The author investigates why some women pursue women-only pinball tournaments and how the pinball industry represents them. He argues that women are absent from the top rankings not because of their biological differences from men but rather because of problematic social environments and the pinball industry's approach to representing women in games. Thus, pinball's culture involves gender-related issues similar to those in the broader game industry. Banfi discusses pinball's popularity in general and the growth of women-only leagues in reaction to harassment by male players, characterized, for instance, by the 2014 Gamergate scandal. He draws attention to women pinball players and how they are changing the culture surrounding tournaments, which often intersect with competitive gaming.
The authors trace the evolution of the involvement of parents and other care givers in play using research on the topic and identifying the gaps in this research. They note that parents and care givers are often the play partners of children who invite them into their play for various reasons, including to facilitate play, to observe play, and to engage actively in play. The authors examine cultural differences in attitudes toward play and highlight significant social changes involving play. They explore children's engagement in play with care givers in diverse family structures consisting of parents, single parents, same-sex parents, grandparents, and extended family members. They explore the influences on this engagement, including socioeconomic conditions, the availability of play environments and materials, and the impact of technology and care giver gender roles within diverse family structures. Throughout, the authors underscore the benefits of parents and other care givers becoming involved in their children's play, particularly in fostering the cognitive, social, and emotional development of the children.
The authors argue that playable fictions and analog game design can be an effective way to engage students in discussions about climate change and related scientific areas of exploration. They offer the example of a middle school climate science education unit grounded in the design, analysis, and play of board games and card games based on a study of middle school students in a workshop they conducted. They aim to help guide and inspire educators interested in the complex thinking involved in structured play.
The author looks at play-based learning as a concept that supports the holistic development of children, defining such learning as a continuum of a child-directed, collaborative, and adult-directed play and discussing the role of adults on this continuum. King introduces into the discussion the theory of the play cycle and reviews tensions in play-based learning between policy, practice, and the interpretation of play, using the play cycle and adult roles in it to focus on the process of play rather than on its outcomes, which also contributes to a developing understanding of play-based learning itself.
Best known for his parenting books The Hurried Child, All Grown Up and No Place to Go, Miseducation: Preschoolers at Risk, and The Power of Play, David Elkind is currently professor emeritus of the Eliot-Pearson Department of sachusetts. Elkind's bibliography now numbers over five hundred items and includes research, theoretical articles, book chapters, and twenty-two books. He is a member of many professional organizations and is a past president of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC). In addition to having been a consultant to state education departments and government agencies, Elkind lectured extensively across the United States, Canada and abroad. Key words-child development; childhood play; Jean Piaget; The Hurried Child
The author introduces the playful-tension model, a new theoretical concept, to harmonize the gap in play design between general play theory and its actual use in designing playthings. By synthesizing a broad selection of general play theory into a single theoretical concept, the playful-tension model accentuates the delicate interplay of what he calls "handleability" and "unhandleability" as a primary concern for play designers. He asserts that the contribution of the playful-tension model lies in its ability to unify the complex and scattered landscape of play studies into a high-level middle ground metatheory that empowers play designers and inspires them to a more deliberate practice. Key words: handleability; intermediate level knowledge; metatheory of play; play design; play theory; playful-tension model; toy design; unhandleabilitry
Using a grounded theory method, the authors explore the phenomenon of adult play guilt, or the negative emotions associated with the perception of being unproductive while engaging in play. They interviewed twenty-four emerging adult undergraduate students about feeling guilty when contemplating or engaging in play. The authors found that participants often experienced guilt as an internal voice urging them to do something other than playing, especially when their academic workloads were heavy. Guilt struck at different times (before, during, and after play) and could prevent play, or cut it short, or reduce its pleasure. Participants felt less guilt when they conceptualized their play as productive, or beneficial, or as a reward for hard work. The authors conclude with suggestions to improve the understanding of adult play and its import for healthy and fulfilling lives.
The authors describe Hexacago Health Academy (HHA) 2.0, a five-year summer intervention designed to increase interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) among mostly Black high school students in Chicago. The program features public health fundamentals and game design using principles of systems thinking, social-cognitive career theory, experiential learning, playing and making, and storytelling. They conclude that game play and game making can facilitate community collaborations and encourage marginalized youth to engage in complex systems thinking.
The authors assert that as the world's population ages, play becomes an underappreciated and underdeveloped opportunity to address many of the challenges associated with growing old. But no systematic examinations exist for the role of play in age-friendly policy. The authors seek to determine the extent to which play has been integrated into such policy landscapes and conclude that the importance of play and playfulness for the well-being of older people in building and maintaining relationships has simply not been recognized. Key words: age-friendly cities; age-friendly practices; aging and social relationships; Global Database of Age-Friendly Practices; individual connectedness and the elderly; older populations; play and aging; positive emotions and the elderly
To Brian Sutton-Smith's catalogue of seven play rhetorics in his influential work, The Ambiguity of Play, the author adds an eighth category-the rhetoric of computational play, connecting the research field of game studies with other forms of play studies. By proposing this rhetoric, Sicart seeks to consolidate the relation between game studies and play studies.
