Play Is The Work Of Operating A System

‘Play is not an act of diversion, but the work of working a system […] Fun is not the effect of enjoyment released by a system, but a nickname for the feeling of operating […] it in a new way’.  p? bogost-2016-play-anything

this relates (kind of) to filliou-1970-teaching-and-learning-as-performance-arts comments in regard to reflections-on-the-working-of-the-system

excerpt from pgcert blog:
I think this quote from Bogost offers an excellent way to reframe our engagement with systems, and in an education context challenges the conventional perception of learning as a linear journey towards predetermined outcomes. It in some ways suggests that there is an essence of learning which lies in navigating and manipulating constraints in innovative ways.

Comparatively Sicart advocates for a definition of play as an experience highly dependent upon and responsive to the fixed social structures in which it occurs. The originality of Play Matters lies in its diversion from more traditional ideas of play being something that occurs within the temporal fantasy world of the user. Johan Huizinga (a famous play theorist) famously claimed that play is a non-serious activity that occurs within a suspended time and place. Although both theorists recognise play to be an intrinsically motivated and meaningful activity, Sicart departs from Huizinga’s view, believing that play is a deeply serious activity grounded in reality. He proposes a new paradigm for the theory of play based upon user agency, creativity and expressionism (louisapenfoldblog, 2018).

Ian Bogost’s exploration of constraints in game design and Sicart’s reflections on play within fixed social structures offer a compelling lens through which to reflect on some of the systems that we work within on a regular basis and suggest that there is a lot of flex and experiemtation (and fun?!) that we could have with them.