Homo Ludens
Proeve eener bepaling van het spel-element der cultuur
by Johan Huizinga · first published 1938
17mentions
7recommended by
15HN commenters
2010–2026first – last mentioned
47% recommend53% neutral
Why HN recommends it
A classic cultural history arguing that play is a foundational force in human culture, not just leisure. It offers a free-thinking, human-centred view that reshapes how one thinks about games and play.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
A unique philosophical perspective regarding the topic of play and it's impact and necessity in human culture.
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…make our lives more fun than stressful. Finally: - it helps to develop a sense of humour! Good luck to us all on this journey :) And a great but serious book that might be inspiring is Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens. Keep on keeping on!
on “Ask HN: How to develop a growth mindset?” ↗…order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way." ..." One antidote to hate and fear is laughter and play; see for example Dutch historian and cultural theorist Johan Huizinga, author of "Homo Ludens" (who was eventually held in detention by the Nazis): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Ludens And playfulness and laughter can be regained: https://myshrink.com/dont-laugh-anymore/ "If your nervous…
on “The FBI is secretly using Sabre as a global travel surveillance tool” ↗…away what we might consider to be an essential element of a "great" game. Of course you will be taken more seriously if your argument is on firmer footing than the article's writer. I urge you to read Homo Ludens by Johan Huizinga if you haven't. It will change the way you look at video games and any sort of sport physical or otherwise.
on “The Art of Saving in Games (2014)” ↗For those of you interested, there's a great book about play called Homo Ludens, from Huizinga.
on “The Hacker Way: How I taught my nephew to program” ↗…distinctive. There's sim games of course, but they are games first and foremost, not sims. if you want to learn more about play, you should read one of the most interesting writings from 20th century: Homo Ludens, from Johan Huizinga. answering your question, when you ask why is something mainstream or not you should know it has to do with commerce. I should also add killing someone irl is nothing like killing…
on “Ten year study: No link between violent video games and aggressive behavior” ↗The purpose of life is to play. Please read Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens.[0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Ludens
on “Ask HN: Books for Reevaluation of Life” ↗Amazing animals! I strongly recommend everybody interested in play to read Huizinga's Homo Ludens.
on “Bumble bees play, according to new research” ↗…until the end: > For Lewis, the greatest game was running a magazine. He played with words and ideas like a beautiful set of hand-hewn stone blocks. He loved the Dutch historian Johan Huizinga’s book Homo Ludens, about the formative role of play in human culture, its five defining characteristics: “1. Play is free, is in fact freedom. 2. Play is not ‘ordinary’ or ‘real’ life. 3. Play is distinct from ‘ordinary’…
on “The Remarkable Legacy of Lewis Lapham” ↗I read this in college, with a fantastic professor (RIP) who also assigned Huizinga's "Homo Ludens." I loved it ...if only the rest of academic history was so free-thinking and human-centric, I might have stayed. "Night Battles" is amazing too. And the fact that some of the scholarship in both books…
on “'The Cheese and the Worms' by Carlo Ginzburg Review” ↗…candidate to advertise in video games" I stopped reading at this lapse in logic. Besides, how can one cite Caillois without citing Huizinga. Caillois admits his project is little more than a commentary on Homo Ludens.
on “The secret to Farmville isn't gameplay or aesthetics” ↗I'm curious which field Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens is supposed to apply to and rejected by, because it was part of one art-history class I had in art school. We didn't have to read the book itself though.
on “The Books That Wouldn’t Die” ↗…on the exercise of meditation as a kind of therapy. The novel has an imperious structure in which the concept of the game and its role in civilization has surprising parallels with the ingenious study Homo ludens by the Dutch scholar Huizinga. Hesse’s attitude is ambiguous. In a period of collapse it is a precious task to preserve the cultural tradition. But civilization cannot be permanently kept alive by turning…
on “Github Copilot Wants to Play Chess Instead of Code” ↗His "boundaries of space and boundaries of time" reamind a lot of the theories about play in Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens.
on “Brilliant talk by John Cleese on creativity.” ↗Reminds me of the little trichotomy I grabbed from Huizinga's Homo Ludens: good-faith, cheater, xor spoil-sport. I don't think that cheating exists in diplomacy. It's all part of the game. Counterintelligence what it is, I expect that the intelligence was received by the…
on “Israel spied on John Kerry during peace effort – report” ↗Related to the playful vs serious, I got a lot out of this essay > The Playful and the Serious: An approximation to Huizinga's Homo Ludens <https://gamestudies.org/06010601/articles/rodriges>
on “Serious fun” ↗