ABSTRACT
In the 1970s and 1980s, when the advent of ordinary language philosophy and speech act theory launched a wave of inquiries into the nature of fiction, answers were formulated in terms of concepts strongly suggestive of games and of a playful attitude toward fictional representation: non-seriousness (Austin), pretending (Searle), and make-believe (Walton, Currie). This chapter explores the connections between games, play, and fiction in three sections. The first discusses the make-believe approach to fiction, the second analyzes the notion of immersion as expression of the user’s mode of participation in the fictional game of make-believe, and the third asks under what conditions games can be considered fiction.
