The Magic Circle and Lusory Attitude

Johann Huizinga is a Dutch anthropologist and historian, in addition to this he has taken great interest into analysing games and creating theories to support his beliefs. As a theorist he has 'masterfully analysed several of the fundamental characteristics of play and has demonstrated the importance of its role in the very development of civilisation' (Caillios 2001, page 3.)

In his book Homo Ludens (1938) he creates the notion of the 'magic circle.' This is the concept that Huizinga uses to understand play. With this he is strongly suggesting that when you engage in playing games you enter a different state of mind (the magic circle) which guides you away from reality. The "magic circle' can in fact be considered as the games special context or frame; this can be either physical or psychological. Huizinga believes that although the 'magic circle' takes you away from reality, for the gamer it does in fact feel extremely real. We get lost in the game that we are playing.

The Lusory Attitude is another notion that Huizinga suggests that we as gamers adopt. He believes that this is the attitude that the player adopts before they are able to enter the 'magic circle'. Salen and Zimmerman (2004) believe that " the lusory attitude is an extremely useful concept; as it describes the attitude that is required of game players for them to enter into a game". It is fair to say that if we do not except these rules or the 'lusory attitude' then we will find it difficult to engage in the game and gain any enjoyment from it.

After discovering Huizinga's theory i consciously thought about whether this was true for me when i played games and in fact it was. When i started playing Gran Turismo i wasn't that aware of how much concentration i was putting in; however as the game progressed i realised that i was in my own little world - a 'magic circle'. And although deep down i knew that it was only a game, i became so engrossed and focused on designing my cars and winning my races that i started to believe it was reality. I also felt this when i played Mario Kart i became so involved that i was very unaware of what was happening around me.

I can now clearly see that we do in fact adopt a different attitude before we play games but i think the main reason for this is to increase the levels of enjoyment we get out of it. For example if we did not adopt a "lusory attitude" we would not start playing the game in the first place as we would not be gaining any personal benefit from it; and after all games are meant to be entertaining.