Introduction

Play has always dealt with tension and ambiguity, spanning the free, the voluntary and the unserious as well as the rule-bound, the disruptive and the risky (Caillois, 1961/2001, p. 5; Huizinga, 1950/2014, pp. 10-12; Mortensen & Jørgensen, 2020, pp. 101-103; Schechner, 2013, pp. 118-119; Stenros, 2018, p. 13; Sutton-Smith, 1997, pp. 1-3). The acknowledgment that play may deviate from an idealized understanding of play as inherently positive (Caillois, 1961/2001, p. 159; Stenros, 2018, p. 15) has led to the need for concepts that characterize and contextualize play in ways that consider play that is deceptive, elusive and unsafe. The concept of transgressive play recognizes that play practices often may break with established norms of idealized play, people's expectations and sensibilities, the rules of the game and sometimes also the law (Jørgensen & Karlsen, 2018, p. 2).

The concept of transgressive play is thus a response to the fallacy of play (Mortensen & Jørgensen, 2020, p. 3); or the erroneous idea that play is characterized as positive and without consequence, at the same time as it redirects the attention of the potentially subversive sides of gameplay away from the behaviorist paradigm of effect studies towards the social and cultural context of play. Transgressive play is however a descriptive, and not a normative, term, in that it acknowledges that norm-breaking forms of play also can have both a liberating and an exclusionary potential.

The History and Current Use of the Term

Etymology and Origin

Transgressive is an adjective form of the verb transgress, which means to go beyond or overstep the boundaries of taste, moral code, social taboo or law (Collins English Dictionary, n.d.). In scholarly discourse, the noun form transgression is often used to characterize boundary-crossing activities and practices in culture and society. While criminology uses the term to denote criminal acts and legal offenses, in the broader field of sociology, transgression describes the violation of social norms. Chris Jenks stresses that transgression in itself has an important social function by validating and reaffirming the norms or laws being broken, and that the act of transgression by way of its acknowledgment of the boundaries that are being infringed must be understood as "a deeply reflexive act of denial and affirmation" (2003, p. 2).

Scholars who associate play and transgression often refer to Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the carnival and the carnivalesque (1999) to explain the relationship (Leonard, 2006; Majkowski, 2014; 2018; Mortensen & Jørgensen, 2020, pp. 152-156). In a similar way to how the traditional carnival meant a temporary subversion of the norms of society, play has a transgressive potential in which social norms and behaviors may change due to the playful framing of the situation.

Modern play theory characterizes play as ambiguous, multi-directional and involving sudden transformations (Schechner, 2013, p. 89; Sutton-Smith, 1999, p. 139). Some scholars have argued that play lends itself well to transgression because of this ambiguous nature in which metacommunication is key (Jørgensen & Karlsen, 2018, p. 4; Mortensen & Jørgensen, 2020, pp. 150-152; Sutton-Smith, 1999, p. 139). Other scholars have argued that transgressive play is key to understanding the play practices of game culture (Aarseth, 2007, p. 131) and that oppositional play may be essential or fundamental to human play (Myers, 2010, p. 125). This close link between transgression and play is what makes play a convenient setting for exploring boundaries from within a safe space, exemplified by how role-playing scenarios allow for testing out settings and responses that otherwise would be difficult to simulate (Squire et al., 2003). However, play may also be used as an excuse to deliberately break boundaries without having to face the consequences. This can concern both the boundaries of the game, as well as that of other players (Boudreau, 2018).

Before its current use in game studies, the phrase transgressive play was infrequently used in the arts and humanities to describe different playful strategies employed by artists to challenge expectations, conventions or social norms in media and arts (see for example Fay, 1993; Morgan, 1998; Wells, 1991). In the context of play and game research, the term transgressive play first occurs in an article by Kurt Squire and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2003 discussing the design principles of next-generation games in education. They argue that there is an under-explored potential of placing learners in situations of transgressive play, here understood as "the experience of temporarily letting go of social rules and entering a transitional space where social boundaries can be pushed and new roles explored" (Squire et al., 2003, p. 20).

Transgressive Play as Opposition Against Design

The term however gained traction after Espen Aarseth used transgressive play to indicate play that counters the intentions of a game's design. This involves an exploratory playstyle in which the player is breaking the rules of the game, utilizing bugs or otherwise following an unexpected playstyle not predicted by the designer. Aarseth argues that transgressive play thus is "a symbolic gesture against the tyranny of the game, a (perhaps illusory) way for the played subject to regain their sense of identity and uniqueness through the mechanisms of the game itself" (2007, p. 132). The disorderly and often oppositional nature of transgressive play makes such forms of play often the subject of regulation (Meades, 2018).

