sense of the Modernist Muse: Creative Cognition and Play at the Bauhaus.

Abstract: In a review of the methodology of the Bauhaus (Germany's famous art school of the Weimar Republic era) in light of more recent scientific research on creativity and especially in light of the work of Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, the author examines the emphasis the school placed on play and positive emotions and concludes that it evinced a highly sophisticated understanding of creative cognition half a century ahead of science. He thus questions the modernist and rationalistic paradigms into which the Bauhaus has been enshrined and discusses its true relationship to the idea of play. Key words: Bauhaus; cognition; creativity and play; Laszlo Moholy-Nagy; philosophy; photographyThe Bauhaus, Weimar Germany's iconic modernist school, which operated from 1919 to 1933, pioneered the integration of industry, science, and design. In this article, I focus on Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, one of the more prominent Bauhaus artists and pedagogues, who played a key role in formulating the Bauhaus phi- losophy. Moholy-Nagy had a particular enthusiasm for formalist photography and led and developed the Vorkurs (preliminary course), the cornerstone of Bauhaus pedagogy. While often characterized as a utopian rationalist in tra- ditional art-historical accounts, Moholy-Nagy's photographic formalism and visual pedagogy, which he developed in Painting, Photography, Film,1 The New Vision, 2 and Vision in Motion,3 are not pleas for rationalism; they reveal, instead, visionary insights into the mechanisms of creative cognition such as disinter- estedness, conceptual recombination, categorical reduction, and, perhaps most importantly, the importance of play to creativity.Many scholars, such as Pelle Ehn in his "Manifesto for a Digital Bauhaus,"4 still broadly admire the Bauhaus's integration of industry, science, and design, yet view it aesthetically as firmly entrenched within the narrow confines of rational- ist modernism, "a democratic failure diminished to an elitist program of 'hard' regular geometric white shapes in steel, glass, and reinforced concrete."5 Indeed, the general, conventional portrayal of the Bauhaus describes its aesthetics not just as this embodiment of rationalistic, hierarchical, rule-driven modernism, but further as a functionalist dogma devoid of symbolic communication and historical consciousness, one characterized by "an unquestioning faith in mod- ern science as the logical and seemingly omnipotent discipline par excellence. . . with which artists were prepared to renounce nature as a logical consequence of the already predominating influence of the machine."6This view owes much to the Western tradition that correlates creativity with mystery and madness, exceptionalism, uninhibited subjectivity, and "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings."7 However, this perspective neglects or misunderstands key features of the Bauhaus philosophy and methodology, especially those that emphasize a playfulness no less profound and fertile for its use of technology as instrument and experimentation as method. Moreover, in recent decades, cognitive psychology has researched and formulated principles governing creativity much more closely aligned with the Bauhaus approach than with the views of its critics or with the traditional classical, romantic, and psychoanalytic notions of creativity still prevalent in art history. I suggest that both the school and its representatives were active proponents of the processes and methods we consider today hallmarks of play, and that this reveals the Bau- haus's visionary understanding of creativity, a view confirmed by more recent research into human cognition.8Although many continue to consider the Bauhaus errant and dehuman- izing, some critics questioned that paradigm as early as the 1920s. In fact, Walter Gropius, founder and first director of the Bauhaus, objected to hiring Theo van Doesburg, founder of the Dutch art movement De Stijl (Dutch for "The Style," an art movement also called neoplasticism), because Gropius found van Doesburg's bare idealization of geometry too dogmatic and reductive, despite great affini- ties between their aesthetic visions. …

Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons and Dragons and the People Who Play It

Abstract: Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons and Dragons and the People Who Play ItDavid M. EwaltNew York: Scribner, 2013. Contents, notes, index. 288 pp. $26.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781451640502.A few pages into David Ewalt's autoethnography of Dungeons and Dragons (DD like acting, it occupies a place between true life and delusion, reality and fantasy. In Of Dice and Men, Ewalt takes on several tasks: he documents the history of DD although he appreciates other game styles, D&D is home to him-the play experience he feels most comfortable pursuing. …

