Games | Game Design | Game Studies. Gundolf S. Freyermuth

in: Bürger, Jan (ed.), Friedrich Schiller: Dichter, Denker, Vor- und Gegenbild, Göttingen: Wallstein-Verl. 2007, pp. 158-171.) Until this day, a widespread connotation of the German word ‘Spiel,’ which has this aimless ‘here and there’ at its core, has to do with a mostly unintentional freedom of movement within and among machine parts: ‘The steering has too much play (“Spiel”).’ This is just how Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman define human play: “Play is free movement within a more rigid structure.” (Salen/Zimmerman: Rules of Play, loc. 4730) The fact that the most important audiovisual modern media have the same German language ‘last name’ of ‘Spiel’, which has its roots in free motion, points to what binds these media together irrespective of their great variety: the principle of aesthetic play. According to Friedrich Schlegel, aesthetic play also possesses narratological and mimetic features, within which the “appearance of acts” (“Schein von Handlungen”) is generated through artistic means (Athäneums Fragments, in: Schlegel, Friedrich von/Behler, Ernst/Anstett, Jean Jacques/Eichner, Hans: Kritische Friedrich-Schlegel-Ausgabe: Erste Abteilung: Kritische Neuausgabe, vol. 2, Munich; Paderborn; Wien: F. Schöningh 1967, p. 180).—This definition has bestowed validity upon many later attempts—from Johan Huizinga up until contemporary game theorists like Jesse Schell—through the advantage of an openness which transcends the boundaries of the arts (and media). While this definition generally covers the similarities of the stage play (Bühnenspiel) and the digital game (digitales Spiel), it inevitably avoids their differences. For the close relationships among audiovisual media say little about the quality of those actual relationships. Cain slew Abel and everyone would like to find their own familial example of the dialectic of attraction and repulsion, of alternating states of cooperation, coexistence, and constant strife. In particular, the various—aesthetic, artistic, practical, technological, economic—aspects of the cultural relationships between game and film demand a more precise, historical clarification. See Intermezzo: Game//Film, p. hereff.

2 Alberti, Leon Battista: On Painting. Translated with Introduction and Notes by John R. Spencer, New Haven: Yale University Press 1970, *1956, Chapter 19; http://www.noteaccess.com/Texts/Alberti/

3 Crawford, Chris: “The Phylogeny of Play,” (2010); http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/science/the-phylogeny-of-play.html

4 Herodotus/Macaulay, G. C.: The History of Herodotus, 2 vols., London; New York: Macmillan and Co. 1890, here Book 1, Clio, 94; http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hh/index.htm

5 McGonigal: Reality Is Broken, loc. 242.

6 Mäyrä: An Introduction to Game Studies, loc. 621.

7 Juul: Half-Real, loc. 272.

8 Pross, Harry: Medienforschung: Film, Funk, Presse, Fernsehen, Darmstadt: Habel 1972.

9 Pross: Medienforschung, p. 119.

10 Ibid., p. 68.

11 Ibid., p. 78.

12 Ibid.

13 Huizinga, Johan: Homo Ludens, loc. 129.

14 Pross: Medienforschung, p. 69.

15 Goldblatt, David: The Ball is Round: A Global History of Football, New York: Riverhead Books (Kindle edition) 2008, loc. 217. The subsequent outline of the history of soccer follows Goldblatt’s narrative.

16 Ibid., loc. 239.—An important exception is displayed by American culture. Within American culture, FOOTBALL established itself as a combination of SOCCER and RUGBY. Characteristic of the sport is the oval shape of the ball as well as the case that, at certain times, players may use both hands and feet to interact with the ball, and, finally, an entirely different game experience for both player and spectator: “Perhaps most fundamentally of all, soccer offers modes of storytelling and narrative structures that the American sporting public finds unsatisfactory.” (Ibid., loc. 133)

17 Ibid., loc. 182.

18 See ibid., loc. 269.

19 Ibid., loc. 422.

20 Ibid., loc. 490.

21 Ibid., loc. 492.

22 Ibid., loc. 516.

23 Ibid., loc. 1119.

24 Ibid., loc. 818.

25 Ibid., loc. 822-824.

26 Ibid., loc. 809.

27 Ibid., loc. 1394.

28 Ibid., loc. 1436.

29 Ibid., loc. 1344.

30 Ibid., loc. 1442.

31 Ibid., loc. 1355.

32 Grieves, Kevin: “On This Day in History: First Live Radio Broadcast of a Soccer Match, 1927,” The Modern Historian, January 23, 2009; http://modernhistorian.blogspot.de/2009/01/on-this-day-in-history-first-live-radio.html

33 N. N.: “Happened on This Day—16 September,” news.BBC, September 16, 2002;