Players only
selectively
challenged actions under some types of
rules and not others.
rules and not others.
Childens - Folklore
social life like playing a game.
RULES AND RULES FOR RULES
We commonly think of rules, and perhaps especially game rules, as being
rather rigid and explicit, as primarily prescriptive and proscriptive in func-
tion (Shimanoff 1980). This contrasts with the perspective commonly
adopted by those who describe social life in terms of rules, and who think
of rules as highly ambiguous, largely implicit, and essentially productive or
generative in function (Harre and Secord 1972; Hymes 1980; Shwayder
1965). The former conception, which has appropriately characterized most
studies of games, emphasizes the many ways rules confine the range of ac-
tions available to players. The latter conception, however, stresses how rules
help us choose among the many possible courses of action available to us
in the course of everyday life (Brenner 1982; Gruneau 1980). It rests upon
an analogy with the grammatical rules of language, which do not explicitly
and rigidly determine each and every utterance we make, but instead guide
our construction of novel yet meaningful and appropriate action. 3
Game rules do strongly shape what happens within a particular game.
To borrow from Goffman (1959) and Burke (1945), game rules typically set
a scene by identifying an appropriate setting, a set of necessary props, and
game roles. They then outline a sequence of game action, which is usually
cyclical and repetitive (L. Hughes 1983, 1989). At another level, game rules
also create distinctive domains of meaning (placing a ball in a hoop, for ex-
ample, has particular meaning within the context of a game of basketball),
and specify a typically nonpragmatic relationship between means and ends
(one does not approach the task by using a ladder).
Game rules still leave substantial areas of ambiguity, however, and a
central task in gaming studies is to describe players' perceptions of areas of
ambiguity and how they go about managing them. Game rules do not rig-
idly and explicitly specify each and every move in the game or, as Goffman
(1974, 24) observes, "establish where we are to travel or why we should
want to, . . . [they are] merely the restraints we are to observe in getting
there. " One does not, as Shwayder (1965, 243) notes, "succeed in getting
into a certain chess position by following the rules of chess. " There are many
ways of accomplishing the same ends within the general "restraints" of the
rules (Brenner 1982; Collett 1977; Gruneau 1980).
There is also another very important sense in which game rules pro-
vide an ambiguous framework for player action. In the social world, we
do not respond simply and objectively to what people do, but rather on
the basis of what we take actions and events to mean (Harre and Secord
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? ? 1972). Translated into the world of gaming, this means that while game
rules may tell us what we can and cannot do, they do not also tell us what
is to count as an instance of that "doing" (Brenner 1982; Harre 1977).
The same or very similar actions can be taken to mean very different things
to different players and in different contexts of occurrence. This is perhaps
the most central tenet of the study of children's gaming. It can be illustrated,
however, in the most formal of gaming contexts, professional sports. "(Na-
tional Hockey League) referees must have an instinct for which violations
to call and which to ignore. They themselves talk of 'good' penalties (fla-
grant violations such as tripping the player with the puck) and 'bad' ones
(minor offenses such as hooking a player who doesn't have the puck late
in a tight game). 'You could call a penalty a minute,' says referee Ron
Fournier. 'But that's not what we're supposed to do. You call a guy for a
minor infraction and even though you cite the rule number, he just looks
at you and says, "What's that? " It doesn't earn you respect'" (Shah 1981,
emphasis added).
Competent hockey players and referees are clearly expected to know
what a "hook" is, and what are the rules about "hooking. " But they are
just as clearly expected to know that all "hooks" are not to be understood
or responded to in the same way. These types of understandings are often
implicit (thus the appeal to an "instinct," not to the rule book for hockey),
they are subject to choice and evaluation ("You could. . , but that's not what
we're supposed to do"), and they lead to social, rather than game-prescribed,
consequences (the referee just cited is concerned about winning or losing
"respect," not about winning or losing the game). All of these qualities are
clear markers of gaming rules.
Children make similar distinctions. The players I observed responded
very differently to the same move in different contexts of performance, and
they recognized important differences between what you could do under the
game rules and what you were supposed to do as a socially competent mem-
ber of a play group. Their actions in the game had clear social consequences
outside its bounds, and this strongly shaped the meaning of actions under
the rules of the game. Their treatment of the common act of "slamming the
ball" will illustrate.
In the game of foursquare, as in many other ball-bouncing games, a
"slam"4 is a hard bounce high over the receiving player's head. "Slams" are
difficult to return, and thus constitute one way players can try to eliminate
another player from the game. They were usually understood to be prohib-
ited by "the rules" among the players I observed.
Despite this prohibition, however, "slams" were very regularly used
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? ? without any indication that players perceived a game rule to have been vio-
lated. This was possible because whether the same or very similar "move"
was taken to constitute a "slam" was not a simple matter of assessing what
a player had or had not done. At one level, these players felt obliged to con-
sider such things as the heights of the particular players involved, their
relative skill levels, and their degree of engagement in or distraction from
play. A low, easy bounce might constitute a "slam" to a short, inexperienced,
or temporarily distracted player, but not to an older, more skilled, or
attentive one.
At another level, players' interpretations of "slams" were also influ-
enced by relationships among the players involved, and even by who would
come into the game next if a "slam" was successful. A very hard bounce
among "friends" was understood quite differently than the same "move"
among members of different social cliques. A "slam" was far more likely to
be interpreted as a "real slam," and not "just an accident," when its effect
was to bring a friend rather than a nonfriend into the game.
Maynard (1985) has observed that one has to know the history of
relationships among children in order to understand what is going on in their
disputes. The same is also true of understanding what is going on in their
games. There are rules among children for who can appropriately do what
to whom (Davis 1982; Eder and Sanford 1986; Thorne and Luria 1986),
and actions under the game rules are often interpreted within this additional
domain of social obligation and responsibility.
The example of "slams" illustrates this point particularly clearly. The
players I observed were generally much more concerned about the intents
and purposes underlying a particular performance of a "slam" than they
were about the outward form of the action itself. Both were essential to per-
ceptions of whether a "rule" had been broken or not, and to generating an
appropriate response (Hughes 1988, 1989, 1993). As noted above, friend-
ships provided a primary context for assessing motives and their appropri-
ateness, and this in turn strongly shaped players' judgments of the accept-
ability of actions under the rules of the game. Even their terminology for
differentiating among different types of "slams" reflected the importance of
motive over form. There were "minislams" and "nice slams," and there were
"rough slams" and "mean slams. " Each called for a different type of re-
sponse.
Incorporation of social criteria like motives into judgments about the
status of particular actions under the rules of the game can have far-reach-
ing consequences. Motives are notoriously difficult to prove and impressions
of one's intentions can be actively managed and manipulated. Among the
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? ? players I observed, this created substantial areas of ambiguity that were then
subject to both playful and serious manipulation for strategic purposes. s They
could, for example, violate the stated rules against such moves as "slams"
and still be treated as though they were acting in a totally appropriate and
acceptable way. This was because strict adherence to the game rules did not
allow them to fulfill critical social obligations to their friends. In fact, the
gaming rules, which did incorporate rules concerning the responsibilities
inherent in friendships, often required "slams" to nonfriends even when they
were very explicitly prohibited by the game rules. I will return to this ex-
ample below, as it provides a particularly clear illustration of the highly sig-
nificant subtleties of meaning that can be generated out of the need to rec-
oncile the (sometimes competing) demands of social structure and game
structure.