Jesper Juul is a video game theorist and occasional developer. He works at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen and has taught at MIT and New York University. He coorganized one of the first academic video game conferences, had a hand in starting the video game journal Game Studies, and helped organize the first Nordic Game Jam. He coedits the MIT Press Playful Thinking series. He has published five books with MIT Press, Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds; The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games; Handmade Pixels: Independent Video Games and the Quest for Authenticity; A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players; and Too Much Fun: The Five Lives of the Commodore 64. His first computer was a Commodore 64, on which he wrote games and demos.
The authors discuss the shift in play-based educational experiences during the past decade in Guyana. They hold that nature-based play has become a type of pedagogy in decline and even at risk of extinction. Their study presents the status of nature play beginning with Guyana's national early childhood program in 1976 and employs a descriptive survey of teachers from the different geographical areas of Guyana about the nature play experiences of children. Using three categories of nature-based play-regular, messy, and risky-and introducing the culturally relevant peacock flower play, they outline the negative impact on play associated with over protectiveness, environmental worries, and ideological objection. They present recommendations for retaining, advancing, and creating nature play spaces and experiences in Guyanese early childhood settings.
The authors discuss their application of John W. Kingdon's multiple streams framework (MSF) and the role it plays in the analysis of a pioneering local public policy in the United Kingdom (UK). The aim of this policy, instituted in 2009 and initiated by a group of Bristol's mothers, was to reclaim children's right to play, mainly for their own enjoyment and sense of freedom and independence but also for all the important functional, healthy, and developmental outcomes of free outdoor active play. Their play street model was disseminated to more than one hundred other local authorities within a decade and obtained the explicit support of the UK government. The authors intend their analysis and conclusions both to contribute to the MSF and policy change literature and offer lessons learned in Bristol as useful for children's right to play advocates, social movements, policy makers, and strategic planners.
The authors contend that, although recent research-especially concerning the role of teachers-shows play to be critical for early childhood education, most kindergartens in the United States limit play because of accountability worries. And this is especially true for those kindergartens serving Black and Brown children. To support the development of rich play-based teaching, the authors developed an educational observation tool called the Educationally Productive Play Protocol (EP3), which they describe in relation to a pilot study in thirty preschool classrooms and which offers evidence that teachers who viewed themselves as facilitators of play had higher ratings than their management-oriented peers.
The author discusses how social scientists and psychologists in the late 1960s and early 1970s devised the board games Ghetto, Blacks & Whites, and El Barrio to teach students in college and high school about racism, racial segregation, and poverty in American society. But, he also argues, these games assumed that poor Black and Latino Americans bore some individual responsibility for their poverty and could, with great effort, escape the ghetto or the barrio. Rasmussen concludes that these games simultaneously encouraged players to become more aware of racial inequality and replicated ideas about race and segregation prevalent among social scientists and game designers at the time, ideas that are considered questionable or even discounted today. Key words: board games; civil rights and games; game design; race; roleplaying games; simulation games; sociology of games
The author, using extensive interviews, researches the play of working elementary school teachers to discover how they engage in such activities, both in and out of the classroom, to relax, enhance learning, and connect professionally. She discusses how these experiences offer rich insight for strengthening teacher well-being, training, and professional development.
The author considers adult doll play as therapeutic intervention by examining how the physical properties of reborn dolls and also sex dolls provide comfort and establish needs met through care giving. She discusses dolls providing a sense of personal identity through narrative play, community, and retail therapy, and she describes the companionship attained through imaginative perception and social connections, all benefits that accompany what she calls a synthetic relationship. Drawing from research related to doll therapy in dementia care and from studies on sex doll usage, she considers original research on reborn dolls. She proposes that doll ownership can therapeutically support personal development and good social and mental health, thus improving broader social relationships for many doll owners.
The author analyzed popular YouTube toy play videos, reviewing the range of storylines and their impact and influence. She argues that, although such videos may contribute to the commercialization of toys and play, they may also facilitate development of fine motor skills, socialization, and learning. She notes that, as with all Internet content, YouTube viewing is subject to algorithmic influences, and parents must oversee their children's use and regularly communicate with them about video content.
The authors examine the evolution of board game authorship between 1845 and 1984, based on an analysis of a corpus of more than thirty-seven hundred games from the University Sorbonne Paris North's Fonds Patrimonial du Jeu de Soci & eacute;t & eacute;, a board game collection of more than fifteen thousand titles. Overall, they show that game authors have rarely received credit from publishers, although they increasingly do so now, testifying to the existence of a legitimization process for board games. The authors also discuss the difference in the status of the author for games in Europe and North America, highlighted by the different proportion of games credited or in the terms used for such crediting. Finally, they explore the questions of author gender, transmediality, and the porous distinction between intellectual property and authorship.
