Week 4 - Lusory Attitude and The Magic Circle

In the International Journal of Learning the lusory attitude has been described as follows:




'Games require what Bernard Suits has called a "lusory attitude" - game players intentionally and willingly accept rules that compel them to use less efficient means to achieving an end.'







This can be related through digital games by the way we accept seemingly strange occurances as part of the gameplay. For example, having just purchased an N64 (a classic console!) and playing Banjo-Kazooie your character is a bear called Banjo and your sidekick is a bird known as Kazooie. This in itself is rather odd...you are after all a bear! You must go around collecting certain things and attacking odd looking carrots and equally strange other things. After my initial surprise at playing such an odd game you can really get involved with what is going on and almost talk in terms of the game - 'Get more notes!', 'Shoot more eggs at the bull!' etc etc. This leads us into the Magic Circle.





Johan Huizinga first suggested the 'Magic Circle' where the gameplayer is in a fantasy land in which they can do anything as part of the game which in non-gaming circumstances would not be possible to do. My example for this would be in 'GoldenEye 007' where you are James Bond going through missions on Her Majesty's Secret Service. Clearly in real life (unless you were to become a secret agent!) you would not be able to go around Russian military bases shooting guards and completing missions on behalf of the secret service. A clear fantasy for many people especially after watching a Bond movie.



Kupperman, J., Stanzler, J., Fahy, M., Hapgood, S.. Games, School and the Benefits of Inefficiency [online] retrieved on 06/03/07 from http://ijl.cgpublisher.com/product/pub.30/prod.1185