People, the author holds, instinctively believe quitting a game to be a simple choice: you are either playing or you are not. But she finds quitting play more complex. To understand better the whole ecosystem of play, she maps out the reasons Finnish players abandon or reduce their gaming and examines these reasons through the lens of specific…

The authors conduct a broad, cross-cultural review of the literature in fields such as psychology, education, speech-language pathology, early intervention, and library science concerned with board games and learning in young children. They include experimenter-developed and commercial board games and children's learning in mathematics, science,…

The author argues that ethnography is a kindred of play. Based on her research of play in digital gaming environments, she draws several parallels between the practices of ethnography and the practices of play. She explores the complexities of play in games and expands our understanding of the work of ethnography as play.

The author discusses the impact of Black Twitter, a section of Twitter dominated by members of the African diaspora, on marginalized communities when it offers alternatives to the rules and expectations of mainstream social media, especially in relation to such online games as UNO. She touts the value of what she calls the "petty" for…

In 2009, Markus Montola, Jaakko Stenros, and Annika Waern published "Pervasive Games: Theory and Design," based on research conducted during the Integrated Project on Pervasive Games (IPerG) and funded by the European Union (E.U.) from 2005 to 2008. They wrote it--the first book-length treatise on the topic--before the widespread use of…

Christopher Bensch is vice president for collections and chief curator at The Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY. He oversees the acquisition of and care for the world's most comprehensive collection of playthings. He also serves as the primary spokesperson for the National Toy Hall of Fame. Andrew Borman is digital games curator at…

In an article adapted from his latest work, "Play: A Basic Pathway to the Self,"published by The Strong in 2020, the author offers a wide-ranging review of play studies--and the thinkers, philosophers, and scholars who led to the creation of the discipline. He also reviews and seeks to explain for both specialists and more general…

The author demonstrates that war places children's play under acute stress but does not eliminate it. He argues that the persistence of children's play and games during periods of armed conflict reflects the significance of play as a key mode for children to cope with conditions of war. Episodes of children's play drawn from the recent Syrian…

The author discusses Johan Huizinga's "Homo Ludens" and the animating mood that it calls the "play spirit." He argues that these styles of playfulness represent a major practical and theoretical contribution Huizinga offers contemporary studies of play, and he considers Huizinga's methodology in a reading that runs counter to…

The author discusses Magic: The Gathering as not only a card game but as situated in New Literacies as a Discourse and community of practice with rich, complex, and multimodal literacy practices. She describes apprenticeship to the game from the perspective of a novice and a long-time player and argues that entering its Magic Discourse depends on…

The author counters the common descriptions of play as endlessly diverse, ambiguous, and even paradoxical by describing it as a fundamental experience comparable to three others--ritual, work, and communitas. Play, he argues, entails a distinctive strategy of self-realization and a strategy for living. He first examines four basic types of…

Game historians usually trace the literary roots of role-playing games to J. R. R. Tolkien and other fantasy authors. In this article, the author argues that, although Tolkien indeed provided pioneer game creators with specific content, historians have missed the important early influence on game history of children's literature that advocates and…

Children have a natural inclination to play and imagine themselves as characters. Research has supported theories that connect this pretend play and related theatrical play to the development of children's social and emotional skills, but the author contends we need further, more rigorous research on whether such play directly relates to such…

The author discusses the Exeter Book riddles, some of the earliest poems in English, specifically Old English, as perfect examples of how play and poetry intersect. Their playfulness, he claims, is most apparent in the original manuscript, but notes that few modern readers read Old English. The orthography of the manuscript also helps to make the…

For Sigmund Freud, the terms "dreamwork" and "jokework" denoted the process by which the mind displaces social and psychological anxieties and permits them to emerge disguised in dreams and jokes. This article posits a similar process for "sandwork." Examining the ways people play with sand in its three basic…