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The "Playing" Field: Attitudes, Activities, And The Conflation Of Play And Games, Chad R. Carlson

Chad Carlson

Many philosophers have attempted to describe the nature of play and games. In doing so, they have come to a number of similar conclusions. Some authors speak of play and games interchangeably, while others regard them as two distinct phenomena. However, even some of those who attempted to distinguish games from play provided ambiguous or otherwise confusing descriptions. The end result has been a tendency to conflate the two entities. This conflation is so commonplace that we regularly speak of participating in all and any games as “playing games.” In this paper I address the issue of play-game conflation and …