What defines games, toys, playing? (Quotes)

"Each person defines games in his own way - the anthropolgists and folklorists in terms of historical origins; the military men, businessmen, and educators in terms of usages; the social scientists in terms of psychological and social functions. There is overwhelming evidence in all this that the meaning of games is, in part, a function of the ideas of those who think about them."

– E.M. Avedon in "The Structural Elements of Games" in "The Study of Games", Sutton-Smith and Avedon, Eds., New York 1971, p.438

“Play can be recognized by the more or less large-scale change in the relation of equilibrium between the reality relation and the ego. One could thus say: if adaptive activity and thought produce an equilibrium between assimilation and accommodation, then play begins at the point at which assimilation begins to dominate accommodation. (...) Play is thus practically pure assimilation”

– J. Piaget: Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 5:"Nachahmung, Spiel und Traum", Quoted in Claus Pias:"Action, Adventure, Desire"

"A game is a form of art in which participants, termed players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal."

- Greg Costikyan (1994), "I have no words & I must design"[1]

"The ideology of a game is in its rules, its invisble mechanism, and not only in its narrative parts. Thus a global innovation of this medium will be very difficult."

- Paolo Pedercini from Molleindustria (translated from German)[2]

"Games are perhaps the only medium which allows us to experience guilt over the actions of fictional characters."

- Will Wright ("The Sims"), quoted in Henry Jenkins (2003), "Meaningful Violence"

"The gap between those who want games to entertain and those who want games to be art does not exist. Because both entail posing questions - tough ones even, ethical ones, even. And games will never mature as long as the designers create them with complete answers to their own puzzles in mind."

- Raph Koster, "Theory of Fun"[3]

"Interactivity is one of the core features that differentiate games from passive media like film. In a game we play a role. Most of the time, the roles we play in games are roles of power. Space marine, world-class footballer or hero plumber. Isn't it about time we played the role of the weak, the misunderstood, even the evil? If videogames remain places where we only exercise juvenile power fantasies, I'm not sure there will be a meaningful future for the medium."

Ian Bogost, Watercooler Games

- From the David Fincher Movie "The Game"

- David Cronenberg, character Allegra Geller in the movie "eXistenZ" (1999)

"Much can be learned in play that will afterwards be of use when the circumstances demand it."

- Johan Amos Comenius (1649)

"Alternate reality gaming is emerging as the way for the world to imagine and engineer a best-case-scenario future... If you want to change the future, play with it first."

- Alison, SURGE Network 2007, on "World without Oil" [4]

"In strongly opposing the world of play to that of reality, and in stressing that play is essentially a side activity, the interference is drawn that any contamination by ordinary life runs the risk of corrupting and destroying its very nature."

- Roger Caillois, "Men, Play and Games", chapter "The Corruption of Games" (italics by author) p. 43

"A voluntary activity or occupation executed within certain fixed limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy, and the consciousness that it is different from ordinary life."

- Johan Huizinga (1938), "Homo Ludens"