Play that goes against the rules of a game also corresponds with one of David Myers' examples of bad play (also labeled anti-play; Myers, 2010, p. 17). Within the formal category of rule-breaking play, Myers directs his attention toward digital games where he finds that the most interesting form of transgression is exploits; i.e. play that "involves players that break the rules while engaging (rather than destroying) the game code." He finds these to be particularly interesting because they are infringements not only of the rules but of the "spirit" of the game as interpreted by players and intended by designers. This is a form of play in which players play with the rules rather than according to the rules (Myers, 2010, p. 19). This understanding of transgressive play is thus a way to play the system (Stenros, 2018, p. 20), and is a practice that often goes hand in hand with cheating (Consalvo, 2009; Kafai & Fields, 2009). Alan Meades' term counterplay, which involves oppositional forms of play, spanning hacking, cheating but also anti-social play, can also be considered an example of this (2015).

Transgressive play has also been used to describe practices that go against the design of the game because of the way that players appropriate and adapt a game to their own play preferences. Jenny Sundén describes the queering practices of gay gamers in massively multiplayer online games as transgressive play (2009, 2012), showing that practices of appropriating a game to one's own needs, interests and identity is a way of taking back control over the game through creative instances of play. Sundén thus follows Aarseth in claiming that transgressive play is crucial for game culture, and argues that queer play is a form of transgressive play that reorients players, offering them "a symbolic act of rebellion, of disobedience, of deviance from dominating ways of inscribing and imagining 'the player'" (2009, p. 7). Queering practices are here thus understood not only as a practice performed by a queer or a gay community, but also more broadly in terms of an antinormative way of "thinking differently about gameplay" (Sihvonen & Stenros, 2018, p. 117). We also recognize this perspective in Yasmin Kafai and colleagues' use of the term transgressive play to describe the practices and activities with which young girls challenge stereotypical notions of gender during online gameplay (Kafai et al., 2009). An interesting perspective that shows the liberating potential of transgressive play is provided by Mia Consalvo's analysis of the Twitch streamer Kaceytron, who transgresses the expectations of what a female streamer and a quality streaming channel is by integrating the toxicity with which she is targeted as part of her own performance (Consalvo, 2018).

Transgressive Play as Anti-Social Player Practices

Consalvo's example shows that even though transgressive play may be just as engaging as norm-abiding forms of play, transgressive play may also target other players in ways that are not experienced as playful. Anti-social play is included in Meades' term counterplay (2015), and we find examples of this one-sided social play in which only one part acknowledges the playfulness of the situation (Stenros, 2018, p. 17) in situations of grief play (Webber, 2013), where the play context is used to mask harassment, discrimination and other toxic practices (Jane, 2017; Massanari, 2015; Stenros, 2018; Thorleifsson, 2021), or to police the gameplay of others through offensive language or by disrupting the gameplay and enjoyment of other players (Boudreau, 2018). However, although some authors use the term transgressive play to describe such practices (Boudreau, 2018; Stenros, 2018, p. 17; Thorleifsson, 2021; Webber, 2013), such practices are often described in other terms, including but not limited to griefing (Achterbosch et al., 2016; Mulligan & Patrovsky, 2003), toxicity and toxic behavior (Deslauriers et al., 2020; Kwak et al., 2015), or in terms of different forms of harassment or online abuse (De Letter et al., 2017; Gray & Leonard, 2018; Salter, 2016). While such practices are sometimes described in terms of transgressive practices and transgressive player behavior, play is often excluded from such descriptions, indicating that these practices are often not recognized as play (Myers, 2010; Stenros, 2015). Anti-social player practices that are threatening and harmful to others, and that may involve emotional and psychological harm are also covered by Myers' definition of bad play or anti-play (2010, p. 17).

Another related term is Marcus Carter's treacherous play, which is "the use of deception and betrayal for in-game advantage" (2022, p. 3); however, although a common denominator between Carter's term and the other forms of antagonistic player practices discussed here is that they are all based on the killer gameplay style in which acting upon other players is key (Bartle, 1996, 2003), treacherous play is motivated by game-internal gains rather than by the joy in putting others through distress.