"BASIC RULES" AND THE RULES OF PLAY IN PARTICULAR SETTINGS
Having stressed the importance of attending to how groups of players in-
terpret the rules of their games, I should note that play groups also elabo-
rate the rules of their games in ways that are important to understanding
the principles underlying play in particular settings. The players I observed
clearly distinguished between the "basic rules" of foursquare, those that
correspond to the rules presented in printed descriptions of this game, and
a variety of other types of rules they used in playing the game (Hughes 1989).
The "basic rules" (Table 1) were only a small part of what players listed as
the rules of their game (Table 2), and they were not even included among
what they called the "real rules" of the game. In fact, these "basic rules"
did not seem all that important to players. They almost never mentioned
them when asked about the rules of their game, and when queried about
them, they dismissed them as "just things you had to do. " Players were far
more interested in the rules they generated and controlled, and that they
could use to introduce excitement, variety, strategy, and fun into the game.
These are precisely the kinds of rules and practices that rarely make their
way into descriptions of games, despite their apparent importance to the
players themselves.
TABLE 1. The "Basic Rules" of Foursquare
Hit a ball that lands in your square to another square.
Let the ball bounce once, but only once, in your square.
Don't hit a ball that lands in another square.
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? ? TABLE 2. The "Real Rules" of Foursquare
AC/DC
Babies
Baby Bottles
Baby Stuff
Backsies
Backspins
Bishops
Bops
Chances
Comebacks
Country and
City
Donna Rules
Double Taps
Duckfeet
Fair Ball
Fair Square
Fakes
Fancy
Fancy Day
Fast Ball
Fish
Friends
Front Spins
Frontsies
Getting Out on
Serve
Goody Rules
Half Slams
Half Wings
Holding
Interference
Kayo Stuff
Knee Balls
Lines
Low Ball
Main Rules
Mean Slams
Mean Stuff
Medium Ball
My Rules
Nice Ball
Nice Slams
Nice Square
No Outs
One-Handed
One-Two-Three-
Four
Part-Rules
Poison
Practice
Purpose Duckfeet
Purpose Stuff
Randi Rules
Ready
Regular Ball
Regular Rules
Regular Spins
Regular Square
Regular Volley
Rough Ball
Rough Slams
Rough Square
Saves
Saving Places
Secrets
Slams
Mini-Slams
? ? Mandy Slams
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? ? games and qualities of the episodes in which they are embedded in the play-
ing. I will begin by contrasting the stated point of the game with the pur-
poses of its players (Sabini and Silver 1982), and then consider, in turn, the
significance of nongame prescribed action to the creation and maintenance
of gaming episodes, the relative roles of competition and cooperation in the
study of games and gaming, and the interplay between the interpretive
"frame" defined by the game (Bateson 1972; Goffman 1974) and players'
own "framings" of what occurs within its bounds.
THE POINTS OF GAMES AND THE PURPOSES OF PLAYERS
Games usually have some clearly stated objective or point, almost always
stated in terms of criteria for determining winners and losers. Participants
in the game, however, have purposes, and these may be shaped not only by
the game but also by the social matrix in which it is embedded. Players may
incorporate a variety of goals or purposes beyond those specified by the ac-
tivity (Brenner 1982; Collett 1977; Maynard 1985), they may define "suc-
cess" very differently than the game defines "winning" (Simon 1985), and
they may further reinterpret "winning" in light of a variety of agendas that
are totally extrinsic to the game itself. Whenever we judge some ways of
winning to be more or less appropriate than others, we recognize that suc-
cess may be something more than meeting the criteria of the game. A six-
foot tall adult who defeats a child at basketball, for example, would nor-
mally be viewed as winning in a very different sense than when he competes
with someone of similar size and skill. 6
The issue can be much more complex, however. Players' own crite-
ria for success may differ from, and even conflict with, the game's criteria
for winning. The girls I observed provided a particularly striking example.
They played within a social matrix that demanded that they help and pro-
tect their friends, or at least make an appropriate display of doing so. This
demand for a collective orientation interacted with a game that defined win-
ning as an individual achievement in a variety of interesting and significant
ways (Hughes 1993). For example, players who played the game according
to its rules, competing as individuals, were treated as though they were act-
ing in a totally inappropriate and unacceptable way. They were quickly elimi-
nated from the game. This was because the gaming rules among these play-
ers required that they sustain the impression that they were "mean" only to
help and support their friends, not for their own personal gain. Players them-
selves were quite clear about this discrepancy between how the game was
supposed to be played and how it actually was played.
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? ? Amanda:7 It's supposed to be that you treat everyone equal and
no one's your friend and no one's your enemy. . .
Everyone is just all for yourself. That's the way it's
supposed to be. It's like one on one. It's not supposed
to be team on team.
Janet: It's not supposed to be (laughs).
Author: You make it sound like lots of times it is team on
team, though.
Chorus: It is! (laughter) (Fieldnotes 4/27/81. Emphasis in
original)
Regardless of what the game rules said, these players still played foursquare
like a team game, with groups of friends vying for control of the game. In
fact, much of what happened in the playing of this game would be totally
inexplicable in the context of individual competition, even though this game
has long been categorized that way.
Activities and Episodes
Just as players need not always be primarily oriented toward game-prescribed
procedures and outcomes, what happens during gaming episodes need not
always be primarily defined by the game. An episode defined as "playing
the game" may incorporate a great deal of action that is in no way defined
by the activity itself, even though it may be strongly shaped by its occur-
rence within one type of social episode rather than another. There are many
possible breaks in, or overlays upon, the action specified by the game. There
may be time-outs, fights, discussions, interruptions, interference, stalemates,
"side-plays" and "side-involvements," changes in "keying" or "footing"
(Goffman 1963, 1974, 1981). Some are woven into and concurrent with
action that is primarily defined by the game. Others are perceived as clear
breaks or interruptions in the game (Denzin 1977).
All of this can be ignored when the purpose is to describe games and
their rules. When the purpose is to describe how players understand and
collectively negotiate a particular instance of gaming, however, close atten-
tion must be paid to all of the activity that is woven into and around the
game. Players need to understand and manage transitions among activities
that are defined primarily by the game and those that are not, and they need
to integrate the flow of action across those boundaries in meaningful ways.
Many important gaming rules deal with these issues, and a great deal of
communicative activity among players concerns their management.
Incidents of this type tend to cluster around transitional junctures in
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? ? the game, (Erickson and Shultz 1981), as players partition it into emic units
(Clarke 1982) of game-related and non-game-related action, and then inte-
grate these units into a single episode of play. Systematic mapping of what
can and must occur at these various slots and nodes (R. Lindsay 1977; von
Cranach 1982) provides critical information concerning basic principles
underlying play in particular settings. Figure 1, for example, illustrates the
basic episodic units defined by the game of foursquare. In contrast, Figure
2 more closely approximates the episodic structure as I saw it played in the
setting I observed.
