jonne.arjoranta.fi
What Game Studies Got Wrong About Caillois
Last year, we read Roger Caillois’ Man, Play and Games (1961) in a reading circle with my colleagues. I had read it when I started my PhD studies, so I had a vague memory of the different categories Caillois used in the book. After then, I had encountered the central terms – paidia and ludus, agôn, alea, mimicry and ilinx – time and again in different game studies publications. What I had forgot was that most of these references actually got the categories wrong, or at least the implications that Caillois connects to them. In game studies they are treated as neutral categories that can be used to analyse different aspects of games and play. But Caillois gives them specific values and meanings, reading their role in culture from his particular perspective on culture. That perspective is unfortunately a 20th century French scholar, looking at other cultures and seeing them as backwards, while sitting behind his desk in Paris and considering his own culture as an example of progress.
