From newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!csd.unb.ca!morgan.ucs.mun.ca!nstn.ns.ca!news.cs.indiana.edu!mips!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tarpit!cs.ucf.edu!news Thu Apr 30 15:22:44 EDT 1992
Article 5261 of comp.ai.philosophy:
Path: newshub.ccs.yorku.ca!ists!helios.physics.utoronto.ca!news-server.ecf!utgpu!csd.unb.ca!morgan.ucs.mun.ca!nstn.ns.ca!news.cs.indiana.edu!mips!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!tarpit!cs.ucf.edu!news
>From: clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Categories: bounded or graded?
Message-ID: <1992Apr24.132722.20648@cs.ucf.edu>
Date: 24 Apr 92 13:27:22 GMT
References: <mt6j0nd.kmc@netcom.com>
Sender: news@cs.ucf.edu (News system)
Organization: University of Central Florida
Lines: 32

In article <mt6j0nd.kmc@netcom.com> kmc@netcom.com (Kevin McCarty) writes:
> zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
> 
> >In article <1992Apr15.010721.17700@organpipe.uug.arizona.edu>
> >bill@NSMA.AriZonA.EdU (Bill Skaggs) writes: 
> 
> >BS:
> >>  With Wittgenstein in mind, I ask:  what are the invariant features
> >>that characterize a "game"?
> 
> >To cite Johan Huizinga, play is "a voluntary activity or occupation
> >executed within certain limits of time and place, according to rules freely
> >accepted but absolutely binding, having an aim in itself and accompanied by
> >a feeling of tension, joy and the consciousness that it is ``different''
> >from ``ordinary life''." ("Homo Ludens", Boston: Beacon Press, 1955, p.28)
> 
> Actors in the theater seem to fit this definition perfectly.  Is
> putting on Shakespeare a game?
> 
I'm reading "The grasshopper : games, life, and Utopia" by Bernard H. Suits  
(University of Toronto Press, 1978).  
A very nice little book (with pictures!).  Suits goes beyond Huizinga and  
amplifies the definition of game (I have not read H, but only seen citations in  
Suits).  

Paraphrasing from memory, a game requires three things:  an objective goal  
(crossing the finish line first), rules (can't shoot your opponent,  shortcut  
across the infield etc), and the ludic attitude (game playing frame of mind,  
free desire to play the game).  Therefore an acting performance is not a game.   
Actors lack the ludic attitude, and it is not clear what the restrictive rules  
of acting are.  Children playing make-believe games are playing games, however.
 


