[game_edu] suggestions for readings?

[David Thomas]

On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 9:34 AM, Ian Schreiber <ai864 at yahoo.com> wrote:


> As for the division between "play" and "fun," I'm not familiar with any

> readings that make explicit distinctions between the two, but I'll go out on

> a limb and say that play is an activity, and fun is the result of (or

> emotional reaction to) an activity, so the two terms describe different

> things and can't be directly compared. But that's just my reaction.

>

> - Ian

>


Can you play and not have fun? Sure.Can you have enjoyable play and not have
fun? Maybe.
Can you have fun and not play? Of course.

So why do play and fun stick together as much as play and games (or fun and
games for that matter)?

I think something else that complicates the "fun" concept is that from what
I've been able to dig up so far, the term fun is pretty new. It's not an old
word by any measure, and the way it is used in, at least North American
contexts, is something different than "fun as amusement" of the past 200
years.

It's a bit out of my area, but I am led to believe that the meaning of the
word as we use it in English might be more an American concept, and one that
has filtered out into other languages. I would certainly like to hear from
my global friends on that assumption.

Sorry to tack this problem onto this particular thread. But I stumped at the
moment on the fun concept and wonder either a) what I am missing or b) if
there is actually a real problem here!

-- David


>

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