Fun and Games
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Wikipedia-Article "Fun"
Recreation is the employment of time in a non-profitable way, in many ways also a therapeutic refreshment of one's body or mind. While leisure is more likely a form of entertainment or rest, recreation is active and participatory, but in a refreshing and diverting manner. As people in the world's wealthier regions lead increasingly sedentary life styles, the need for recreation has grown. The rise of so called active vacations exemplify this.
Recreation, play, and fun are not the preserve of humans; nearly all creatures indulge in this to some extent. Play is essential for the development of skills, the most basic of which are motor skills in young creatures.
The weekend is typically a time for recreation, perhaps (in Judeo-Christian and Muslim cultures) because the Sabbath falls on the weekend and the Sabbath is "the day of rest." Holidays are also a common time for recreation.
Traditionally music and dance serve as recreation in many cultures, as do sports, hobbies, games and tourism. Watching TV and listening to music are common forms of recreation, or rather leisure.
For many, the most valued recreation is spontaneous and original.
Many activities may be considered recreational:
- Conversing
- Eating and drinking
- Hobbies
- Hunting and fishing
- Playing games
- Reading a book
- Sexual behavior
- Shopping
- Sports and exercise
- Travel and tourism
- Martial arts
- Using the Internet
- Visiting an amusement park
In recent years, more 'exciting' forms of recreation have risen in popularity: skiing, snowboarding, bungee jumping, sky diving, hang gliding, paint balling, rock climbing, backpacking, canyoning, caving, BASE jumping, and adventure tourism.
Recreation, Law, and Morality
Some recreational activities are made illegal because of the perceived immorality of certain forms of recreation in many regions. These include gambling, some forms of sex, and drug use. Often one form of an activity is arbitrarily viewed as immoral by a culture while other forms are acceptable. For example, some forms of sex have been outlawed in certain regions, such as prohibitions against sodomy and oral sex in much of the United States (though the Supreme Court recently ruled such laws unconstitutional in the landmark Lawrence v. Texas case), while other forms of intercourse are acceptable. Another example is recreational drug use. In most of the world, responsible alcohol consumption, a form of recreational drug use, is legal and acceptable by most people's moral standards. This is probably because alcohol has traditionally been in wide use in Western Europe. Note that nearly all drugs that have traditionally not been widely used in European culture have been deemed illegal in most of the world.
Some individuals view recreation as largely non-productive, even trivial. Excessive recreation is not considered healthy, and may be labeled as escapism. However, research has shown that recreation contributes to life satisfaction, quality of life, health and wellness, and that the use of recreation as a diversion may have clinical applications to individuals with chronic pain and other health impairments. In some cultures and religions, recreation is encouraged on certain days and discouraged on others. For example, in Judaism, the Sabbath is a day for recreation and relaxation, which has in turn influenced many Christian sects to use the Sabbath for the same purpose. However, some sects interpret the Sabbath to be a day where worship is done in lieu of recreation.
Recreation is very essential to longevity of human beings. It is the exact opposite of stress. Today, stress is the number one killer in the United States according to TIME magazine. Stress can lead to a number of ailments, such as hypertension.
See also
Wikipedia-Article "Games"
- This article is about a recreational activity. For other meanings, see game (disambiguation).
A game is an (often, but not always recreational) activity involving one or more players. This can be defined by either a goal that the players try to reach, or some set of rules that determines what the players can or can not do. Games are played primarily for entertainment or enjoyment, but may also serve as exercise or in an educational, simulational or psychological role.
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Definition
Although many animals play, only humans confirmably have games. Whether some animals are intelligent enough to game is debatable, though a game has ritualistic elements (such as rules and procedures) that are voluntarily acted upon, rather than as a result of instinct. The existence of rules and criteria that decide the outcome of games imply that games require intelligence of a significant degree of sophistication.
Non-human animal species may, however, engage in games whose rules and sophistication may be of such a nature as to be incapable of detection by humans in their present state of knowledge. It would, for example, seem incongruous that large brained species such as many Cetaceans and the larger hominids did not play games. Our inability to observe and understand such games should not be taken as a confirmation that they do not exist. Some courtship displays by some species of bird, such as the Black Grouse, appear to have a component which, from an anthropolgical view, might appear to be a game in which there are clearly winners and losers.
Games can involve one player acting alone, or two or more players acting cooperatively. Most often involve competition among two or more players. Taking an action that falls outside the rules generally constitutes a foul or cheating.
All through human history, people have played games to entertain themselves and others. There are an enormous variety of games; for specific information about different types of games, see the links at the end of this article.
Philosopher David Kelley, in his popular introductory reasoning text The Art of Reasoning, defines the concept "game" as "a form of recreation constituted by a set of rules that specify an object to be attained and the permissible means of attaining it." This covers most cases well, but does not quite fit with things like war games and sports , which often are not played for entertainment but to build skills for later use.
