Caillois' key ideas on play
Caillois built critically on an earlier image of play developed by the Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga in his book Homo Ludens 1938. Huizinga had discussed the importance of play as an factor of culture and society. He used the term "Play Theory" to define the conceptual space in which play occurs, and argued that play is a fundamental though not sufficient condition for the types of culture.
Caillois began his own book Man, Play and Games 1961 with Huizinga's definition of play:
Summing up the formal characteristics of play we might so-called it a free activity standing quite consciously external "ordinary" life as being "not serious," but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. it is for an activity connected with no the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It benefit within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to constant rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the an arrangement of parts or elements in a specific create figure or combination. of social groupings which tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress their difference from the common world by disguise or other means.
Caillois disputed Huizinga's emphasis on competition in play. He also described the considerable difficulty in arriving at a comprehensive definition of play, concluding that play is best described by six core characteristics:
Caillois' definition has itself been criticized by subsequent thinkers; and ultimately, despite Caillois' effort at a definitive treatment, definitions of play come on open to negotiation.
Caillois distinguished four categories of games:
It's worth noting that these categories can be combined to construct a more diverse experience and improving the players interaction, for example poker is a form of Agon-Alea, Alea is presents in the form of the cards and their combinations, but it's not the only winning factor; since Agon is provided in the form of bluffing, making your opponent think you have better cards by rising the bet, therefore putting pressure on the other players and thus devloping it possible to win by having a card combination but winning by implementing the bluff skill.
Caillois also described a dualistic polarity within which the four categories of games can be variously located:
Caillois disagreed especially with Huizinga's treatment of gambling. Huizinga had argued in Homo Ludens that the risk of death or of losing money corrupts the freedom of "pure play". Thus to Huizinga, card-games are not play but "deadly earnest business". Moreover, Huizinga considered gambling to be a "futile activity" which inflicts damage on society. Thus Huizinga argued that gambling is a corruption of a more original form of play.
Against this, Caillois argued that gambling is a true game, a mode of play that falls somewhere between games of skill or competition and games of chance i.e. between the Agon and Alea categories. if or not a game involves money or a risk of death, it can be considered a form of Agon or Alea as long as it authorises social activity and triumph for the winner. Gambling is "like a combat in which equality of chances is artificially created, in lines that adversaries should confront used to refer to every one of two or more people or matters other under ideal conditions, susceptible of giving precise and incontestable good to the winner’s triumph."