Mapping the structure of the gaming episode is critical because it cre-
ates highly repetitive units for analysis and because players often display their
understandings of actions and events more explicitly during breaks in the
game itself (Collett 1977; Grimshaw 1980; R. Lindsay 1977; Marsh 1982).
When things go smoothly, the principles organizing an exchange may not
be apparent at all. When something goes wrong from players' perspectives,
however, or when interpretations of actions seem to require a great deal of
management, those principles may become the explicit topic of discussion.
When players are accused of inappropriate conduct and must defend or ex-
cuse their actions, or when players stop play to fight over the finer points
of what did or did not happen in a particular exchange, they provide a win-
dow on their own interpretations of actions and events, and on the processes
by which they collectively negotiate and renegotiate those interpretations as
new circumstances arise.
The players I observed very clearly illustrated the methodological
importance of identifying and attending to such "contexts of justification"
(Harre and Secord 1972; Much and Shweder 1987), many of which occurred
outside of what players perceived to be "playing the game. " Challenges to
actions under different types of rules, for example, only occurred at certain
junctures.
Players only selectively challenged actions under some types of
rules and not others. And they employed only a few types of responses to
such challenges: "I couldn't help it," "I didn't mean to," and "I didn't know. "
Analysis of the types of accusations that were made or not made and under
what circumstances, and especially of the conditions under which they suc-
ceeded or failed, provided a very important entree into the basic principles
underlying play in this setting. They were an important clue, for example,
to the underlying concern for motive noted above, and they illustrated very
clearly how the difficulties inherent in assessing motive could be managed
and manipulated to a variety of ends.
The form of accusations, denials, and excuses, and especially their
contexts of use, for example, helped explain why players were called out for
103
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? ? FIGURE 1. Structural model of the game of foursquare
PROPS
SETTING
(court)
PLAYERS
(five)
(yes)
tt
(no)
wait
(no) -4
wait
explain/ -
demonstrate
t
(no)
(yes)
(no) -
(yes)
4
DON'T PLAY FOURSQUARE
(no) - PLAY A VARIANT OF
FOURSQUARE
"practice"
"three square"
"two square"
king has ball?
(yes)
players are "ready"?
(yes)
"KING" CALLS THE RULES
,
- players understand/accept rules?
- players are "ready"?
4, 4
wait (yes)
wait " "KING" SERVES THE BALL
44
apologize (yes)
(no)= -- - no one is out on the serve?
(yes)
PLAY THE GAME
PLAYERS
ROTATE
OUT
(yes) ambiguity? -- (yes)
(yes)
responsible -- (no)
for actions?
leaves court? 4-----(yes)
(no)
give "chances"? -
(no)
(no) - STALIEMATIE
4
(yes)
(yes)
"KING" CALLS
A TAKEOVER
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? ? FIGURE 2. Structural model of an episode of playing foursquare
PROPS
(ball)
SETTING
(court)
PLAYERS
(five)
(yes)
"KING" CALLS THE RULES
YERS "KING" SERVES THE BALL
PLA'
ROTATE
PLAY THE
OUT-
4'
GAME
4
violating only some types of rules and not others, despite players' stubborn
insistence that they would be out for violating any of them. It seems useful
to develop this example in somewhat greater detail here, because the prin-
ciples involved are so fundamental to gaming in this setting and thus criti-
cal to further discussion.
The players I observed recognized a number of different types of game
rules. Motive was essential to assessing the status of actions under only some
of them, and their ways of responding to perceived violations varied accord-
ingly. The game rule "no holding" will illustrate the basic workings of this
system and how it affected play at many levels in this setting, though all of
what these players called the "real rules" of their game operated in much
the same way (see L. Hughes 1989 for a full description of rule taxonomy
and use among these players).
Players generally understood that there was "no holding. " That is,
players were supposed to hit the ball, not catch it and throw it to another
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? ? player. In practice, however, this was interpreted to refer not to the action
of catching and throwing but to its context of use. As one player put it, "no
holding" means "you can't just stand there and decide who to throw it to"
(Fieldnotes 5/5/81. Emphasis in original).
Randi: (In my rules) you can't hold the ball. . . . You have to hit
it. You can't pick it up.
Author: Do you really call people out if they throw the ball in-
stead of hitting it?
Randi: Uh huh.
Author: I didn't see that happen too much.
Randi: Well, like if they. . . just grab it for a second and then
throw (that's okay). But if they hold onto it, . . . just do it
deliberately, like then they're out.
Author: It's okay if you just do it quick, but you're not really sup-
posed to?
Randi: Instead of hitting it like this (demonstrates tapping the
ball with her fingertips), they sort of pick it up, sweep it
up like this. But you can't really call that holding because
they didn't really hold it. (Fieldnotes 5/7/81. Emphasis in
original)
These players' treatment of "holding" is reminiscent of the NHL referee's
treatment of "hooks. " The same action could be variously interpreted as
"holding," "not holding," or "holding that was not really holding," depend-
ing upon its context of use and especially on a player's reason for "hold-
ing. " The "no holding" rule did not prohibit "holding" per se, but only
"holding" for particular purposes.
The only type of "holding" that was of serious concern among these
players was "holding" that was "really mean," that is, "holding" for the pur-
pose of deliberately eliminating another player from the game. Actions that
had the effect of getting another player out were "really mean" only if they
were also intentional, and "purpose stuff" was "really mean" only if it was
directed at getting a player out. To complicate matters even further, players
also interpreted "holding" differently depending upon whether it was used
against a friend or a nonfriend. While it was expected that such "moves"
would be directed toward nonfriends, their use in exchanges with friends was
an extremely serious violation of gaming rules among these players.
In practice, as noted above, distinctions among "moves" based on the
perceived motives of players are highly ambiguous. For this reason, players
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? ? had to monitor and manage their actions very carefully. This was a power-
ful constraint on what players could do in the game, but it was also a po-
tent resource for play. Ambiguity of intent was actively generated and ma-
nipulated to a variety of ends.
For example, the issue in trying to call someone out for violating rules
like "no slams" or "no holding" was not simply what a player had or had
not done, but whether it was "really mean. " Would-be accusers were very
aware of the likely outcome of making such a serious charge, even implic-
itly. "Meanness" would surely be denied, and accusers then had only two
choices for further action, neither of which was very appealing. They could
either suffer the embarrassment of backing down, and appear "mean" them-
selves for having falsely accused another, or they could risk a serious esca-
lation of conflict by further accusing the offender of lying. Needless to say,
players who understood this system rarely, if ever, took the risk of directly
calling someone out for violating these types of rules.
Players who "slammed" or "held" the ball, in turn, routinely worked
this system to their own advantage. They acted with relative impunity be-
cause they knew that if they were challenged, they did not have to deny that
they had done something (though this often was the apparent topic of dis-
course). They only had to deny that they had a "mean" purpose ("I didn't
mean to"), a "mean" intent ("I couldn't help it"), or the kind of foreknowl-
edge necessary for a truly intentional act ("I didn't know"). 9 Often they only
had to express sufficient outrage that someone could think so "meanly" of
them to quite effectively stave off the challenge.
