![]() So in many ways I do feel responsible for the magic circle shenanigans that have followed the book's publication. ![]() It's certainly true that in the nearly 10 years since the book was published, the idea of the magic circle is easily the most popular concept to come out of it. However, the term only reached full fruition in Rules of Play. the shared space of play created by its rules." In 1999, we co-authored an article for Merge Magazine called "Rules, Play, Culture: Checkmate" that referred to the magic circle as "the artificial context of a game. In fact, game designer Frank Lantz and I started using the term in our game design classes years before work on Rules of Play began. Perhaps I'm sensitive to the phenomenon of the magic circle jerk because I (or Katie Salen and I) often are identified as the embodiment of the worst of the magic circle. It is meant to clarify where this magic circle idea came from, what it was intended to mean, and to stop the energy being wasted by chasing the ghost of the magic circle jerk - a ghost that simply doesn't exist. I am here to tell you: there is no magic circle jerk. My question remains: who is this ignoramus that holds these strange and narrow ideas about games? Where are the books and essays that this formalist-structuralist-ludologist has published? Where is this frightfully naïve thinker who is putting game studies at risk by poisoning the minds of impressionable students? Just who is this magic circle jerk? (Note that the word is "jerk" as in annoying person - I'm using it as a noun, not a verb.) ![]() The magic circle naively champions the preexisting rules of a game, and ignores the fact that games are lived experiences, that games are actually played by human beings in some kind of real social and cultural context. The argument goes something like this: the idea of magic circle is the idea that games are formal structures wholly and completely separate from ordinary life. Taylor all have written about the need to overthrow the oppressive magic circle. Sometimes, I see it in the work of colleagues for whom I have the utmost respect and whose work I otherwise admire: game studies icons Mia Consalvo, Marinka Copier, and T.L. It goes beyond just wide-eyed graduate students. But what I want to ask here is: what is this oppressive regime that these well-intentioned researchers feel a need to overthrow? Who is this Voldemort that these papers dangerously invoke, in order to stage a final battle of good against evil? Does anyone really hold to the orthodox, narrow view of the magic circle, or is the phenomenon of taking down the magic circle just game studies scholars tilting at windmills? The Magic Circle Jerk We all know it's fun to take down an authority figure. It seems to have become a rite of passage for game studies scholars: somewhere between a Bachelor's Degree and a Master's thesis, everyone has to write the paper where the magic circle finally gets what it deserves. ![]() I regularly get emails from budding game critics asking me if I think the magic circle "really ultimately truly" does actually exist. They proceed to supplant the narrow magic circle point of view with one of their own - an approach that emphasizes something like social interaction between players, a wider cultural context, or concrete sociopolitical reality. They begin by citing either Johannes Huizinga's Homo Ludens or Rules of Play (the game design textbook I co-authored with Katie Salen), and then elaborate mightily on the dangers of the magic circle approach. Invariably, these presentations have a single aim: to devalue, dethrone, or otherwise take down the oppressive regime of the magic circle. They are generally given by earnest graduate students, and have titles like "Beyond the Magic Circle," or "The Pitfalls of the Magic Circle." A few years ago, there was an entire conference called "Breaking the Magic Circle." If you've ever been to an academic game gathering, you know the kind of talk. Shoot Me NowĪt game studies conferences, I often find myself browsing through the scheduled program and finding one or more presentations on the magic circle. And along the way, I offer some correctives to how we think about the concept, about game design theory, and about the more general study of games. Is the magic circle a verifiable phenomenon? A useful fiction? A ridiculous travesty? And who really cares? This essay endeavors to answer these questions by looking at the history, the use, and the misuse of the term.
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