Miguel Sicart, "Playing Software: Homo Ludens in Computational Culture" (MIT Press, 2023)

Mar 2, 2026

Miguel Sicart, professor and scholar of play and digital culture, explores how playing with software shapes both people and systems. He discusses entangled agency between users and software, the role of make-believe and world-traveling in digital play, risks of gamified exploitation, and how generative AI reframes playful interactions. Short, provocative, and focused on play as a cultural force.

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ANECDOTE

Slay The Spire Became A Daily Ritual

Miguel Sicart's daily ritual is playing Slay the Spire since March 2020.
He treats the game's daily runs as a go-to ritual while occasionally sampling indie and AAA titles but returns to Slay the Spire regularly.

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INSIGHT

Make-Believe Outweighs Competition In Digital Play

Make-believe and mimicry matter more than agonistic competition in digital play.
Sicart provocatively claims digital interactions prioritize mimicry (world-building, role adoption) over traditional competitive play.

insights

INSIGHT

Play Is How We Understand Software

Playing is the primary mode we use to make sense of ubiquitous digital systems.
Miguel Sicart argues in the information age our daily life is transformed by software, so play becomes how we understand and relate to those systems.

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Miguel Sicart's background and research focus

01:32 • 3min

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Why the center renamed to Digital Play

04:52 • 4min

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Favorite games and platforms shaping his taste

09:10 • 4min

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Preface: California, fun, and productive ambiguity

13:21 • 6min

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Aims to provoke and not claim certainty

19:17 • 8min

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Key theses: information age and play with software

How play shapes and is shaped by software

31:23 • 4min

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Universities, essays, and the play of ideas

35:32 • 3min

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Lugones' world-traveling as playfulness

38:33 • 4min

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Loving world-traveling and an ethos of digital play

42:26 • 4min

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When play is weaponized: gamification and exploitation

46:51 • 5min

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Metagaming and seeing video games as software

51:30 • 3min

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Generative AI as a new focus for playing software

54:28 • 3min

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What Miguel plans to play next

57:44 • 2min

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Closing remarks and Copenhagen invitation

mut moochi, Jonny Hopkins, and Gurn Group

Repairing Play

Aaron Trammell

Aaron Trammell's 'Repairing Play' (as referenced) offers a critique of dominant play theories by centering Black studies and cultural perspectives, arguing for reparative approaches in game and play studies. The work challenges canonical thinkers and seeks to reframe how play is conceptualized in relation to race, power, and cultural history. It proposes new frameworks that address systemic exclusions and reorients theoretical foundations toward justice and inclusivity. Trammell's scholarship contributes to ongoing efforts to diversify and decolonize play and game studies. The book is positioned as foundational for future work that moves beyond romanticized theories of play.

The ethics of computer games

Miguel Sicart

Miguel Sicart's 'The Ethics of Computer Games' examines ethical dimensions in videogame design and play, exploring how games mediate moral choices and shape players' ethical understanding. The book investigates responsibility in design, features of gameplay that invite ethical reflection, and methodologies for designing ethically-aware games. Sicart offers frameworks for evaluating games' moral impacts and proposes approaches for integrating ethics into design practice. It serves as a foundational text for scholars and designers concerned with the interplay between games and ethical thought.

Beyond Choices

Miguel Sicart

In 'Beyond Choices: The Design of Ethical Gameplay', Miguel Sicart explores how game design can foster ethical thinking by moving beyond simple binary choices. The book looks at the structural and narrative strategies that encourage players to engage with moral complexity, examining case studies and proposing design principles. Sicart argues for gameplay that enables reflection, responsibility, and ethical engagement rather than prescriptive moralizing. The work bridges game design practice and ethical theory, offering actionable insights for designers and scholars.

Playing Software

Miguel Sicart

Miguel Sicart argues that in the information age our relations with ubiquitous digital systems are fundamentally playful, and that playing with software shapes both software agency and human agency. He explores how make-believe, mimicry, and world-traveling inform digital play, and contrasts digital play with analog play. Sicart also considers the cybernetic aspects of digital play and critiques how play can be instrumentalized by platform capitalism, highlighting risks like exploitation and the weaponization of play in online conspiracy and gamified labor. Through theoretical synthesis and examples, the book proposes an ethos of digital play grounded in loving world-traveling and responsible interaction with software agents. It aims to reframe how scholars and designers understand play in computational culture.

Play Matters

Miguel Sicart

In 'Play Matters' Miguel Sicart presents a compact theory of play, arguing that play is a foundational human activity with ethical and cultural significance. He examines how playful practices shape social interactions, design, and meaning-making, offering conceptual tools for understanding play beyond games. The book engages with play theory to inform design and critical perspectives on interactive media. Sicart's accessible approach makes it useful for scholars and designers interested in the cultural implications of play. It situates play as a central mode of human engagement in contemporary life.

The play element at the heart of our interactions with computers—and how it drives the best and the worst manifestations of the information age.

Whether we interact with video games or spreadsheets or social media, playing with software shapes every facet of our lives. In Playing Software: Homo Ludens in Computational Culture (MIT Press, 2023), Miguel Sicart delves into why we play with computers, how that play shapes culture and society, and the threat posed by malefactors using play to weaponize everything from conspiracy theories to extractive capitalism. Starting from the controversial idea that software is an essential agent in the information age, Sicart considers our culture in general—and our way of thinking about and creating digital technology in particular—as a consequence of interacting with software's agency through play.

As Sicart shows, playing shapes software agency. In turn, software shapes our agency as we adapt and relate to it through play. That play drives the creation of new cultural, social, and political forms. Sicart also reveals the role of make-believe in driving our playful engagement with the digital sphere. From there, he discusses the cybernetic theory of digital play and what we can learn from combining it with the idea that playfulness can mean pleasurable interaction with human and nonhuman agents inside the boundaries of a computational system. Finally, he critiques the instrumentalization of play as a tool wielded by platform capitalism.

Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, editor of “Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok.

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