The Ludic Life

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Comment by Barry Joseph on September 6, 2008 at 5:19pm

Chance, Great to see you there. Yes, that is a great piece, and will be discussed in more detail by Douglas in an upcoming RezEd podcast. It would be interesting to think more about how the two connect. Want to take a stab at it?

Comment by Chance Abattoir on September 6, 2008 at 4:08pm

I missed a tiny bit of the speech due to stream problems, but I think I heard most of it and I didn't hear you mention Douglas Thomas and John Seely Brown's February article hailed by the HBR as one of the breakthrough ideas of 2008, "The Gamer Disposition." I think you will find it topical. http://conversationstarter.hbsp.com/2008/02/the_gamer_disposition.html

Comment by Barry Joseph on August 24, 2008 at 8:44pm

Lorraine, Please say more. What were you talking about exactly that was related?

Thanks Beth. I particularly liked: "A friend once told me that so much of Second Life was like being a kid again" and "we can move our cameras to watch ourselves watching"

Jonathon, Well said.

JJ, I am still researching how I want to frame it, but at the moment basing it on Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen's Rules of Play book, Thomas Malaby's upcoming book on Second Life, and the source for both, which is Johan Huizinga and his book Homo Ludens, or "Man the Player," written in 1938.

One quote from Huizinga: ""...it was not my object to define the place of play among all other manifestations of culture, but rather to ascertain how far culture itself bears the character of play."

My use of the word is also a derivation of the term coined and gained popularity after it was featured in an article by Gonzalo Frasca in 1999 to describe game studies: "We will propose the term ludology (from ludus, the Latin word for "game"), to refer to the yet non-existent 'discipline that studies game and play activities'."

Comment by Lorraine Mockford (SL: LoriVonne Lustre) on August 19, 2008 at 8:21am

Great topic Barry! I was having just this conversation with colleagues yesterday, following from an idea for a discussion panel at our college on Learning Through Play -- which is also the title of one of our Early Childhood Education courses.

Comment by Beth Harris on August 18, 2008 at 7:27am

You may be interested in a post I just wrote about looking at art in Second Life that touches on the idea of play and childhood -- at www.smARThistory.us/blog.

And how about flying around the Sistine Chapel. Where else can you do that!

Comment by Jonathon Richter / Wainbrave Bernal on August 17, 2008 at 4:12pm

Second Life as a platform to extend our formal learning experiences into playful, ludic formats: integrating gaming scaffolds, modifying our avatars in whimsical and/or imaginative ways, providing DIRECT 1st person experiences of learning content (rather than indirect, 3rd person (i.e. through the lens of spoken or written language), allowing students easy access to construction tools that defy physics or material limitations, providing networking and communication opportunities that allow multiple, simultaneous channels to work. In short, the accessibility, plasticity, and communication channels available within Second Life provides for the "networked imagination" of the ludic life to flourish.

Comment by JJ Drinkwater on August 17, 2008 at 1:40pm

Bravo, Barry! Let me just set you up a soapbox here.... I would like to hear how exactly you are using your key term - Ludic. You are, if I understand you aright, usung it as something of a term of art, something beyond its dictionary definition of (paraphrased from numerous sources) "Playful or disposed to playfulness." So....what is it for life to be Ludic, exactly?