ABSTRACT
This introduction chapter presents an overall description of the book and some of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The book is an investigation of several of the aspects of dark play, playing with controversial themes as well as controversial play behaviours. The concept dark play has been used by game scholars that mainly draw on Schechner's work. Schechner points out that dark play is the subversion of these meta-cues that tell people actions and utterances are supposed to be understood as playful. By dark people refer to content, themes, or actions that occur within games that in some contexts would be problematic, subversive, controversial, deviant, or tasteless. Play refers to the fact these matters occur in a game, which means people make no statements about whether or not the participant perceives the games as playful. The playfulness depends on each player's ability to maintain a balance between the many forces that pull them in different directions.
