Introduction: Playfulness across Media

Abstract

This is the introduction to the guest-edited Playfulness across Media issue of Eludamos. The articles collected here seek to demonstrate the productivity of the concept of playfulness across disciplines and the importance of moving beyond the study of primarily game-based playfulness in order to explore how a playful mood, attitude, or state of mind can manifest itself in and be encouraged by a range of different practices of play and a range of different (post)digital media forms that include, but are certainly not limited to, digital and nondigital games. While there obviously are some very productive intersections between game studies and playfulness studies, the articles also clearly show that the latter cannot and should not be conflated with the former.

Keywords

• playfulness
• digital culture
• games
• media studies
• play
• postdigital culture