ABSTRACT
The fact that the games are played slightly differently in different places, and may even vary in name, is itself evidence that mutation takes place. A superficial glance at Peter and Iona Opie’s published studies of children’s play and games might lead a contemporary reader to see them as documents of a lost age. As well as listing and categorising games and songs, the Opies were attentive to the mutational nature of play, the wax and wane of games’ popularity, the shifts and hybridisations that work across time and space. Videogame play is often compared to outdoor play or to television viewing, yet this history of children’s media documents numerous ludic and interactive devices from the familiar board and card games to elaborate hybrids of toy and book, cybertextual narrative devices of flaps, and animated figures from the Victorian nursery.
