Defining Play by Salen and Zimmerman

There are 3 kinds of play defined in this article: game play, ludic activities, and being playful. They go into great descriptive detail for each of these types, explaining "being playful" as the most general and all encompassing form of play. Another topic is the importance of rules of a system and how play is learning how to use that system in new ways. Bouncing a ball off of a wall is an example of using the building's architecture for a new purpose, but the act in and of itself still conforms to the rules of the architecture like the angles of the wall and the materials used. "To play with the ball is to play with all of these structures, testing their limits and boundaries, finding ways of moving around and inside them."

"Play is free movement within a more rigid structure". Salen and Zimmerman keep repeating this idea of structured rules being transformed to new uses through play. How play requires the structure while at the same time opposes it. This is an interesting analysis of the word 'play' and how we might look at defining a game based on the way play works in the real world (and in the game world).