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Reasons for recommendation
In life, people often understand games as an entertainment behavior, and even find it difficult to be elegant, which is a concept that produces the game under the social view. Heizinha elevated the game to the spiritual level, arguing that human civilization did not add any basic meaning to the concept of the game, and that understanding the game should be out of the cosmology.
This book is based on the concept of the spirit of games, which aims to integrate games into the concept of culture, and belongs to the study of cultural history. Heizimha believes that games are inseparable from culture, and that games are somewhat superior to culture, and that games are the foundation of civilization. Heizimha argues the role of games from a variety of socio-cultural phenomena such as law, poetry, war, and art, and this book is the first book to study games from multiple perspectives such as historiography and culture, and has made important contributions to game science.
About the Author
Johann Hejzinha was a Dutch historian and cultural scientist. In 1987, he received his Ph.D. in Indo-European-Germanic Linguistics. The main representative works are "Autumn in the Middle Ages", "Erasmus Biography", "The Necessary Conditions for the Resurrection of Civilization", and "The Man of Games". Hejzinha taught at leiden University, The University of Groningen, the University of Leipzig and was rector of Leiden University.
Synopsis
This book first points out the nature, definition, meaning, and function of games, and then explains the relationship between games and socio-cultural phenomena such as law, war, rituals, poetry, and philosophy.
In the first chapter of the book, the author points out that games are voluntary, pretentious, regular, and compartmentalizing. At the same time, the author believes that games have great significance to the world, and that truly pure games are one of the foundations of human civilization, which precedes and is superior to cultural existence, and that people cannot explain what games are with reason, because the existence of human society outside the game lies. The author rejects the biological and psychological understanding of play, pointing out that we should study play as a function of culture, rather than as a phenomenon in animals and children.
In the second chapter, the author focuses on the relationship between games and language. The author points out that games occupy a more basic and important place in language than non-game concepts, and that words such as serious are only invented by people in order to create a second-place opposing concept. Therefore, the author analyzes the concept of game in greek, Sanskrit, German, English and other different languages, and discusses the abstraction process of the word.
In the third chapter, the author mainly discusses the relationship between games and competitions. The author points out that in the classical era, many countries had the same vocabulary as the competition, but with the evolution of civilization, production technology and social life technology became more and more refined in organization, and civilization gradually became serious, so the game was assigned a secondary position, and there was a game of the Lower Riba people.
In the fourth chapter, the author focuses on the relationship between games and law. Etymologically, most of the words that denote legal and judicial concepts are in the fields of placement, fixation, directive, and constraint. On the face of it, the semantic domains of these concepts have little to do with the semantic domains that produce the vocabulary of the game, yet the sanctity and seriousness of the acts in no way exclude the nature of their games. In addition, early legal proceedings focused on winning and losing over justice, and it was not until the Stoics that they gradually reversed, realizing the similarity between law and competition, that is, understanding the similarity between law and game.
In the fifth chapter, the author mainly discusses the relationship between games and war. All battles that are constrained by rules have the formal characteristics of the game, and these formal characteristics are the rules of the game. For example, puppies fight with boys for fun, and the rules limit the level of violence. In addition, medieval tournaments were always used as pretend fights, which highlighted the pretense of the game, although the initial form of fighting was extremely serious, even to decide life and death, but it also had the characteristics of the game.
In the sixth chapter, the author focuses on the relationship between play and knowledge. The knowledge discussed by the author refers to sacred things and their mysterious titles, about the origin of the world, and the important form of this knowledge is riddles. Riddles, on the other hand, have the entertainment characteristics of the game and at the same time promote the birth of mythological discourse.
In the seventh chapter, the author deals primarily with the relationship between games and poetry. The birth of the original poetry was in the service of man, not a purely artistic aesthetic work, that is, a higher and sacred spiritual game. At the same time, the language of poetry is closely related to riddles, and the characteristics of the game are reflected in the internal language structure and the creation of external myths.
In the eighth chapter, the author focuses on the relationship between games and mythology. The author believes that the use of human figures to represent non-physical, non-living things is the soul of all myths in the process of creation. At the same time, anthropomorphism is an important cause of mythological fantasies, and anthropomorphism occurs as soon as it feels the need to convey one's perception to others. Anthropomorphism is a way for people to guess everything in the world, and it is also an important embodiment of the game.
In the ninth chapter, the author mainly discusses the relationship between games and philosophy. The author believes that philosophy is a form of knowledge, that all knowledge is inherently polemical, that controversy and competition cannot be separated, and that philosophy is inseparable from nature and play.
In the tenth chapter, the author focuses on the relationship between games and art. Art forms such as music and dance have a unique artistic language, such as musical notes. These artistic languages motivate them to create artistic situations, and the emergence of these situations is the embodiment of games. In addition, art is also related to competition, and many works are created or presented for the sake of receiving subsidies or greater benefits, and participation in competitions is a game.
In the eleventh chapter, the author focuses on the relationship between games and Western civilization. The author believes that civilization is born in the game, and civilization is the game. The game factor is extremely active throughout the cultural process, and it has also given rise to many basic social forms. The spirit of competition of a playful nature, as a social impulse, is longer than the history of culture and permeates all areas of life.
In the twelfth chapter, the author focuses on the game component in contemporary civilization. The author emphasizes that games are the foundation of all civilizations, but also points out that the spirit of games is gradually lost with the development of society. For example, today's war is based on the principle of enemy-friend, and all enemies of nations and nations are hated people, and this evolution distorts the original spirit of the game.
Overall, the author argues that games are the essence of the world, and that games inject specific meaning into behavior. However, the purpose of the game is the game, which is the embodiment of a sacred spirit, not the entertainment and leisure cognition under social values.
