2.1 How to Read Homo Ludens

How to Read Homo Ludens

Cultural historian Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens is a foundational text in the field of ludology, or game studies. What makes Huizinga’s work so essential is his emphasis on the primacy of play in culture. Not only that, he provides one of the most compelling and detailed definitions of what play is, as it is a notoriously slippery subject.

Here, I’m going to introduce Huizinga’s five point definition of play from his book Homo Ludens.

Part 1: What are games? What is play?

Game as a noun is defined as “a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck.”

As a noun, games seem to be the container of play, an activity.

Games also seem to contain sport, and we will define the difference between those two as well. Play as a verb is defined as: “engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose.” "the children were playing outside" It can also mean to “take part in (a sport). "I play softball and tennis.”

Play is about recreation and enjoyment. It also, as a verb, is an action. Sport is crucially different. Again, note the difference that sport is defined as a noun: it is an activity involving physical exertion and skill in which an individual or team competes against another or others for entertainment. Sport is a thing itself, a thing that is played. Sport involves exertion, skill, and physical competition.

That’s not to say that sport does not seriously involve play. But, if we return to trying to figure out what the verb “play” is, by asking what it is not, we can see that you can play a board game, you can play cards – these are not particularly physically exerting tasks, they often involve the manipulation of symbols.

I also want to point out that our first definition of play is as something especially practiced by children. Who can’t remember just simply playing as a child. That’s to say, not playing a specific sport or game, but playing make-believe or something of that nature. There is an imaginative quality to play in its purest forms, which is also where I think a lot of the educational value of play exists for children. It’s through playing that children learn how to navigate social situations and different roles.

So, play seems to represent something that involves the physical and imaginative capacities.

Great! What we’ve done here is look at the most current dictionary definition of these three terms: games, sports, and play. These are pretty simple definitions, and perhaps what is best about them is that they should feel somewhat self-evident to us. We play games. You can play a sport like basketball. Games can be hard, but playing them is fun. Games are a category above them, as a catch-all to describe organized forms of that activity.

Part 2: The theory of play in history

There are many writers and thinkers who have discussed games and play throughout history. Games and play have an intimate relationship historically, but play often referred to other leisure activities such as theater, music, and dance. Homer described the latter activities as paizein, playing, a verb etymologically connected to the Greek pais, child. Confucius described how men of leisure with nothing better to do should learn how to play Go, and indeed for Chinese scholars, knowledge were valued alongside activities such as calligraphy, playing music and Go as essential parts of being a well-rounded scholar of history and philosophy.

Moving into modern times, perhaps the first field to start to seriously examine what play and games are was psychology. Prominent researchers spanning different fields of psychology, including Melanie Klein, Jean Piaget, William James, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung believed play was important for human development. It’s precisely here at this moment in history that Johan Huizinga writes his book. As we shall see, his perspective differs in significant ways from these early psychological models of play.

Part 3: How to read Johan Huizinga.

Johan Huizinga was a Dutch cultural historian. Huizinga’s book is unique in that he wants to talk about the significance of play as a cultural phenomenon. Not as a psychological one. This book is a really fascinating glimpse into the way that play and games were thought of at the beginning of the 20th century. It also is a text in the true sense of the word. It is a product of Johan Huizinga’s specific background knowledge, he was a very educated man in comparative linguistics, and had written and lectured on Medieval and Renaissance history.

This is a course on the history of digital games, which arrived on the scene in a much different cultural context. So I want us to take a close look at how we should approach these first 13 pages of the book where he comes up with this famous five-point definition of what play is. In fact, we can get a really great insight into the way that Huizinga thinks just from looking at the title.

In the introduction, Huizinga mentions that whenever he was lecturing, he would insist that the posters say “A STUDY OF THE PLAY-ELEMENT OF CULTURE”, preferring the genitive as it implied that he was not studying some way that play relates to culture, but rather how culture is itself constituted by play. So, you can see, for him these subtle distinctions take on a lot of value. We’ll also see that he uses a lot of arcane and old examples throughout his writing, but for now we can set that aside.

Let’s read the first page of his book together to get a sense of what he means by play being “of” culture, or how play itself constitutes culture. We can see how he comes in with an argument right off the bat:

PLAY is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing.

