CFP: Breaking the Magic Circle

This call for papers (received via Vili) is of interest, given our frequent discussions about the magic circle here.

Breaking the Magic Circle
Call for Papers: Game Studies Seminar, Tampere 10-11 April, 2008

One of the classic theories of games and play was presented by Johan Huizinga in his work Homo Ludens (orig. from 1938). Huizinga wrote about the free and voluntary nature of play, how it is "an activity connected with no material interest" and how it "proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space", involving and absorbing players utterly into a separate world set off from the "ordinary" life, while being created and maintained by communities of players.

Huizinga's view has become widely known within contemporary game studies, and it is often referred as the 'Magic Circle' view on games and play. This concept has also been widely criticised, as it has become increasingly obvious how various "games external" areas play an important role in digital play, and also because digital games have become more widely enmeshed with and applied into various economical, educational and other social and cultural processes and uses.

"Breaking the Magic Circle" seminar invites presentations from multiple
> points of view, including theoretical as well as empirically based studies into that question or expand existing conceptions regarding digital games and play. Particular fields of study might include, but are not limited to:

•    pervasive, mobile or location based gaming,
•    alternate reality gaming
•    casual, non-immersive or coincidental forms of play,
•    professional gaming,
•    money gaming, betting and gambling within digital games and play.

The seminar is fourth in the annual series of game studies working paper seminars organised by the Games Research Lab in the University of Tampere. Due to the work-in-progress emphasis, we strongly encourage submitting late breaking results, working papers and/or submissions from graduate students. Early considerations from projects currently in progress are most welcome, as the purpose of the seminar is to have peer-to-peer discussions and thereby provide support in refining and improving research work in this area. After the seminar, separate consideration will be given to various options of publishing the seminar papers.

The papers to be presented will be chosen based on abstract review. Full papers are distributed prior the event to all participants, in order to facilitate discussion.

The two-day event consists of themed sessions that aim to introduce current research projects and discuss ongoing work in studies of games, play and their relation to surrounding phenomena. The seminar will be chaired by professor Frans Mäyrä (Hypermedia Laboratory, University of Tampere). Paper commentators include researchers Markus Montola, Aki Järvinen and Simon Niedenthal, associate professor of interaction design.

The seminar will be held in Tampere, Finland and will be free of charge; the number of participants will be restricted.

Important Dates

•    Abstract Deadline: January 15, 2008
•    Notification of Acceptance: January 30, 2008
•    Full Paper deadline: March 27, 2007
•    Seminar dates: April 10-11, 2007

Submission Guidelines

Abstract submissions should include maximum of 1.000 words (excluding references). Abstracts should be send to info-gamestudies{at}uta.fi as plain text only (no attachments). Guidelines for submitting a full seminar paper will be provided with the notification of acceptance.

Our aim is that everyone participating has been able to read materials submitted to the seminar, therefore the maximum length for a full paper is set to 6.000 words (excluding references). Note also that the presentations held at the seminar should also encourage discussion, instead of only repeating the information presented in the papers.

Tentatively, every paper will be presented for 10 minutes and discussed for 20 minutes.

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Ed: I won't be able to make it to Finland, but hopefully, these papers will show up online eventually.  Personally, I'd like to see a paper contrasting Huizinga's magic circle with Foucault's notion of the heterotopia.  Has anyone written one of those yet?  :-)

Comments

[Angela Thomas]

1.

Greg! I have just written a paper for a discourse and culture conference which LINKS the notions of the magic circle and heterotopia. I'm presenting it next week. Essentially I look at Second Life as being a space where the cline of imagined freedoms (from a feminist perspective) is significantly reduced the moment the magic circle is broken! What a coincidence I saw this cfp here right now just when I finished writing that paper. Anyway my question to you is why do you suggest a CONTRAST?
I'd love to find out what you meant before I presented my paper :)
Thanks!
Angela (aka Anya Ixchel)

[shander]

2.

I get a kick out of the "criticism" assuming, pervasive in so many fields, that an exception negates the validity of a theory.

The alternative would be looking for validation by corelations...ie like proving a genetic commponent for a disease by the statistically significant difference between a twin also getting a disease and the general population.

"proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space", involving and absorbing players utterly into a separate world set off from the "ordinary" life, while being created and maintained by communities of players."

I think that the separation issue here is misconstrued. The "utter" separation I think refers to an entirely new vector, that there is a "game reality" .. not that all movements within the game are uninfluenced by the outside reality.

A rather extreme illustration would be to put a sail on top of my car. The sail would be a new system of propulsion which could be examined in its own right even if I always used the sail in conjunction with the engine. The influence of the sail could be examined by subtracting the known inlfuence of the engine from the speed behvior of the car.

It wouldn't be correct refute the separateness of the sail as a means of propulsion just because it was usually used in conjunction with the engine.

The games are separate realities, but because people playing the games bring human traits, language, traditions into that separate world, that which is observed is a mix of that separate world and the other influences external to the game.

The mixing doesnt argue against the separateness as a vector any more than aerodynamic drag reduces the power of an engine. Drag reduces speed, not propulsive force. People playing checkers have for the duration of play, thrown a situational separate reality onto their mix of actions, though t, concious, etc.. A reality can scale in its degree of control of those gauges.. its not a boolean all or nothing thing.

[greglas]

3.

Shander -- I agree.

Angela -- I'm hardly a Foucault expert, but my sense is that the notion was kind of vaguely sketched out in a couple radio broadcasts and then fleshed out in text here in ways that tend to be a bit contradictory: http://foucault.info/documents/heteroTopia/foucault.heteroTopia.en.html

Here's a key bit of definition:
"But among all these sites, I am interested in certain ones that have the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, or invent the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reflect."

I've found a few paper that speak of sports fields and play areas as heterotopic, but none that tie those notions to Huizinga's concept of the play element.

I see much more commonality than I do difference, and I'd be just as happy to see someone think through the commonalities. If I had to look for differences, I guess, among the interesting distinctions are that whereas Focault sees the heterotopia as a site of potential political resistance (at least that is how his comments are read today by many), Huizinga sees the play space as separate and transcendent -- autotelic as Bernard Suits might say.

And whereas Foucault sees the heterotopia as reflecting, inverting, and interpenetrating dominant spaces, Huizinga sees play spaces as more dependent on boundaries and the independent creation of a new social order. Indeed, he seems explicitly concerned about the potential for the corruption of play spaces by their commercialization or mediation by external influences.

Anyway, that's just off the cuff. If you post your paper online, please send us a link! :-)

[Erik]

4.

Linking Finland Foucault and Space:
in the 70s the Greek architect Demetri Porphyrios used heterotopia in his book on the famous Finnish architect Alvar Aalto. Apart from practising as an architect himself, I think I recall Porphrios was also a Greek housing minister so perhaps he managed to implement some of these ideas?
ah yes ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demetri_Porphyrios