Would-be accusers were clearly at a disadvantage here, and one re-
sult was that these players almost never attempted to call someone "out"
for violating rules like "no holding" or "no slams" that incorporated an
assessment of underlying intent. They were not lying, however, when they
steadfastly maintained that players would be out for using these actions in
"mean" ways. It was the mode or style of enforcement, not the principle,
that was ultimately at issue. Rather than trying to call a player "out" for
"slams" or "holding," players usually tried to precipitate a less ambiguous
"out" under a different kind of rule, like failing to hit the ball into another
square. Since this did not involve an exchange among players and motive
thus was not an issue, this was the preferred mode of enforcing the rules.
Even if such actions were challenged, the player(s) who precipitated the "out"
had recourse to the same highly effective set of excuses and denials: "Gee,
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. "
A full explication of this scheme is clearly impossible here. This brief
introduction, however, will illustrate how criteria for evaluating actions in
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? ? the social world, like motive, can constrain and shape player actions in ways
that the game rules alone do not, while also providing players with signifi-
cant resources for playful and strategic manipulation. Games, as they are
actually played, invoke multiple frames of reference. Players' choices among
various courses of action will be explained only rarely by reference to a single
rule or principle. Their decisions usually involve a process of weighing, bal-
ancing, and finally integrating a variety of concerns and agendas.
COMPETITION AND COOPERATION
Another important issue arises in the relative emphasis given to competition
and cooperation in studies of games and gaming. Games are prototypically
competitive, but social life is prototypically cooperative (Hymes 1980). Co-
operation, therefore, is taken as the more fundamental organizing principle
in gaming episodes. Participants in face-to-face interaction must coordinate
their actions to sustain the exchange and the projected definition of the situ-
ation upon which it is based, even though their expected roles, underlying
purposes, and motives may be quite different (Goffman 1959). Simply put,
a great deal of cooperation is required to sustain a competitive exchange.
I have found this notion to be particularly useful in resolving appar-
ent contradictions between what players say and what they do. Statements
may be true about the game yet false about the process of playing it, as well
as the reverse. For example, I observed many instances when players col-
lectively ignored violations of game rules or consistently failed to pursue ef-
fective strategies for "winning," even though they insisted that this was not
what they did or were supposed to do. If I had interpreted these observa-
tions purely in terms of the game, I would have concluded (as Gilligan 1982;
Kohlberg 1966; Lever 1976, 1978; Piaget 1965; and others have) that these
girls cared very little about games and their rules.
When viewed in the context of the gaming episode, however, these
same actions were actually indicative of what Borman and Lippincott (1982,
139) have called the "press to maintain the game. " Players understood that
continuing the game depended on sustaining the social episode in which it
was embedded, and further that threats to the episode arose primarily from
perceived failures to fulfill responsibilities to friends. They thus cooperated
in framing competition in a way that would not threaten the episode, even
when this meant bending the stated rules of the game. When players all acted
as though the ball landed on a line when it clearly did not, or acted as though
a "slam" was accidental when it was clearly quite deliberate, they were of-
ten dealing with a critical boundary beyond which strict enforcement of the
game rules would have threatened continuation of the episode, and ultimately
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? ? the game itself.
Attempts to directly enforce those types of rules that required an as-
sessment of motive provided a particularly clear example of players' need
to balance the demands of playing the game with the demands of sustain-
ing the episode. Competent players knew that such attempts were far more
likely to make players mad than they were to make them out. They also knew
that making players mad in certain kinds of ways could, in turn, easily es-
calate into an extended stalemate in the game (L. Hughes 1988). Regard-
less of their roles or interests in a particular exchange, therefore, they usu-
ally opted for courses of action that were more likely to accomplish the de-
sired outs without also bringing to the foreground inherently awkward is-
sues of who was being "really mean. " Those rare instances when a stale-
mate did occur, of course, were highly revealing of what was at stake in those
choices, and thus of what these players perceived to be beyond the limits of
negotiation.
Frames and Framings
Finally, it is important to make a general distinction between games as
frames, which mark off what occurs within their bounds from other pos-
sible realms of experience (Bateson 1972; Goffman 1974), and gaming as a
process of framing what occurs within that domain. I have already noted a
number of ways that games do act as interpretive frameworks for what oc-
curs within a gaming episode, as well as some important limits to the re-
sources they provide their players. It is still important, however, to place the
players, and not the activity they are engaged in, firmly at the center of the
gaming process.
The literature on games has often extended the notion that games
grant distinctive meanings to actions and events to suggest that they also
communicate an attitude toward those events. A shove on the basketball
court, for example, is not supposed to mean what it would normally mean
if we were not playing a game. This is a type of meta-communication about
how actions are to be interpreted that Bateson (1972) has called "the mes-
sage this is play. "
The distinctive domains of meaning constituted by games should not
be confused with gamers' communications about such things as "playful-
ness," however. They do not eliminate the need for players to communicate
their attitudes toward actions and events in the game. Games probably do
invoke a general expectation that events will not be taken too literally, but
frames are notoriously leaky affairs (Goffman 1974). There is nothing about
games per se that dictates players' attitudes toward events, whether they are
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? ? to be understood as fun or serious, competitive or cooperative, work or play,
"nice" or "mean," fair or unfair. This is a matter of framing, not the frame.
Regardless of the fact that they are playing a game, players must and
do communicate about how their actions are to be interpreted, about how
they understand the actions of others, and about the conditions under which
everyday meanings will and will not be allowed to permeate the game. While
the relative need for such communications will vary with circumstances and
events, they constitute another important entree into the principles players
use to organize their play. They also can be a highly significant factor in the
distinctive quality or style of gaming in different settings (Harre and Secord
1972).
A further elaboration of how the players I observed handled perfor-
mances of "slams" will illustrate. They often seemed to work very hard to
make their play look far more hectic and difficult than it actually was, es-
pecially when potentially "mean" moves were being used. Even rather easy
"slams" were often accompanied by very exaggerated reaching and bend-
ing, cries of "whew! " and mopping of brows. Either I did not understand
the physical demands of this game, or players perceived something very im-
portant to be at stake in the style of their performances.
Something very important was at stake. Players were very concerned
that if they got someone out (especially a friend), or even used a move that
could be interpreted as "mean stuff," this might be understood as a real act
of exclusion or personal affront. This could have very serious consequences
for the gaming episode, as well as for relationships among players more gen-
erally (L. Hughes 1988). They responded by orchestrating the style of their
performances toward alternative, more acceptable interpretations.
One way they did this was by overlaying rather easy exchanges with
the possibility that their exaggerated performances could be indicative of the
physical challenges of the game. The logic was rather simple, and again cen-
trally concerned with perceived motive. In the heat of a fast-paced exchange,
players might not be totally in control of their actions. If they were not in
control, their actions could not be truly intentional and they could not be
held fully accountable for their consequences. In short, they could not be
"really mean. "
Players constantly and redundantly reinforced this perspective on
events. They followed almost every instance of "outs" resulting from actions
that would be "mean" if deliberate with "Gee, I'm sorry. I couldn't help it.
