Playing Games and others Symbols of Transformation

Beyond Evil and Good in Online Gaming. An Analysis of Violence in ‘Overwatch’ Between Demonization and Proactive Values (Enrico Gandolfi and Francesca Antonacci) Many studies have addressed and explored the effects of video games with an emphasis on violence and aggressive behaviors. This article’s aim is to go beyond the simplistic difference between negative outcomes and their absence by suggesting the concept of “meaningful violence.” For exploring possible instances of such a phenomenon, a content analysis (Gee, 2012) of online materials (online comments, user-generated content) from leading gaming media environments (Reddit, YouTube) was directed targeting the popular video game Overwatch. The theoretical framework adopted drawn its cornerstones from Educational Sciences, Philosophy, and Media Studies, spanning key concepts such as “symbolic imaginary” (Durand, 1999, Wunenburger, 1995) and phenomenological-hermeneutic analysis (Gadamer, 2004). Results point to an alternative ov

Play has often been snubbed as a serious research topic. The combination of its supposed uselessness and its association with the world of childhood has led to a general lack of reflection about play on the part of high culture. Nevertheless, play experience is symbolic, polysemic, ambivalent, laden with affect and a potential generator of contradictory and transformative knowledge (Huizinga, 1980; Fink, 1987, 1992; Suits, 1978). Due to its rich variety of expression and multiple meanings, it eludes the rigorous conceptualizations and reductionism favoured by contemporary mainstream educational science, which views play mainly as a teaching aid or as an opportunity for socialization, culturalization, transmission of contents or as a means of furthering linguistic, cognitive or affective development. When we speak about the relationship between playing and childhood, we have to go beyond the real and concrete child, and also go beyond a univocal kind of game - as symbolic play. Altho

Imagination is a peculiar cognitive faculty that is linked to the artistic gaze. The artist’s ability is not simply a gift, rather a complex skill which enables one to find new connections between things. I call this function ludic imagination, because I have discovered deep ties between it and the play sphere. Playing seems to be the way in which man understands his relationship with the world through a process of cognitive dislocation, displacement from the literal sense, in order to embrace a sense of poetry such as metaphor, irony and hyperbole. Poetic modalities are full of agon, alea, ilinx, mimicry (Caillois). What unites playing and poetry is the symbolic attitude and the ludic imagination and this mode is rooted in a ‘cosmic childhood’ (Bachelard) not just because man's way of being starts in playing, but because it is the symbolic child that could remain throughout the various stages of the individual's life span. Ludic imagination is a kind of knowledge, an imagina