ABSTRACT
Children's play constructs worlds that can be deconstructed according to the needs of the player. Adult play may seem inconsistent with more common definitions of play, though it certainly exists despite seeming to "have more to do with waiting than with preparing, with boredom than with rehearsal, with keeping up one's spirits than with depression". The personalization of play experiences is precisely the complexity that makes research into the influences of play so difficult to generalize. Computer/console games engage many of these rhetorics through multimodal interactivity. Rhetorics of play value both intrinsic and extrinsic play functions. This refers to the valuing of the "player's game-related motives for playing" in contrast to the functions that forms of play are "supposed to serve in the larger culture". This is an important distinction when analyzing the ergodic ontogeny of players as they experience interactive digital play in increasingly realistic and immersive environments with ever-expanding potential for open-world formats.