Huizinga sets the stage here by telling us that play is older than culture. He wants to show us how play is somehow bigger than humanity. He does this by saying that animals also play. Animals do not have language or society, they are “pre-linguistic” creatures. This first sentence is already putting him in dialogue with psychologists' model of play as a specifically human phenomenon. He even makes a very strong point that he believes the play activity essentially is unchanged from the animal version of it.

We can safely assert, even, that human civilization has added no essential feature to the general idea of play.

He moves on to this really lovely description of the way that animals play, very observational.

We have only to watch young dogs to see that all the essentials of human play are present in their merry gambols. They invite one another to play by a certain ceremoniousness of attitude and gesture. They keep to the rule that you shall not bite, or not bite hard, your brother's ear. They pretend to get terribly angry. And-what is most important-in all these doings they plainly experience tremendous fun and enjoyment.

This is a very rhetorical point – you probably have had experiences like this if you have pets, or have seen how animals play with one another. Huizinga is clearly writing for an audience here, which makes sense because he was a lecturer. From this observation he derives something more significant:

Even in its simplest forms on the animal level, play is more than a mere physiological phenomenon or a psychological reflex. It goes beyond the confines of purely physical or purely biological activity. It is a significant function-that is to say, there is some sense to it.

Here, I take significant to mean something like signifying. Remember, Huizinga has a background in linguistics, so he’s interested in these forms of play that involve the manipulation of symbols, or the creation of some kind of imaginary scene.

In play there is something "at play" which transcends the immediate needs of life and imparts meaning to the action. All play means something.

At the same time however, from looking at the animal example, it’s almost like he’s trying to figure out how play communicates, or what sort of meaning is generated by it. These are big questions that he’s just starting right off with. What is play if it is not something defined by human society? How is the play of animals something that generates a kind of pre-linguistic significance or signification? He’s already also hinting at how play is outside the realm of “needs of life”.

He does lots of really interesting things like this in the lead up to when he starts to define play – making very specific cases about how play comes before other hallmark features of human society, such as myth, ritual and even language.

Part 4: Johan Huizinga’s five principles of play.

Johann Huizinga’s five principles of play are best summarized as:

1. Play is voluntary
   
2. Play is rule ordered.
   
3. Play happens within fixed boundaries, or the ‘magic circle’ theory of games.
   
4. Play is different from ordinary life.
   
5. Play is not useful or done in material interest.
   

This is also the order that they appear between page 8 and page 13. I’ve also noted where each one appears in the text. Something that makes Huizinga’s text really interesting is that even though he presents five principles of play, each one has a subordinate clause that illuminates the principles. I’m going to go through each of them now.

1. Play is voluntary.

“First and foremost, then, all play is a voluntary activity. Play to order is no longer play: it could at best be but a forcible imitation of it.” p. 7

From this Huizinga also introduces the idea that because play is voluntary, it is also free. Play is voluntary -> Free

2. Play is outside of ordinary life.

“A second characteristic is closely connected with this, namely, that play is not "ordinary" or "real" life. It is rather a stepping out of "real" life into a temporary sphere of activity with a disposition all of its own. ” p. 8

From this idea, Huizinga also introduces the idea that because play is outside of ordinary life it is also disinterested.

“As regards its formal characteristics all students lay stress on the disinterestedness of play. Not being "ordinary" life it stands outside the immediate satisfaction of wants and appetites, indeed it interrupts the appetitive process.” p. 9

3. Play has distinct times and spaces (the Magic Circle idea)

Play is limited in time and space. Limit in time makes it so that you have to incorporate play into your life in a rhythm – you play a game, then you go back to normal life, then the memories of the game make you excited about playing it, then you play the game again. Play is also limited in space, which means like a playground or a tennis court.

“This is the third main characteristic of play: its secludedness, its limitedness.” p. 9

4. Play creates order.
Because of the limitedness of play, it also has a tendency towards ordering things.

Order -> Tension

“Inside the play-ground an absolute and peculiar order reigns. Here we come across another, very positive feature of play: it creates order, is order.” p. 10

“Play is "tense", as we say. It is this element of tension and solution that governs all solitary games of skill and application such as puzzles, jig-saws, mosaicmaking, patience, target-shooting, and the more play bears the character of competition the more fervent it will be. In gambling and athletics it is at its height.” p. 11

He mentions the fifth principle while summarizing his principles of play as the following:

“Summing up the formal characteristics of play we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside "ordinary" life as being "not serious", but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means.” p. 13