Strategy and sociability: The mind, the body, and the soul of Chess

Abstract: Chess is a game of minds, bodies, and emotions. Most players recognize each of these as essential to playful competition, and all three are embedded in social relations. Thus chess, despite its reputation as a game of the mind, is not only a deeply thoughtful exercise, but also a test of physical endurance and strong emotions in its joys and failures. This exercise of thought, stamina, and feeling gets shaped, in turn, by chess's dependence on social arrangements among a player, a competitive other, and an audience. Like all forms of social play, games like chess rely on the community in which they occur. Having spent five years observing scholastic, collegiate, community, and professional chess and having interviewed players of various skill levels, the author argues that chess must be understood in light of the social relations and the communities that shape the competition. Key words: body in chess play; chess; components of chess play; emotion in chess play; mind in chess play; social relationsCHESS IS A GAME of contemplation, endurance, and action. It tests a player's mind, body, and emotions. These aspects of play seem highly personal, yet I argue that they depend on the presence and recognition of others. As a result, the game of chess remains, in every way, social. Chess requires a public identity, competition, and a real or imagined audience. Therefore, not only can cognitive psychologists and psychiatrists lay claim to understanding the game, so too can sociologists. A world may be biological and personal, yet it depends on social relations and community belonging, as is true of other worlds in which we participate voluntarily.A surprisingly large number of Americans know how to play chess or at least understand its basic rules. According to Susan Polgar, a prominent grand master, there are forty-five million chess players in the United States. Others put that figure lower, but most estimates hover around forty million. In chess centers like Russia, Eastern Europe, Iceland, Cuba, and Argentina, the number grows far higher. Polgar guesses that there are seven hundred million players worldwide. Even though many of these millions are not seriously committed to the game, the United States Chess Federation boasts a paid membership of some eighty thousand.1 Chess constitutes an extensive world of play.Having studied Little League baseball, high school debate, Dungeons and Dragons, and mushroom collecting,2 I wished to examine a more exten- sive leisure world. For five years-from 2006 to 2010- I observed at tourna- ments, interviewed players, and read books, magazines, and websites. I wanted to examine the diversity of chess, and to this end I visited the Marshall Chess Club in New York, the open chess tables in Washington Square Park, several elementary school chess programs in New York and Chicago, weekly meetings of a suburban Chicago chess club, a collegiate chess team, a high school team, a private adolescent chess group, the games of a professional chess team in the United States Chess League, and several dozen tournaments of various sizes, including the World Open and the United States Open. During these years, I met a dozen of the top one hundred American chess players and became friends with several of them. I conducted interviews with some fifty players at various skill levels from grand masters to players of modest abilities. I had also my own memories as a chess parent in the late 1980s and early 1990s when I took my son to elementary school tournaments and, for two years, organized a chess club at his elementary school.The Social MindAll agree that chess is a mental game. As Goethe remarked, "The game of chess is the touchstone of the intellect." Indeed its current popularity among ambitious parents stems from this belief. But just what is a mental game?Scientists, philosophers, and scholars often treat the mind as something both individual and universal. We humans think as members of a species, and we individuals think through our own experiences-experiences, in part, shaped by our genetic endowments. …

Deep Play. Rationality in the Life World with Special Reference to Sailing.