Table of contents of the book
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Chinese Translator Reprint Prologue/1
Chinese Translator's First Edition Prologue/5
George Stanner Prologue/32
Author's Preface/43
Chapter 1: The Game as a Cultural Phenomenon: Nature and Meaning/1
Chapter 2 The Concept of Game manifested in language/35
Chapter III: Games and Competitions that Function as Indoctrination/59
Chapter IV Games and Laws/95
Chapter 5: Games and War/113
Chapter 6: Games and Knowledge/137
Chapter VII: Games and Poetry/157
Chapter 8: The Formation of Myths and Games/181
Chapter IX The Form of Play in Philosophy/197
Chapter 10: Form of Play in Art/215
Chapter 11: Western Civilization in the Game's Vision/237
Chapter XII: The Composition of Games in Contemporary Civilization/269
Reading insights
1. The useless use of gamers
In the book, Heizinha proposed the concept of "game man", hoping to form a confrontation with the previous definition of human beings, such as craftsmen and Homo sapiens, thus highlighting the spirit of human play. Heizimha's idea of a game man actually embodies the concept of "useless use" that is different from the mainstream concept of practicality in society. That is to say, people should not only be an instrumental existence to achieve their goals, but we should also have the attribute of "entertainment" to make our life experience more complete. Of course, the entertainment here does not refer to play, but a manifestation of the spirit of the game, that is, the principle of interaction such as pretense and regularity.
When we face this highly tense social system with such a "useless" attitude, we may have a different sense of life.
2. The decline of the spirit of the game
In the ideal gaming society depicted by Heizimha, everyone follows the rules of the game, and even if someone cheats, they will not deliberately disrupt the course of the game. It was this recognition and observance of the rules of the game that led to what Gombrich called the "Social Covenant."
However, in the present, the act of destroying the game makes the spirit of the game continue to decline. For example, in the popular RPG games now, the growth of players relies on constantly accepting challenges and completing tasks under the rules of the game. However, with the emergence of the so-called "Krypton gold" game recharge behavior, the original game rules of RPG games have been broken, ordinary players have become one of the elements of the game experience of kryptonian players, and the game has become a pure commercial tool. But in fact, this is not the fault of Kryptonian players, they did not "cheat" in the game, but followed another game rule. In fact, the "kryptonite" behavior is the embodiment of the decline of the game, so we need to think about the impact and impact of the current rapidly expanding commercial game logic on the previous social model and thinking mode.
Note: The full name of the RPG game is Roll-playing game, which translates to a role-playing game.
3. Game with seriousness
In the book, Heizimha tries to completely isolate gaming from seriousness. But as Gombrich points out in his essay "The High Seriousness of Games," seriousness is not absolutely separate from gaming. Gombrich rejects Heizinha's view of the opposition between games and serious duality, but he does not deny the value of Heizinha's game theory. Gombrich believes that the game itself is serious, for example, one of the essences of the game is the rules of the game, only by determining the rules, the game can be carried out fairly, and the rules ensure the order and scope of the game.
This reflects the ambiguity and contradiction of Theizimha's game theory. But game theory, based on the history of civilization and the perspective of society, can cause us to imagine society and life.
Excerpts from the content
The occurrence of the game is not related to the specific stage of civilization evolution, nor does it have anything to do with the human cosmology.
—Quoted from chapter 1, p. 6
We can probably say that the concept of the game in language seems to be a more basic concept than the concept that is opposed to it. The need to express the concept of "non-game" seems to be much weaker. The various words expressing "seriousness" are merely attempts to invent a second concept in opposition to "play.".
—Quoted in chap. II, p. 57
The trend of the development of civilization is more and more complex and diverse, more and more layered, and the technology of production technology and social life is becoming more and more exquisite in organization. In the process, the soil of ancient cultures becomes increasingly difficult to breathe under the weight of overlapping overlaps, and ideas and systems of knowledge, doctrines, rules and regulations, morals and conventional customs have lost their connection with the game. So we say that civilization has become more serious, and it has assigned only a secondary position to the game.
—Quoted in chapter III, p. 94
The actual enforcement process, the process of litigation, resembles a race, regardless of the ideal basis of the relevant law. Once this truth is realized, the similarities between the existence of laws and games are clear at a glance.
—Quoted in chapter IV, p. 97
In fact, all battles constrained by rules have the formal characteristics of the game, and these formal characteristics are rules. We can call war the most violent and laborious form of play, or we can call war the most obvious and primitive form of play.
—Quoted in chapter V, p. 115
There must be such a contest of knowledge at the feast of the divine, for the words spoken in the mouth have a direct impact on the order of the world.
—Quoted in chapter VI, p. 139
In the poetry of later generations of bards, the function of the game was more open-minded, and they paid special attention to the creation of obscure poems.
—Quoted in chapter VII, p. 179
The divine and the game are always overlapping each other. In the same way, poetic fantasies and beliefs overlap with each other.
—Quoted in chapter VIII, p. 188
All knowledge (including, of course, philosophical knowledge) is inherently contentious, and controversy and competition cannot be separated.
—Quoted in chapter IX, p. 213
To understand these musical ideas, we can only understand them in musical terms, such as rhythm and harmony, which can also be used to understand games or poetry.
—Quoted in chapter X, p. 217
The game factor is extremely active throughout the cultural process, and it also gives rise to many basic forms of social life.
—Quoted in chapter XI, p. 239
It now seems that with the increasing institutionalization and standardization of the movement, pure gameplay is bound to be lost.
—Quoted in chapter XII, p. 273
Editor-in-Chief: Zeng Runxi
Executive Editor-in-Chief: Chen Di'an