Blog 3
Discussing the magic circle and the lusory attitude.

In Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, he describes two important elements in playing. The first is the idea of entering what he calls “the magic circle” of play. He explains this as when a person “plays in complete, in sacred- earnest” thus the player “transports into another world, separate from ordinary life”, a “realm of the beautiful and sacred”.
Huizinga also discusses the idea of the “law” or the attitude one must adopt during play. He calls this attitude, the ‘lusory’ attitude. This is when the participant chooses to enter the magic circle accepting certain conditions and rules which one must abide by in order to enjoy the play.
These two aspects of play do not only apply to humans but animals too. The whole idea is nicely demonstrated by the example Huizinga uses. He explains that even dog’s play has certain rules that they follow, that “you shall not bite or bite hard, your brother’s ear” during play. In this way their game is remains fun and enjoyable.
Whilst playing the playstation game Ryman, I found myself entering the magic circle in which I become very involved in the game and in Ryman’s world. The character’s mission to rescue the little pink creatures became important to me at the time and in this new world I was in. Trying to cheat in anyway or skipping the pink creatures in order to finish the level quicker would have ruined the game. And so I found myself abiding by these rules in order to enjoy the game more. There were fixed boundaries within the magic circle I was in. The first boundary is these certain rules which I found my self sticking to. Another one was the space and time limit of the game. The character within the game was only permitted to move in certain areas of the screen and in a certain way, i.e., the character could not swim or fly when falling of a cliff, also the character could not go to certain areas of the screen which were irrelevant and had no purpose to the game, but were only there as part of the pictorial scene. Time was also a limited in the way that each level finished once you get to a certain part of the game, (the end of the level).
Word count per entry 384
Bibliography
Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens, Beacon Press (1971, Ch. 1)