Magic circle.

Huizinga believed that play is crucial to mankind, so much so that he proposed that we should be called Homoludens (man the player). He proposed that it’s through play that we interpret life and our world (Dovey, J and H. W. Kennedy 2006). Many people have tried to explain what play is for. Different reasons have been put forward e.g. some suggest it is a discharge of excess energy, or an outlet for harmful impulses. However Huizinga says that ‘What is play for?’ is the wrong question to be asking, instead we should ask, ‘what is play in itself?’
Huizinga claims that there are four characteristics of play. The firstly ‘Play’ must be voluntary; someone can’t be forced into playing; they must have the option not to play. This seems reasonable, though I’ve never been forced to sit down and play ‘Final Fantasy XII’ so I can’t really say how true this point is.
The second characteristic is that play is outside ordinary life. Play is external to all material interests and biological needs i.e. you don’t profit from playing. However, sportsmen gain wealth and fame by playing their sport. Huizinga would probably say that these rewards were outside the playing the game itself. The rewards are a consequence (outside influences) of the ‘playing’ rather then part of the playing itself. So, a sprinter doesn’t earn his/her fame and money in the race itself, or the action of running.
However, while this view clears this point, it causes problems for his next characteristic; playing promotes social groups. By playing together social bonds are formed between people, however, this doesn’t always apply to many digital games, because many are single player games. When I play ‘Kingdom Hearts 2’, I’m not playing with anyone else. However, I do make social bonds when I go online or meet friends and we talk about the game, but then according to Huizinga, this would be external to playing the game itself. At this point we have a problem; either having social bonds as a consequence of playing and not the playing itself is acceptable, in which case so must the rewards that a sportsman receives as a consequence of playing, which proves the second characteristic wrong, or both are unacceptable because they are external to the playing, in which case the later characteristic has been proven wrong.
The last characteristic is that there has to be fixed boundaries of time (when I start playing ‘Kingdom Hearts 2’ and then when I decide to stop would be the boundaries of time in that case) and space (when playing ‘Kingdom Hearts 2’ the boundaries would be the TV screen). There also must be precise rules and order in the playing e.g. which equipment I can give each character in ‘Kingdom hearts 2’, and what abilities I can equip them with. Huizinga went on to say that when we play games we cross over a special frame, within which the game takes place. He called this boundary the ‘Magic Circle’, where games take up their own time and space, but, of course, they still exist in social time and space (otherwise we’d disappear whenever we played a game) (Dovey, J and H. W. Kennedy 2006). Inside this ‘magic circle’, special rules apply, and one action, like fighting or sweeping the floor, and take on a different meaning to outside the ‘magic circle’. It becomes a safe zone where harmful impulses can released which have to be held in check in the real world (Jenkins, J). So in Soulcalibur 2, the action of beating someone up takes on a different meaning to in the real world and I don’t have to restrain myself.