We have been fighting over who gets to play with the Sifteo sample here at the office. These little blocks are addicting! Imagine all the fun of your favorite puzzle games meeting the touch-sensitivity of your smartphone meeting the accelerometer of your Wiimote. And the best part? It comes with the ability to write your own games!

Play is nature's learning engine, says games researcher and author Aaron Dignan. In other words, we're hardwired to enjoy games - they're addictive, skill-building, and satisfying. So the question is: How can we integrate game concepts into our work lives to help us push ideas forward? In this talk, Dignan walks us through the principles of creating a great game and suggests ways that we might use them to overcome email exhaustion, spice up workaday meetings, and more.

I’ve never been fully satisfied with the definitions of ‘play’ and ‘game’ that have currency in Game Studies. Where I really have trouble is when I try to apply them to the fields of ethics and the philosophy of law in which I now tend to write.

In my recent analysis of sports law and the historical relationships between violence, criminal law and governance (focusing on duelling, boxing, rugby etc) I’ve been searching for an explanation of what is going on when sport is left to get on with it - free from ‘magisterial interference’, as the London Prize Ring Rules of 1838 put it.

I’ve touched on some of this in a recent post (People play online http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2011/02/people-play-online-.html) – but what I did not focus on there was a more formal characterisation of the thing at the centre of sport and games i.e. play.

Werewolf is a simple game for a large group of people (seven or more.) It requires no equipment besides some bits of paper; you can play it just sitting in a circle. I'd call it a party game, except that it's a game of accusations, lying, bluffing, second-guessing, assassination, and mob hysteria.
I really like it. But then I go to some strange parties.

This is a great article by Jackie Marsh from the University of Sheffield. The piece, ‘Young Children’s Play in Online Virtual Worlds’ is taken from the Journal of Early Childhood Research. If you’re in the kids virtual world or MMO space I’d recommend taking the time to read this. I’ve ‘bolded’ the parts that I think are particularly interesting