Seminar paper

After moving into a new apartment and catching the most awful flu you ever experienced I’ve found that trying to keep up any kind of schedule for writing here has been a failure. I’ll try to correct that.

Yesterday I sent my seminar paper to the seminar participants. I was forced to cut several pages to fit the length restrictions, which I still exceeded by few pages. While cutting off the excess, I tried to incorporate the feedback I got from my two helpful commentators. Thanks, jiituomas and Thanuir. The paper was far from perfect when I was through with it, but it was better than the draft I sent you. The parts that didn’t get in the paper will be useful when I continue writing on the subject.

As a sneak-peek inside the paper, there is a part in the conclusion where I join different views of play and game into a single list. Translated into English it goes something like this:

1. Play happens inside the magic circle.

2. Play is a unique phenomenon, but it can also be studied as some other cultural phenomenon.

3. Play exists simultaneously on several different levels, similarly to a work of art.

4. The act of defining something as play or a game tells you something about the definers concept of play.

5. The player assumes a lusory attitude.

6. Playing is autotelic.

7. Research of games tells us something about culture.