I'll get you back in.
RULES AND RULES FOR RULES
We commonly think of rules, and perhaps especially game rules, as being
rather rigid and explicit, as primarily prescriptive and proscriptive in func-
tion (Shimanoff 1980). This contrasts with the perspective commonly
adopted by those who describe social life in terms of rules, and who think
of rules as highly ambiguous, largely implicit, and essentially productive or
generative in function (Harre and Secord 1972; Hymes 1980; Shwayder
1965). The former conception, which has appropriately characterized most
studies of games, emphasizes the many ways rules confine the range of ac-
tions available to players. The latter conception, however, stresses how rules
help us choose among the many possible courses of action available to us
in the course of everyday life (Brenner 1982; Gruneau 1980). It rests upon
an analogy with the grammatical rules of language, which do not explicitly
and rigidly determine each and every utterance we make, but instead guide
our construction of novel yet meaningful and appropriate action. 3
Game rules do strongly shape what happens within a particular game.
To borrow from Goffman (1959) and Burke (1945), game rules typically set
a scene by identifying an appropriate setting, a set of necessary props, and
game roles. They then outline a sequence of game action, which is usually
cyclical and repetitive (L. Hughes 1983, 1989). At another level, game rules
also create distinctive domains of meaning (placing a ball in a hoop, for ex-
ample, has particular meaning within the context of a game of basketball),
and specify a typically nonpragmatic relationship between means and ends
(one does not approach the task by using a ladder).
Game rules still leave substantial areas of ambiguity, however, and a
central task in gaming studies is to describe players' perceptions of areas of
ambiguity and how they go about managing them. Game rules do not rig-
idly and explicitly specify each and every move in the game or, as Goffman
(1974, 24) observes, "establish where we are to travel or why we should
want to, . . . [they are] merely the restraints we are to observe in getting
there. " One does not, as Shwayder (1965, 243) notes, "succeed in getting
into a certain chess position by following the rules of chess. " There are many
ways of accomplishing the same ends within the general "restraints" of the
rules (Brenner 1982; Collett 1977; Gruneau 1980).
There is also another very important sense in which game rules pro-
vide an ambiguous framework for player action. In the social world, we
do not respond simply and objectively to what people do, but rather on
the basis of what we take actions and events to mean (Harre and Secord
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? ? 1972). Translated into the world of gaming, this means that while game
rules may tell us what we can and cannot do, they do not also tell us what
is to count as an instance of that "doing" (Brenner 1982; Harre 1977).
The same or very similar actions can be taken to mean very different things
to different players and in different contexts of occurrence. This is perhaps
the most central tenet of the study of children's gaming. It can be illustrated,
however, in the most formal of gaming contexts, professional sports. "(Na-
tional Hockey League) referees must have an instinct for which violations
to call and which to ignore. They themselves talk of 'good' penalties (fla-
grant violations such as tripping the player with the puck) and 'bad' ones
(minor offenses such as hooking a player who doesn't have the puck late
in a tight game). 'You could call a penalty a minute,' says referee Ron
Fournier. 'But that's not what we're supposed to do. You call a guy for a
minor infraction and even though you cite the rule number, he just looks
at you and says, "What's that? " It doesn't earn you respect'" (Shah 1981,
emphasis added).
Competent hockey players and referees are clearly expected to know
what a "hook" is, and what are the rules about "hooking. " But they are
just as clearly expected to know that all "hooks" are not to be understood
or responded to in the same way. These types of understandings are often
implicit (thus the appeal to an "instinct," not to the rule book for hockey),
they are subject to choice and evaluation ("You could. . , but that's not what
we're supposed to do"), and they lead to social, rather than game-prescribed,
consequences (the referee just cited is concerned about winning or losing
"respect," not about winning or losing the game). All of these qualities are
clear markers of gaming rules.
Children make similar distinctions. The players I observed responded
very differently to the same move in different contexts of performance, and
they recognized important differences between what you could do under the
game rules and what you were supposed to do as a socially competent mem-
ber of a play group. Their actions in the game had clear social consequences
outside its bounds, and this strongly shaped the meaning of actions under
the rules of the game. Their treatment of the common act of "slamming the
ball" will illustrate.
In the game of foursquare, as in many other ball-bouncing games, a
"slam"4 is a hard bounce high over the receiving player's head. "Slams" are
difficult to return, and thus constitute one way players can try to eliminate
another player from the game. They were usually understood to be prohib-
ited by "the rules" among the players I observed.
Despite this prohibition, however, "slams" were very regularly used
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? ? without any indication that players perceived a game rule to have been vio-
lated. This was possible because whether the same or very similar "move"
was taken to constitute a "slam" was not a simple matter of assessing what
a player had or had not done. At one level, these players felt obliged to con-
sider such things as the heights of the particular players involved, their
relative skill levels, and their degree of engagement in or distraction from
play. A low, easy bounce might constitute a "slam" to a short, inexperienced,
or temporarily distracted player, but not to an older, more skilled, or
attentive one.
At another level, players' interpretations of "slams" were also influ-
enced by relationships among the players involved, and even by who would
come into the game next if a "slam" was successful. A very hard bounce
among "friends" was understood quite differently than the same "move"
among members of different social cliques. A "slam" was far more likely to
be interpreted as a "real slam," and not "just an accident," when its effect
was to bring a friend rather than a nonfriend into the game.
Maynard (1985) has observed that one has to know the history of
relationships among children in order to understand what is going on in their
disputes. The same is also true of understanding what is going on in their
games. There are rules among children for who can appropriately do what
to whom (Davis 1982; Eder and Sanford 1986; Thorne and Luria 1986),
and actions under the game rules are often interpreted within this additional
domain of social obligation and responsibility.
The example of "slams" illustrates this point particularly clearly. The
players I observed were generally much more concerned about the intents
and purposes underlying a particular performance of a "slam" than they
were about the outward form of the action itself. Both were essential to per-
ceptions of whether a "rule" had been broken or not, and to generating an
appropriate response (Hughes 1988, 1989, 1993). As noted above, friend-
ships provided a primary context for assessing motives and their appropri-
ateness, and this in turn strongly shaped players' judgments of the accept-
ability of actions under the rules of the game. Even their terminology for
differentiating among different types of "slams" reflected the importance of
motive over form. There were "minislams" and "nice slams," and there were
"rough slams" and "mean slams. " Each called for a different type of re-
sponse.
Incorporation of social criteria like motives into judgments about the
status of particular actions under the rules of the game can have far-reach-
ing consequences. Motives are notoriously difficult to prove and impressions
of one's intentions can be actively managed and manipulated. Among the
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? ? players I observed, this created substantial areas of ambiguity that were then
subject to both playful and serious manipulation for strategic purposes. s They
could, for example, violate the stated rules against such moves as "slams"
and still be treated as though they were acting in a totally appropriate and
acceptable way. This was because strict adherence to the game rules did not
allow them to fulfill critical social obligations to their friends. In fact, the
gaming rules, which did incorporate rules concerning the responsibilities
inherent in friendships, often required "slams" to nonfriends even when they
were very explicitly prohibited by the game rules. I will return to this ex-
ample below, as it provides a particularly clear illustration of the highly sig-
nificant subtleties of meaning that can be generated out of the need to rec-
oncile the (sometimes competing) demands of social structure and game
structure.
