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Playframes

How Do We Know We Are Playing?

Author Celia Pearce
Foreword by Janet H. Murray
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Paperback
$65.00 US
| $86.00 CAN
The MIT Press
On sale Dec 17, 2024 | 338 Pages | 9780262550819
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An exploration of how we know we’re playing and what happens when we don’t.

Playframes builds on the work of Gregory Bateson and Erving Goffman to take a deep dive into Bateson’s primary question: How do we know we’re playing? In this book, Celia Pearce addresses this question by building a comprehensive theory of the specific mechanisms that metacommunicate the message “this is play.” This “big tent” approach covers a broad swath of playframes, ranging from theme parks to cosplay, board and video games, and sports, and describes how spatial and temporal frames, as well as artifacts such as costumes and uniforms, toys, and sports equipment, let us know when a play activity is underway.


Pearce teases out distinctions between ritual and play activities, including social practices in which they merge or are indistinguishable, as well as incidents of frame breach or misalignment, where participants’ perception of “what is going on” diverges. These principles are illustrated with a series of four topical studies that explore various scenarios in which play and non-play contexts are juxtaposed or blurred. These span from delightful (fan convention cosplay and simulated and virtual weddings) to confusing (virtual currency and bitcoin) to dangerous. Building on recent research, the book culminates with an in-depth analysis of the gaming roots of the January 6 Capitol insurrection and argues that playframe breach and deliberate misalignment were the major contributing factors.
“This book asks a question that is fundamental to game design—'How do we know we are playing?’—and considers a range of answers. [Pearce’s] analysis makes the case that it is very important for us to understand these distinctions and delineate the boundaries because if we cannot, we encounter “the severe and deadly consequences of playframe misalignment.’”
—Choice

“Building on Bateson and Goffman, Pearce shows how cosplay and larps, the whole digital package, make playing and gaming central to twenty-first-century personal, social, and political life.”
—Richard Schechner, editor of TDR: The Drama Review; theater director; author of Performance Studies: An Introduction

“Celia Pearce brings her essential voice to core questions about metacommunication: How do we know if we are playing in a world where play and reality are blurred in so many ways?”
—Henry Jenkins, author of Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture

“Using sophisticated media theory, Playframes unpacks the events of January 6th in unexpected, deeply interesting ways. Like an intriguing game, this text puzzles, provokes, enchants, and clarifies. It is a page turner, a rare treat in a thoroughly academic book.”
—Bonnie A. Nardi, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Irvine; coauthor of Heteromation, and Other Stories of Computing and Capitalism

“Required reading for our times! With her notion of ‘playframes,’ Pearce provides a hermeneutic key to open and interrogate the fraught space between fiction and fact, games and the larger political order.”
—William Uricchio, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Media Studies, MIT; author of Collective Wisdom
Celia Pearce is the author of Communities of Play (MIT Press) and IndieCade: A History. Her award-winning game designs include Virtual Adventures and eBee, an electronic quilt game, which won the 2017 award for Most Innovative Board Game at the Boston Festival of Independent Games. She is also a cofounder of IndieCade and Co-Executive Director of the Playable Theatre Project.
Celia Pearce View titles by Celia Pearce
Foreword
Janet H. Murray
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The How of Play
Part I: Framing This Research
Introduction to Part I
1 The Social Construction of Playframes
2 Principles and Terms
Part II: The Metacommunication of Play: Keying Mechanisms
Introduction to Part II
3 Four Types of Rule Conveyance
4 Inter-Rule Dynamics
5 The How of Play
6 Gestalt Redux—Putting It All Together
Part III: Topical Studies
Introduction to Part III
7 A Trip to Dragon Con with Erving Goffman
8 “Playing with Fire”: Weddings, Real and Virtual
9 Play Money
10 “This Is Not a Game”: Alternate Reality, Alternative Facts, and the January 6 Insurrection
11 Beyond Bateson’s Monkeys: The Present and Future of Playframes
Notes
References
Index
additional book photo
additional book photo

About

An exploration of how we know we’re playing and what happens when we don’t.

