- The aim of this game is to create a crossword grid with your hands and explore a part of the Glossary of Productive Play. There is a printed grid for you here, but if you want more, visit the website of this Special Issue. Take some time (leisure or productive?), place the pieces on a surface, on a wall, on your bed, on your cat's body.. and start playing!
- "I know it might sound complicated now, but I promise you that you will understand how to make it work while playing. There are four things you have to keep attention to while creating the grid:"
- 1. A code (e.g. B7), composed of a letter and a number, defines the position in the imaginary grid. 2. The papers with the clues are not to be used during the grid's construction. 3. A content category gathers all the definitions that are part of the same crossword (e.g. loot box). 4. The papers having the same code could represent an intersection or the presence of two definitions, one going down and the other across. Find out which is which!
- "If you don't know the word, don't stress yourself out: these crosswords are meant to teach while having fun. Yes, you heard that well, you are experiencing Productive Play! Enjoy the time you are taking for yourself! It's okay not to finish it, it's okay to give up, it's okay to still be happy with it. And if you are really unsatisfied, just call some friends and have some fun together!"
- "Remember, these are just instructions not to get lost. But it's okay to get lost. Get lost sometimes."
definition: A form of government in which the society is based on the common ownership of the means of production, cooperative labour, and freely associated producers that administer production on the basis of a social or common plan.
definition: A factory management system developed in the late 19th century to increase efficiency by evaluating every step in a manufacturing process and breaking down production into specialized repetitive tasks.
definition: 'Ideas and opinions are not spontaneously "born" in each individual brain. They have had a centre of formation, or irradiation, of dissemination, of persuasion, like a group of men, or a single individual even, which has developed them and presented them in the political form of current reality.'
definition: According to the Marxist theory, it refers to society's other relationships and ideas that are not directly related to production. That includes its culture, institutions, political power structures, roles, rituals, religion, media, and state.
definition: "It is easier to imagine the end of the world that the end of…" an economic system characterized by private or corporate ownership of goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.
definition: A term used in the Marxist theory to describe the state in which one feels like they are given full agency of their own choices and actions when in fact they are subject to a certain ideology that has come to seem so self-speaking they wouldn't question it.
definition: "An uneasy amalgam of several contradictory legacies: a religious one, which has censured excessive drinking, gambling and drug use as moral transgressions; a scientific one, which has characterized alcoholism and drug addiction as biological diseases; and a colloquial one, which has casually applied the term to almost any fixation."
definition: A business model that is used also in video games to ensure that microtransactions are turned from an occasional event into a rooted activity for gamers. This model functions following different strategies to ensure continuous profiting, like fast thinking processes, gatchas (collectable items), subscriptions, etc.
definition: A business model where users can purchase virtual items for small amounts of money. It often appears in free-to-play games, meaning there is no cost to download the game, just a cost to buy the online virtual products.
definition: The type of process that a video game publisher can use to generate revenue from a video game product. Some in-game purchasing systems could be characterized as unfair or exploitative. These systems describe tactics that capitalize on informational advantages (e.g., behavioural tracking) and data manipulation to optimize offers to incentivize continuous spending, while offering limited or no guarantees or protections, with the potential to exploit vulnerable players (e.g., adolescents, problematic gamers).
definition: When you describe something such as information, writing, or entertainment that you consider to be of no worth, value, nor serious interest.
definition: It often includes activities such as conventions, writing fictions, participating in online forums and discussions, purchasing merchandise and collector items in order to build a community around a common interest.
definition: An alternative mode of exchange to the rationalist calculation of capitalist exchange, where valuables are not sold, but rather given without an explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards.
definition: Something that is given away without any expectation for payback. It allows us to act in a way that is non-alienated and differs considerably from the exchange of commodities with the aim of profit-making.
definition: Modification used to gain an unfair and unauthorized advantage in a game to make it more fun, accessible, and easy for the user who is playing.
definition: Time that modders spend in modifying and sometimes improving corporates' video games in form of a hobby, but still producing profit for the company.
definition: A type of game that is monetised later either by using the user data or by adding payable content inside the game. Because of being so accessible, it became quite popular and attracted high numbers of players.
definition: A form of opposition to the increasing use of game elements within non-game systems, which aims to disrupt the processing and exploitation of users’ data; it calls for gaming with the system, for a disruptive play with its rules and content while being within it.
definition: After-hours labour, masked with enjoyable activities that feel like leisure, also related to self-work (people trying to improve their own capital).
definition: A free activity standing quite consciously outside ordinary life as being "not serious", but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by doing it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner.
definition: The process of turning non-ludic activities into play. It might be seen as a form of ideology and it can be used as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service.
definition: "Any action you take towards the improvement of your own body or mind: incentives to quantify yourself couched in a “do what you love” rhetoric."