"BASIC RULES" AND THE RULES OF PLAY IN PARTICULAR SETTINGS
Having stressed the importance of attending to how groups of players in-
terpret the rules of their games, I should note that play groups also elabo-
rate the rules of their games in ways that are important to understanding
the principles underlying play in particular settings. The players I observed
clearly distinguished between the "basic rules" of foursquare, those that
correspond to the rules presented in printed descriptions of this game, and
a variety of other types of rules they used in playing the game (Hughes 1989).
The "basic rules" (Table 1) were only a small part of what players listed as
the rules of their game (Table 2), and they were not even included among
what they called the "real rules" of the game. In fact, these "basic rules"
did not seem all that important to players. They almost never mentioned
them when asked about the rules of their game, and when queried about
them, they dismissed them as "just things you had to do. " Players were far
more interested in the rules they generated and controlled, and that they
could use to introduce excitement, variety, strategy, and fun into the game.
These are precisely the kinds of rules and practices that rarely make their
way into descriptions of games, despite their apparent importance to the
players themselves.
TABLE 1. The "Basic Rules" of Foursquare
Hit a ball that lands in your square to another square.
Let the ball bounce once, but only once, in your square.
Don't hit a ball that lands in another square.
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? ? TABLE 2. The "Real Rules" of Foursquare
AC/DC
Babies
Baby Bottles
Baby Stuff
Backsies
Backspins
Bishops
Bops
Chances
Comebacks
Country and
City
Donna Rules
Double Taps
Duckfeet
Fair Ball
Fair Square
Fakes
Fancy
Fancy Day
Fast Ball
Fish
Friends
Front Spins
Frontsies
Getting Out on
Serve
Goody Rules
Half Slams
Half Wings
Holding
Interference
Kayo Stuff
Knee Balls
Lines
Low Ball
Main Rules
Mean Slams
Mean Stuff
Medium Ball
My Rules
Nice Ball
Nice Slams
Nice Square
No Outs
One-Handed
One-Two-Three-
Four
Part-Rules
Poison
Practice
Purpose Duckfeet
Purpose Stuff
Randi Rules
Ready
Regular Ball
Regular Rules
Regular Spins
Regular Square
Regular Volley
Rough Ball
Rough Slams
Rough Square
Saves
Saving Places
Secrets
Slams
Mini-Slams
? ? Mandy Slams
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? ? games and qualities of the episodes in which they are embedded in the play-
ing. I will begin by contrasting the stated point of the game with the pur-
poses of its players (Sabini and Silver 1982), and then consider, in turn, the
significance of nongame prescribed action to the creation and maintenance
of gaming episodes, the relative roles of competition and cooperation in the
study of games and gaming, and the interplay between the interpretive
"frame" defined by the game (Bateson 1972; Goffman 1974) and players'
own "framings" of what occurs within its bounds.
THE POINTS OF GAMES AND THE PURPOSES OF PLAYERS
Games usually have some clearly stated objective or point, almost always
stated in terms of criteria for determining winners and losers. Participants
in the game, however, have purposes, and these may be shaped not only by
the game but also by the social matrix in which it is embedded. Players may
incorporate a variety of goals or purposes beyond those specified by the ac-
tivity (Brenner 1982; Collett 1977; Maynard 1985), they may define "suc-
cess" very differently than the game defines "winning" (Simon 1985), and
they may further reinterpret "winning" in light of a variety of agendas that
are totally extrinsic to the game itself. Whenever we judge some ways of
winning to be more or less appropriate than others, we recognize that suc-
cess may be something more than meeting the criteria of the game. A six-
foot tall adult who defeats a child at basketball, for example, would nor-
mally be viewed as winning in a very different sense than when he competes
with someone of similar size and skill. 6
The issue can be much more complex, however. Players' own crite-
ria for success may differ from, and even conflict with, the game's criteria
for winning. The girls I observed provided a particularly striking example.
They played within a social matrix that demanded that they help and pro-
tect their friends, or at least make an appropriate display of doing so. This
demand for a collective orientation interacted with a game that defined win-
ning as an individual achievement in a variety of interesting and significant
ways (Hughes 1993). For example, players who played the game according
to its rules, competing as individuals, were treated as though they were act-
ing in a totally inappropriate and unacceptable way. They were quickly elimi-
nated from the game. This was because the gaming rules among these play-
ers required that they sustain the impression that they were "mean" only to
help and support their friends, not for their own personal gain. Players them-
selves were quite clear about this discrepancy between how the game was
supposed to be played and how it actually was played.
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? ? Amanda:7 It's supposed to be that you treat everyone equal and
no one's your friend and no one's your enemy. . .
Everyone is just all for yourself. That's the way it's
supposed to be. It's like one on one. It's not supposed
to be team on team.
Janet: It's not supposed to be (laughs).
Author: You make it sound like lots of times it is team on
team, though.
Chorus: It is! (laughter) (Fieldnotes 4/27/81. Emphasis in
original)
Regardless of what the game rules said, these players still played foursquare
like a team game, with groups of friends vying for control of the game. In
fact, much of what happened in the playing of this game would be totally
inexplicable in the context of individual competition, even though this game
has long been categorized that way.
Activities and Episodes
Just as players need not always be primarily oriented toward game-prescribed
procedures and outcomes, what happens during gaming episodes need not
always be primarily defined by the game. An episode defined as "playing
the game" may incorporate a great deal of action that is in no way defined
by the activity itself, even though it may be strongly shaped by its occur-
rence within one type of social episode rather than another. There are many
possible breaks in, or overlays upon, the action specified by the game. There
may be time-outs, fights, discussions, interruptions, interference, stalemates,
"side-plays" and "side-involvements," changes in "keying" or "footing"
(Goffman 1963, 1974, 1981). Some are woven into and concurrent with
action that is primarily defined by the game. Others are perceived as clear
breaks or interruptions in the game (Denzin 1977).
All of this can be ignored when the purpose is to describe games and
their rules. When the purpose is to describe how players understand and
collectively negotiate a particular instance of gaming, however, close atten-
tion must be paid to all of the activity that is woven into and around the
game. Players need to understand and manage transitions among activities
that are defined primarily by the game and those that are not, and they need
to integrate the flow of action across those boundaries in meaningful ways.
Many important gaming rules deal with these issues, and a great deal of
communicative activity among players concerns their management.
Incidents of this type tend to cluster around transitional junctures in
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? ? the game, (Erickson and Shultz 1981), as players partition it into emic units
(Clarke 1982) of game-related and non-game-related action, and then inte-
grate these units into a single episode of play. Systematic mapping of what
can and must occur at these various slots and nodes (R. Lindsay 1977; von
Cranach 1982) provides critical information concerning basic principles
underlying play in particular settings. Figure 1, for example, illustrates the
basic episodic units defined by the game of foursquare. In contrast, Figure
2 more closely approximates the episodic structure as I saw it played in the
setting I observed.