Playframes builds on the work of Gregory Bateson and Erving Goffman to take a deep dive into Bateson’s primary question: How do we know we’re playing? In this book, Celia Pearce addresses this question by building a comprehensive theory of the specific mechanisms that metacommunicate the message “this is play.” This “big tent” approach covers a broad swath of playframes, ranging from theme parks to cosplay, board and video games, and sports, and describes how spatial and temporal frames, as well as artifacts such as costumes and uniforms, toys, and sports equipment, let us know when a play activity is underway.


Pearce teases out distinctions between ritual and play activities, including social practices in which they merge or are indistinguishable, as well as incidents of frame breach or misalignment, where participants’ perception of “what is going on” diverges. These principles are illustrated with a series of four topical studies that explore various scenarios in which play and non-play contexts are juxtaposed or blurred. These span from delightful (fan convention cosplay and simulated and virtual weddings) to confusing (virtual currency and bitcoin) to dangerous. Building on recent research, the book culminates with an in-depth analysis of the gaming roots of the January 6 Capitol insurrection and argues that playframe breach and deliberate misalignment were the major contributing factors.

Reviews

“This book asks a question that is fundamental to game design—'How do we know we are playing?’—and considers a range of answers. [Pearce’s] analysis makes the case that it is very important for us to understand these distinctions and delineate the boundaries because if we cannot, we encounter “the severe and deadly consequences of playframe misalignment.’”
—Choice

“Building on Bateson and Goffman, Pearce shows how cosplay and larps, the whole digital package, make playing and gaming central to twenty-first-century personal, social, and political life.”
—Richard Schechner, editor of TDR: The Drama Review; theater director; author of Performance Studies: An Introduction

“Celia Pearce brings her essential voice to core questions about metacommunication: How do we know if we are playing in a world where play and reality are blurred in so many ways?”
—Henry Jenkins, author of Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture

“Using sophisticated media theory, Playframes unpacks the events of January 6th in unexpected, deeply interesting ways. Like an intriguing game, this text puzzles, provokes, enchants, and clarifies. It is a page turner, a rare treat in a thoroughly academic book.”
—Bonnie A. Nardi, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Irvine; coauthor of Heteromation, and Other Stories of Computing and Capitalism

“Required reading for our times! With her notion of ‘playframes,’ Pearce provides a hermeneutic key to open and interrogate the fraught space between fiction and fact, games and the larger political order.”
—William Uricchio, Professor Emeritus of Comparative Media Studies, MIT; author of Collective Wisdom

Author

Celia Pearce is the author of Communities of Play (MIT Press) and IndieCade: A History. Her award-winning game designs include Virtual Adventures and eBee, an electronic quilt game, which won the 2017 award for Most Innovative Board Game at the Boston Festival of Independent Games. She is also a cofounder of IndieCade and Co-Executive Director of the Playable Theatre Project.
Celia Pearce View titles by Celia Pearce

Table of Contents

Foreword
Janet H. Murray
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The How of Play
Part I: Framing This Research
Introduction to Part I
1 The Social Construction of Playframes
2 Principles and Terms
Part II: The Metacommunication of Play: Keying Mechanisms
Introduction to Part II
3 Four Types of Rule Conveyance
4 Inter-Rule Dynamics
5 The How of Play
6 Gestalt Redux—Putting It All Together
Part III: Topical Studies
Introduction to Part III
7 A Trip to Dragon Con with Erving Goffman
8 “Playing with Fire”: Weddings, Real and Virtual
9 Play Money
10 “This Is Not a Game”: Alternate Reality, Alternative Facts, and the January 6 Insurrection
11 Beyond Bateson’s Monkeys: The Present and Future of Playframes
Notes
References
Index

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additional book photo

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