There is an important difference between the approach to games by Huizinga or Caillois on the one hand and Salen and Zimmerman on the other. The former focus on play as a dominant factor in human history and the cultural development of modern civilizations, whereas the latter concentrate their analysis on aesthetical, design-oriented, or theoretical descriptions of the object game.
Michael Liebe, “There is no magic circle : on the difference between computer games and traditional games” (
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