The recent popularity of video game studies has lead to renewed interest in game definitions.
Games in philosophy
In Philosophical Investigations, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that the concept "game" could not be contained by any single definition, but that games must be looked at as a series of definitions that share a "family resemblance" to one another. Games were important to Wittgenstein's later thought; he held that language was itself a game, consisting of tokens governed by mutually agreed upon rules that governed the usage of words.
Stanley Fish, looking for a clear example of the sorts of social constructions, cited the balls and strikes of baseball as example. While the strike zone target is governed by the rules of the game, it epitomizes the category of things that exist only because people have agreed to treat them as real. No pitch is a ball or a strike until it has been labelled as such by an appropriate authority, the plate umpire, whose judgment on this matter cannot be challenged within the current game.
Many technical fields are often applied to the study of games, including probability, statistics, economics, ethnomathematics, and game theory.
Anthropology of games
Games, being a characteristic human activity strongly determined by custom and the frequent subjects of folklore, have been the subject of anthropological investigations.
Classes of games
While many different subdivisions have been proposed, anthropologists classify games under three major headings, and have drawn some conclusions as to the social bases that each sort of game requires. They divide games broadly into:
- Games of pure skill, such as hopscotch and target shooting;
- Games of pure strategy, such as checkers, go, or tic-tac-toe;
- Games of chance, such as craps and snakes and ladders.
In addition to these basic classifications, there are mixed games; such as football, partly a game of skill and partly a game of strategy; poker, partly a game of strategy and partly a game of chance; and baseball, which combines elements of all three. Baseball Hall of Famer Casey Stengel underscored this point when he remarked, "I had many years when I was not so successful as a ballplayer, as it is a game of skill."
Games of pure skill are likely the oldest sort of game, and are found in all cultures, regardless of their level of material culture. They are associated with cultures that place a high value on individual performance and prowess.
Games of strategy require a higher material basis. They are associated with cultures that possess a written language: not surprising, since most strategy games are based on mathematics and feature the manipulation of symbols. They often require special equipment to be played. They are associated with hierarchical societies that place a high value on obedience.
Games of chance appear at a variety of levels of material culture; what they seem to share generally is a sense of economic insecurity. They are associated with cultures that place a high value on personal responsibility, keeping one's word, and maintaining personal standing in the face of misfortune; in other words, with "cultures of honor".
Games and sports
There is no clear line of demarcation between games and sports. Generally, sports are athletic in nature, and have an element of physical prowess, but then so do many games. For cultural anthropologists, the distinction between games and sports hinges on community involvement. Sports often require special equipment and playing fields or prepared grounds dedicated to their practice, a fact that often makes necessary the involvement of a community beyond the players themselves. Most sports can have spectators. Communities often align themselves with players of sports, who in a sense represent that community; they often align themselves against their opponents, or have traditional rivalries. The concept of fandom began with sports fans. Games amuse the players; sports amuse a broader public; in advanced material cultures, sports can be played by paid professionals. When games like chess and go are played professionally, they take on many of the characteritics of a sport.
One-person games
One-person games or one-player games are sometimes called solitaire games, but this term can be easily confused with the peg game and the card game of same name.
Types of one-player games include:
- many arcade games
- most computer and video games
- juggling
- most types of puzzles (logical, mechanical, mathematical, etc.)
- solitaire card games
Types of games
main article: Game classification
- Alternate reality game
- Ball games
- Board games
- Business games
- Car games
- Card games
- Casino games
- Children's games
- Clapping games
- Computer and video games
- Conversation games
- Counting-out games
- Creative games
- Dice games
- Drinking games
- Educational games
- Economics games
- Game shows
- Games of chance
- Games of dare
- Games of logic
- Games of physical activity
- Games of physical skill
- Games of skill
- Games of strategy
- Games of status
- Global Positioning System-based games
- Group-dynamic games
- Guessing games
- Letter games
- Locative games
- The Losing Game
- Mathematical games
- New Games
- Open gaming
- Party games
- Parlour games
- Pencil and paper games
- Play-by-mail games
- Playground games
- Political games
- Puzzles
- Quizzes
- Role-playing games
- Singing games
- Spoken games
- String games
- Table-top games
- Tile-based games
- Theater games
- Traditional games
- Unclassified games
- Wargames
- Win-win games
- Word games
See also
- Wikicities has a wiki about games: Wikicities:c:gameinfo gameinfo
- List of game manufacturers
- List of game topics
- List of computer puzzle games
- Ludology
- Game semantics
- Game theory
- Play
- Puzzle
- Toy
- Artistic computer game modification
- Sports
References
- Avedon, Elliot; Sutton-Smith, Brian, The study of games. (Philadelphia: Wiley, 1971), reprinted Krieger, 1979. ISBN 0898740452