Transgressive Play as a Break with Hegemonic Play

Jaakko Stenros considers transgressive play to be a group of play forms that break with the idealized, hegemonic or norm-abiding play (2018, p. 14, p. 17), spanning play practices that break social and cultural norms of what is commonly understood as play. Some of these forms of play break with the norm of what counts as play because they are often not experienced as particularly fun or playful. For example, one-sided social play mentioned above is only playful for one of the involved parties, while parapathic play is play that is meaningful in spite of not being fun or making the player feel good (2018, p. 19). Repetitive play breaks with the idea of what is playful by spanning routine practices such as grinding and compulsive behavior, while instrumentalized play is typically not considered play because it takes place in service of an external goal (2018, p. 22).

Other forms of play break with the idea of idealized play because they are not safe: dangerous play involves considerable risk to the player's wellbeing or resources and is closely related to what Stenros labels "the oldest academic articulation of transgressive play"; namely deep play that involves high psychological, physical or monetary risk (Bentham, 1802/1894); and violent play involves the infliction of damage and pain as part of playing, exemplified by bareknuckle fighting (Stenros, 2018, p. 18). This category is also included in Myers' understanding of bad play (anti-play; 2010, p. 17).

A special form of play that breaks with the idea of normative play as both fun and safe is dark play; which "subverts order, dissolves frame and breaks its own rules – so that the playing itself is in danger of being destroyed" (Schechner, 2013, p. 119). Dark play may emerge out of an escalating situation in which play continues even as players feel increasingly unsafe or threatened, but dark play may also be a conscious play strategy. While dark play has also been used to indicate play with controversial or taboo themes (Mortensen et al., 2015), some scholars use dark play to indicate deceptive situations in which involved participants either do not know that they are engaging in play, or are not aware of the nature of the play in which they are involved. We see examples of this in situations where game designers attempt to deceive the player through so-called dark design patterns (Zagal et al., 2013).

Another category of transgressive play in Stenros' account is play that breaks with specific social or cultural norms: taboo play involves "[a]ctions that are unacceptable even when marked as play" and which do not lose their edge in a playful context, such as playing with topics of incest, rape and racism (Stenros, 2018, pp. 21-22). Arguably, the inclusion of such topics in games would also be covered under taboo play. Salen and Zimmerman use the moniker forbidden play (2004, pp. 477-481; Stenros, 2018, p. 22) to characterize play that defies cultural and social taboos. On the contrary, when an activity that otherwise would appear norm-breaking can be carried out under the guise of play, this is called brink play (Stenros, 2018, p. 21). Related terms are context-insensitive play that involves otherwise recognizable play but in non-appropriate situations, such as playing at a funeral (2018, p. 19); and player-inappropriate play in which the player does not "fit" the situation, such as adults playing children's games or vice versa (2018, p. 20). An example of this is what Mary Flanagan calls unplaying, in which children play out scenarios in opposition to expected or acceptable adult activities, for example by "killing" their dolls rather than caring for them (2009, p. 33).

The last form of transgressive play identified by Stenros is sensation-centric locomotor play, in which playing with one's body for creating a pleasurable sensation is key, such for example rollercoaster rides and masturbation. Stenros deems this kind of play transgressive because its relative primitivity is an infringement of the idea of play as culture or cultured (2018, p. 19).

Final Words

Transgressive play is a term that is used to describe play practices that break with social and cultural norms, the rules and design of a game or with normative or idealized understandings of what constitutes as play. This essay has presented the origin and the use of the term transgressive play, and looked at how it connects to other related terms that describe oppositional, deviant, subversive, exploitive and toxic gameplay practices. As transgressive gameplay practices are often not recognized as play, many of the practices presented in this essay are often described not as transgressive play, but in other related terms such for example transgressive practices, toxic behavior etc. While it has been beyond the scope of this essay, it is worth noticing that the term transgressive and transgression in relation to play and games are also discussed in the literature in terms of transgressive games and transgressive aesthetics (e.g. Jørgensen & Karlsen, 2018; Mortensen & Jørgensen, 2020) and transgressivity (Pötzsch, 2018), all of which address the norm-breaking aspects of game content and its aesthetics rather than play practices.

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Author Information

Kristine Jørgensen is a Full Professor of Media Studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. She is a widely published author in game studies and the author of Gameworld Interfaces and A Comprehensive Study of Sound in Computer Games, co-author of The Paradox of Transgression in Games and co-editor of Transgression in Games and Play.

Citation Information

Jørgensen, J. (2022). Transgressive Play. In Grabarczyk, P. (ed.), Encyclopedia of Ludic Terms (Spring 2022 Edition). URL: https://eolt.org/articles/transgressive-play

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