Mapping the structure of the gaming episode is critical because it cre-
ates highly repetitive units for analysis and because players often display their
understandings of actions and events more explicitly during breaks in the
game itself (Collett 1977; Grimshaw 1980; R. Lindsay 1977; Marsh 1982).
When things go smoothly, the principles organizing an exchange may not
be apparent at all. When something goes wrong from players' perspectives,
however, or when interpretations of actions seem to require a great deal of
management, those principles may become the explicit topic of discussion.
When players are accused of inappropriate conduct and must defend or ex-
cuse their actions, or when players stop play to fight over the finer points
of what did or did not happen in a particular exchange, they provide a win-
dow on their own interpretations of actions and events, and on the processes
by which they collectively negotiate and renegotiate those interpretations as
new circumstances arise.
The players I observed very clearly illustrated the methodological
importance of identifying and attending to such "contexts of justification"
(Harre and Secord 1972; Much and Shweder 1987), many of which occurred
outside of what players perceived to be "playing the game. " Challenges to
actions under different types of rules, for example, only occurred at certain
junctures.
Players only selectively challenged actions under some types of
rules and not others. And they employed only a few types of responses to
such challenges: "I couldn't help it," "I didn't mean to," and "I didn't know. "
Analysis of the types of accusations that were made or not made and under
what circumstances, and especially of the conditions under which they suc-
ceeded or failed, provided a very important entree into the basic principles
underlying play in this setting. They were an important clue, for example,
to the underlying concern for motive noted above, and they illustrated very
clearly how the difficulties inherent in assessing motive could be managed
and manipulated to a variety of ends.
The form of accusations, denials, and excuses, and especially their
contexts of use, for example, helped explain why players were called out for
103
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? ? FIGURE 1. Structural model of the game of foursquare
PROPS
SETTING
(court)
PLAYERS
(five)
(yes)
tt
(no)
wait
(no) -4
wait
explain/ -
demonstrate
t
(no)
(yes)
(no) -
(yes)
4
DON'T PLAY FOURSQUARE
(no) - PLAY A VARIANT OF
FOURSQUARE
"practice"
"three square"
"two square"
king has ball?
(yes)
players are "ready"?
(yes)
"KING" CALLS THE RULES
,
- players understand/accept rules?
- players are "ready"?
4, 4
wait (yes)
wait " "KING" SERVES THE BALL
44
apologize (yes)
(no)= -- - no one is out on the serve?
(yes)
PLAY THE GAME
PLAYERS
ROTATE
OUT
(yes) ambiguity? -- (yes)
(yes)
responsible -- (no)
for actions?
leaves court? 4-----(yes)
(no)
give "chances"? -
(no)
(no) - STALIEMATIE
4
(yes)
(yes)
"KING" CALLS
A TAKEOVER
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? ? FIGURE 2. Structural model of an episode of playing foursquare
PROPS
(ball)
SETTING
(court)
PLAYERS
(five)
(yes)
"KING" CALLS THE RULES
YERS "KING" SERVES THE BALL
PLA'
ROTATE
PLAY THE
OUT-
4'
GAME
4
violating only some types of rules and not others, despite players' stubborn
insistence that they would be out for violating any of them. It seems useful
to develop this example in somewhat greater detail here, because the prin-
ciples involved are so fundamental to gaming in this setting and thus criti-
cal to further discussion.
The players I observed recognized a number of different types of game
rules. Motive was essential to assessing the status of actions under only some
of them, and their ways of responding to perceived violations varied accord-
ingly. The game rule "no holding" will illustrate the basic workings of this
system and how it affected play at many levels in this setting, though all of
what these players called the "real rules" of their game operated in much
the same way (see L. Hughes 1989 for a full description of rule taxonomy
and use among these players).
Players generally understood that there was "no holding. " That is,
players were supposed to hit the ball, not catch it and throw it to another
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? ? player. In practice, however, this was interpreted to refer not to the action
of catching and throwing but to its context of use. As one player put it, "no
holding" means "you can't just stand there and decide who to throw it to"
(Fieldnotes 5/5/81. Emphasis in original).
Randi: (In my rules) you can't hold the ball. . . . You have to hit
it. You can't pick it up.
Author: Do you really call people out if they throw the ball in-
stead of hitting it?
Randi: Uh huh.
Author: I didn't see that happen too much.
Randi: Well, like if they. . . just grab it for a second and then
throw (that's okay). But if they hold onto it, . . . just do it
deliberately, like then they're out.
Author: It's okay if you just do it quick, but you're not really sup-
posed to?
Randi: Instead of hitting it like this (demonstrates tapping the
ball with her fingertips), they sort of pick it up, sweep it
up like this. But you can't really call that holding because
they didn't really hold it. (Fieldnotes 5/7/81. Emphasis in
original)
These players' treatment of "holding" is reminiscent of the NHL referee's
treatment of "hooks. " The same action could be variously interpreted as
"holding," "not holding," or "holding that was not really holding," depend-
ing upon its context of use and especially on a player's reason for "hold-
ing. " The "no holding" rule did not prohibit "holding" per se, but only
"holding" for particular purposes.
The only type of "holding" that was of serious concern among these
players was "holding" that was "really mean," that is, "holding" for the pur-
pose of deliberately eliminating another player from the game. Actions that
had the effect of getting another player out were "really mean" only if they
were also intentional, and "purpose stuff" was "really mean" only if it was
directed at getting a player out. To complicate matters even further, players
also interpreted "holding" differently depending upon whether it was used
against a friend or a nonfriend. While it was expected that such "moves"
would be directed toward nonfriends, their use in exchanges with friends was
an extremely serious violation of gaming rules among these players.
In practice, as noted above, distinctions among "moves" based on the
perceived motives of players are highly ambiguous. For this reason, players
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? ? had to monitor and manage their actions very carefully. This was a power-
ful constraint on what players could do in the game, but it was also a po-
tent resource for play. Ambiguity of intent was actively generated and ma-
nipulated to a variety of ends.
For example, the issue in trying to call someone out for violating rules
like "no slams" or "no holding" was not simply what a player had or had
not done, but whether it was "really mean. " Would-be accusers were very
aware of the likely outcome of making such a serious charge, even implic-
itly. "Meanness" would surely be denied, and accusers then had only two
choices for further action, neither of which was very appealing. They could
either suffer the embarrassment of backing down, and appear "mean" them-
selves for having falsely accused another, or they could risk a serious esca-
lation of conflict by further accusing the offender of lying. Needless to say,
players who understood this system rarely, if ever, took the risk of directly
calling someone out for violating these types of rules.
Players who "slammed" or "held" the ball, in turn, routinely worked
this system to their own advantage. They acted with relative impunity be-
cause they knew that if they were challenged, they did not have to deny that
they had done something (though this often was the apparent topic of dis-
course). They only had to deny that they had a "mean" purpose ("I didn't
mean to"), a "mean" intent ("I couldn't help it"), or the kind of foreknowl-
edge necessary for a truly intentional act ("I didn't know"). 9 Often they only
had to express sufficient outrage that someone could think so "meanly" of
them to quite effectively stave off the challenge.