Abstract: In an essay on the rationality of play, the author characterizes rationality by the three distinct demands it makes on the individual-demands for autonomy, soli- darity, and integrity. He develops each of these as they apply to the sport of sailing, using the example of two deep-ocean expeditions to arrive at a concept of deep play he sees as one solution to the existential problem of living rationally. In the course of doing so, he suggests why so many disparate activities fall under this concept of deep play and concludes with a reflection on how deep play transcends sports. Key words: autonomy; Bernard Moitessier; integrity; deep play; rationality of play; sailing; solidarityA towering figure in the history of ocean sailing, Bernard Moitessier began sailing traditional junks in Vietnam where he was born. At twenty-one, he ran a business shipping cargo between Rach Gia and Kampot, Cambodia. He made his first long ocean voyage with his friend Pierre Deshumeurs in a boat so leaky they had to pump water constantly to keep it afloat. He sailed alone from Vietnam in 1952 headed for France, but he ran aground on reefs near Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and spent three years in Mauritius building a new craft with his own hands. He lost this second boat in the Caribbean and finished his trip to France by airplane. A 1966 voyage with his wife Francoise took him to Tahiti and back via Cape Horn and set a record as the longest ever nonstop voyage by a yacht.Moitessier's most famous exploit began as a race on August 22, 1968, an unusual race, the first of its kind-a single-handed and nonstop race around the world, called the Golden Globe. After the competitors agreed to the rules and a newspaper put up prize money, what began as a theoretical discussion among friends took on a life of its own and became a sporting event. Six months later, sailing hard in the southern Atlantic aboard Joshua, his forty-two-foot steel ketch, Moitessier appeared the race leader. He had crossed his outward track and was expected to turn toward Plymouth, England, and the finish line. But he then made a decision that changed everything. Instead of turning north, he set a course for the Cape of Good Hope and continued to sail on. On March 18, he used a slingshot to propel a film canister onto the deck of a tanker off Cape Town. The canister contained a message that read, in part, "I am continuing non-stop towards the Pacific Islands because I am happy at sea, and perhaps also to save my soul." 1Abandoning the race, he set out on a voyage to which the simple words "sport" or "game" or "play" seem to apply only suggestively. Something deeper was going on-a more complicated form of play, let me call it deep play-that I believe has not been adequately conceptualized.What Moitessier called saving his soul proved a quest to define and then to defend his integrity as a human being. In this essay, I unpack the notion of rationality to reveal a form of personal integrity in which a demand for personal autonomy and a demand for solidarity with other people and the larger world become integral in a way that fully affirms both without recourse to watertight compartments to keep them apart. Moreover, I show how the deep play of sail- ing constitutes a way of life in which personal integrity becomes possible. Seen this way, Moitessier's withdrawal from the Golden Globe becomes something more significant than the idiosyncratic expression of personality. It is a model of rational action in the sphere of life.Philosopher Steven Horrobin would call Moitessier "a sailor of the third kind."2 Such sailors, says Horrobin, "sail toward the horizon they will never reach." For them, sailing is not a means of reaching a destination, winning a prize, setting a record, or achieving some other end external to the activity of sailing: "For the sailor of the third kind, the boat itself and its function, the life with it and within it, its relationship to the wind, the land, the ocean and its living beings, the sun, moon, stars and horizon-that process, focused through the sailor's self, is an end in itself. …

Play, Playfulness, Creativity, and Innovation

Abstract: Play, Playfulness, Creativity, and Innovation Patrick Bateson and Paul Martin New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. Notes, references, index. 162 pp. $34.99 paper. ISBN: 9781107689343Patrick Bateson and Paul Martin's Play, Playfulness, Creativity, and Innovation is a fine short book, especially for two groups of readers of this journal: those who want an introduction to some of the most recent work on play in animals and its relevance to understanding play in the human animal, and those interested in the relationship of play with creativity. Both topics are currently important in biology and psychology. In eleven short chapters, a great number of topics are addressed. Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in the play of nonhuman animals. Scholars and practitioners primarily focused on play in humans, especially children, should be aware of this rapidly accumulating body of knowledge. Those studying nonhuman animals are also becoming more aware of the important contributions from work on human play. Psychologists such as Anthony Pellegrini, Peter Smith, and others have facilitated these connections, particularly in relation to rough-and-tumble play and social play in general, although the literature on object, artistic, and physical play provides useful linkages as well. This book complements these efforts in that its focus moves largely toward play as a source of creativity. However, it does not shy away from broader issues, especially in the earlier chapters.The first four chapters provide a brief overview of the history, biology, functions, and evolution of play. Brief and selective, the information is up to date and authoritative overall, but I think the authors stumble a bit in covering the definition of play and in their central distinction of play and playfulness. While the criteria they posit for recognizing play in diverse species and contexts are useful, their assertion that my own criteria makes "problematical" claims about function and internal state is simply untrue. In fact, I developed my criteria precisely to avoid claims about either, which previous definitions of play typically did not.This is not merely a personal quibble since the authors make as one of their central claims that not all play is playful and thus we need the concept of "playful play," a kind of play that explicitly involves a mood or motivational/affective state. Such states are internal and, of course, difficult to assess in animals without anthropomorphically regressing to the idea of their having "fun" or of being enmeshed in the moment. This makes any claims that turtles, fish, or insects are being "playful" virtually impossible at the behavioral level. Thus, while Bateson and Martin accept data showing that spiders engage in sexual play, they dismiss it as not playful play for no apparent reason other than an uncritical anthropomorphism. Fortunately, this issue is not central to the second major focus of the book-creativity and innovation-although it can even enter into descriptions of human behavior as play.The next six chapters give an overview of creativity research in people, novel behavior in animals, individual and group creativity, pretend play, creativity, education, humor, dreams, and drugs. These topics are all tied together in a fascinating final chapter that suggests directions for future research. Here the authors assert a critical distinction between creativity and innovation that other scholars might challenge, especially pertaining to animals and children. For example, Bateson and Martin review the literature claiming that play is an important precursor to creativity and that creative individuals are playful. …