Ludicity: a theoretical horizon for understanding the concepts of game, game-playing and play

Abstract

The promotion and development of learning based on games and playing must be supported by a unifying theoretical structure that will allow for: contextualising and clarifying the various concepts involved, particularly those of the game and the toy, playing games and play, distinguishing between the characteristics of each of these manifestations; establishing a connection between the types of ludic interaction that are dominant in each of these manifestations and highlighting the nature of the relationship that each of the manifestations has with the others. This theoretical structure will suggest a design framework for projectual ludicity, which may guide the creation of a range of interventional and research methodologies, which is essential for the promotion and development of learning activities that are based on, or which make use, of ludicity. Given that the proponents of the multiple and diverse theoretical and practical approaches to the game, the toy, playing games and play attribute an identical meaning to such distinct actions as play, playing games, games and toys, understanding these theories, and the reality which they are intended to analyse, becomes somewhat more difficult. As there is no existing unifying theoretical framework, the author of this paper has built up the conceptual structure known as ludicity, rooted in the work done in the pragmatics of human communication by Gregory Bateson (1972), (1979), (1956), (1955), Paul Watzlawick, Janet Beavin and Donald Jackson (1967), Edward T. Hall (1959) (1983), Stuart Sigman and Cronen (1995). This article introduces, for critical review, the conceptual structure that enables both an understanding of the diversity and multiplicity of those experiences that result from the human and social condition of ludicity, and an anticipation of the effects arising from such experiences. Ludicity is communication, learning and change.