The Magic Circle, Immersion and Fun

This debate is carried over from Brainy Gamer. It is a complicated idea; but then, all ideas at this level is complicated. The thing that makes them fun is that we're all trying to figure all this stuff out. It can be exasperating, splitting hairs, taking issue with metaphysical impulses that come a priori, but it's the ability to make those distinctions that really lets a person know they're starting to understand things. Well, I think so anyway.

Alright, so the issue here is the Magic Circle:

As to the magic circle, I agree with it from the sociological stance taken by Homo Ludens; however, I don't know if it works (or should work) in practice, or if it needs to be either more developed or battled against (that is, forcing the player to connect their game experiences with the real world).

The comments there were getting rather long so I thought i'd bring this idea here. I think it's relevant enough to really write more about. Huizinga defines the Magic Circle, as he does all things, by creating meaning around the word and hinting at its meaning. In defining the magic circle he talks of (pps 56-7). This will be a long quote but I wanted it said in context, not in summary:

All these forms of contest betray their connection with ritual over and over again by the constant belief that they are indispensable for the smooth running of the seasons, the ripening of crops, the prosperity of the whole year.

If the outcome of a contest as such, as a performance is deemed to influence the course of nature, it follows that the particular kidn of contest through which this result is obtained is a matter of small moment. It is the winning itself that counts. Every victory represents, that is, realizes for the victor the triumph of the good powers over the bad, and at the same time the salvation of the group that effects it. The victory not only represents that salvation but, by so doing, makes it effective. Hence it comes about that the beneficent result may equally well flow from games of pure chance as games in which strength, skill or wit decide the issue. Luck may have a sacred signicicance; the fall of the dice may signify and determine the divine worksings; by it we may move the gods as efficiently as by any other form of contest. Indeed, we may go one further and say that for the human mindthe ideas of happiness, luck and fate seem to lie very close to the realm of the sacred. In order to realize these mental associations we moderns have only to think of the sort of futile auguries we all used to practice in childhood without really believing them, and which a perfectly balanced adult not in the least given to superstition may catch himself doing. As a rule we do not attribute much importance to them...

...With many peoples dice-playing forms part of their religious practices. The dualistic structure of a society in phratria is sometimes reflected in the two colours of their playing-boards or their dice. In the Sanskrit word Dyutam the significations of fight and dicing merge....Very remarkable affinities exist between dice and arrrows...In the Mahabharata the world itself is conceived as a game of dice in which Siva plays with his queen...

The main action of the Mahabharata hinges on the game of dice in which King Yudhistra plays with the Kauravas...For us, the chief point of interest is the place where the game is played. Generally it is a simple circle...drawn on the ground. The circle as such, however, has a magic significance. It is drawn with great care, all sorts of precautions being taken against cheating. The players are not allowed to leave the ring until they have discharged all their obligations. Byt sometimes a special hall is provisionally erected for the game, and this hall is holy ground.

I take this metaphor to mean a variety of things. I'll write these meanings through the ideas of the MMO. Mia Consalvo writes of the magic circle:

Johan Huizinga argued that play occupies a time apart from normal life...and when a game is played it creates a space apart from normal space - the playground or "magic circle" where a special sort of order is created. That order is dependent on rules...All play has its rules...the rules of a game are absolutely binding and allow no doubt...as soon as the rules are transgressed the whole play-world collapses. The game is over."

While this magic circle is present for this game, the idea of the magic circle is indeed present in the ideas of play. Video Games have a magic circle that is very noticable; you turn it on. These magic circles are very delicately constructed and not every one is the same. For the MMO, the magic circle isn't the world that the game exists in so much as the system it uses to deliver that world. When the game's servers are first turned on, the magic circle is drawn and is drawn in a particular way.

However, this game of dice is a bit more complicated than that of two people rolling dice. The magic circle is used for so often and for so long that the boundaries of it, the careful construction of it, falls victim to what could only be referred to as the MMO equivalent of the telephone game. Players figure out that parts of the magic circle are weaker, or that the dice are loaded in a particular way and they do everything they can to tip the game in their favor. Afterall, a game which requires such odious amounts of time ends up creating an impulse to cheat that amount of time by any means necessary.

With this impetus thus created, a balancing act is created. It is as though the magic circle, while carefully constructed, hangs ever so delicately with both players trying, as in a Pinball game, to bump the ball in their favor.

The big thing here is that a market is involved. The game designers, those who created the magic circle need the game to continue. So, while they want the magic circle to be tipped in their favor, whereupon they have ultimate control over the system the world is delivered in, they cannot exert this control less the players all go to another circle. 

So, this situation is created whereupon the designers have to maintain a balance of play that is somewhat challenging to a group of players but is not so challenging; but also not so easy that it is insulting. 

So, the obligation of the designer to maintain balance in their favor while also trying to keep players wanting to play more, is the constant recalibration of the magic circle.

I think that makes sense. I'll try and clarify later after doing some classwork writing.