Would-be accusers were clearly at a disadvantage here, and one re-
sult was that these players almost never attempted to call someone "out"
for violating rules like "no holding" or "no slams" that incorporated an
assessment of underlying intent. They were not lying, however, when they
steadfastly maintained that players would be out for using these actions in
"mean" ways. It was the mode or style of enforcement, not the principle,
that was ultimately at issue. Rather than trying to call a player "out" for
"slams" or "holding," players usually tried to precipitate a less ambiguous
"out" under a different kind of rule, like failing to hit the ball into another
square. Since this did not involve an exchange among players and motive
thus was not an issue, this was the preferred mode of enforcing the rules.
Even if such actions were challenged, the player(s) who precipitated the "out"
had recourse to the same highly effective set of excuses and denials: "Gee,
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. "
A full explication of this scheme is clearly impossible here. This brief
introduction, however, will illustrate how criteria for evaluating actions in
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? ? the social world, like motive, can constrain and shape player actions in ways
that the game rules alone do not, while also providing players with signifi-
cant resources for playful and strategic manipulation. Games, as they are
actually played, invoke multiple frames of reference. Players' choices among
various courses of action will be explained only rarely by reference to a single
rule or principle. Their decisions usually involve a process of weighing, bal-
ancing, and finally integrating a variety of concerns and agendas.
COMPETITION AND COOPERATION
Another important issue arises in the relative emphasis given to competition
and cooperation in studies of games and gaming. Games are prototypically
competitive, but social life is prototypically cooperative (Hymes 1980). Co-
operation, therefore, is taken as the more fundamental organizing principle
in gaming episodes. Participants in face-to-face interaction must coordinate
their actions to sustain the exchange and the projected definition of the situ-
ation upon which it is based, even though their expected roles, underlying
purposes, and motives may be quite different (Goffman 1959). Simply put,
a great deal of cooperation is required to sustain a competitive exchange.
I have found this notion to be particularly useful in resolving appar-
ent contradictions between what players say and what they do. Statements
may be true about the game yet false about the process of playing it, as well
as the reverse. For example, I observed many instances when players col-
lectively ignored violations of game rules or consistently failed to pursue ef-
fective strategies for "winning," even though they insisted that this was not
what they did or were supposed to do. If I had interpreted these observa-
tions purely in terms of the game, I would have concluded (as Gilligan 1982;
Kohlberg 1966; Lever 1976, 1978; Piaget 1965; and others have) that these
girls cared very little about games and their rules.
When viewed in the context of the gaming episode, however, these
same actions were actually indicative of what Borman and Lippincott (1982,
139) have called the "press to maintain the game. " Players understood that
continuing the game depended on sustaining the social episode in which it
was embedded, and further that threats to the episode arose primarily from
perceived failures to fulfill responsibilities to friends. They thus cooperated
in framing competition in a way that would not threaten the episode, even
when this meant bending the stated rules of the game. When players all acted
as though the ball landed on a line when it clearly did not, or acted as though
a "slam" was accidental when it was clearly quite deliberate, they were of-
ten dealing with a critical boundary beyond which strict enforcement of the
game rules would have threatened continuation of the episode, and ultimately
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? ? the game itself.
Attempts to directly enforce those types of rules that required an as-
sessment of motive provided a particularly clear example of players' need
to balance the demands of playing the game with the demands of sustain-
ing the episode. Competent players knew that such attempts were far more
likely to make players mad than they were to make them out. They also knew
that making players mad in certain kinds of ways could, in turn, easily es-
calate into an extended stalemate in the game (L. Hughes 1988). Regard-
less of their roles or interests in a particular exchange, therefore, they usu-
ally opted for courses of action that were more likely to accomplish the de-
sired outs without also bringing to the foreground inherently awkward is-
sues of who was being "really mean. " Those rare instances when a stale-
mate did occur, of course, were highly revealing of what was at stake in those
choices, and thus of what these players perceived to be beyond the limits of
negotiation.
Frames and Framings
Finally, it is important to make a general distinction between games as
frames, which mark off what occurs within their bounds from other pos-
sible realms of experience (Bateson 1972; Goffman 1974), and gaming as a
process of framing what occurs within that domain. I have already noted a
number of ways that games do act as interpretive frameworks for what oc-
curs within a gaming episode, as well as some important limits to the re-
sources they provide their players. It is still important, however, to place the
players, and not the activity they are engaged in, firmly at the center of the
gaming process.
The literature on games has often extended the notion that games
grant distinctive meanings to actions and events to suggest that they also
communicate an attitude toward those events. A shove on the basketball
court, for example, is not supposed to mean what it would normally mean
if we were not playing a game. This is a type of meta-communication about
how actions are to be interpreted that Bateson (1972) has called "the mes-
sage this is play. "
The distinctive domains of meaning constituted by games should not
be confused with gamers' communications about such things as "playful-
ness," however. They do not eliminate the need for players to communicate
their attitudes toward actions and events in the game. Games probably do
invoke a general expectation that events will not be taken too literally, but
frames are notoriously leaky affairs (Goffman 1974). There is nothing about
games per se that dictates players' attitudes toward events, whether they are
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? ? to be understood as fun or serious, competitive or cooperative, work or play,
"nice" or "mean," fair or unfair. This is a matter of framing, not the frame.
Regardless of the fact that they are playing a game, players must and
do communicate about how their actions are to be interpreted, about how
they understand the actions of others, and about the conditions under which
everyday meanings will and will not be allowed to permeate the game. While
the relative need for such communications will vary with circumstances and
events, they constitute another important entree into the principles players
use to organize their play. They also can be a highly significant factor in the
distinctive quality or style of gaming in different settings (Harre and Secord
1972).
A further elaboration of how the players I observed handled perfor-
mances of "slams" will illustrate. They often seemed to work very hard to
make their play look far more hectic and difficult than it actually was, es-
pecially when potentially "mean" moves were being used. Even rather easy
"slams" were often accompanied by very exaggerated reaching and bend-
ing, cries of "whew! " and mopping of brows. Either I did not understand
the physical demands of this game, or players perceived something very im-
portant to be at stake in the style of their performances.
Something very important was at stake. Players were very concerned
that if they got someone out (especially a friend), or even used a move that
could be interpreted as "mean stuff," this might be understood as a real act
of exclusion or personal affront. This could have very serious consequences
for the gaming episode, as well as for relationships among players more gen-
erally (L. Hughes 1988). They responded by orchestrating the style of their
performances toward alternative, more acceptable interpretations.
One way they did this was by overlaying rather easy exchanges with
the possibility that their exaggerated performances could be indicative of the
physical challenges of the game. The logic was rather simple, and again cen-
trally concerned with perceived motive. In the heat of a fast-paced exchange,
players might not be totally in control of their actions. If they were not in
control, their actions could not be truly intentional and they could not be
held fully accountable for their consequences. In short, they could not be
"really mean. "
Players constantly and redundantly reinforced this perspective on
events. They followed almost every instance of "outs" resulting from actions
that would be "mean" if deliberate with "Gee, I'm sorry. I couldn't help it.
I'll get you back in.
