Real Player Manifesto

This document, titled "Real Player Manifesto" and published in the journal Veludamos in 2007, proposes a new research discipline called Ludics, which treats play and games as a methodology for artistic and scholarly inquiry. Its central thesis is that games and play should be extended beyond the screen into everyday life, and that a "Real Player" is someone who treats common reality as a game engine and engages with it playfully and critically. The text positions Ludics as distinct from established game studies approaches such as ludology and narratology, framing it instead as a second-order, interdisciplinary practice that blends game studies with avant-garde traditions including Pataphysics, the Oulipo group, and the Situationists.

The manifesto develops its argument through a range of examples. It cites the Parkour movement in French suburbs, the trade of virtual items in massively multiplayer online games, and the physical risk-taking of workers on the Brooklyn Bridge as instances of game logic bleeding into real-world behavior. It also introduces "Ludic Toy Objects," which are functional but absurd devices, and "Device Art," a category of artworks built around ostensible uselessness. Uselessness is presented as a core principle, one that the author ties to Schiller's account of art's emancipatory function. The historical Luddites and the figure of General Ludd are reinterpreted as early Real Players whose resistance to machinery is recast as a playful inversion of technology.

The work is largely theoretical and essayistic rather than empirical, drawing on philosophy, cultural criticism, and artistic practice rather than survey data or systematic fieldwork. Its scope is primarily European and Anglo-American avant-garde culture, and its claims are programmatic, presenting a set of five ludic principles as a foundation for future research and practice.