I thought this quote was particularly relevant to a recent discussion about the difference between traditional games and video games.

"It is meritorious and fruitful to have grasped the affinity which exists between play and the secret or mysterious, but this relationship cannot be a part of the definition of play, which is nearly always spectacular or ostentatious. Without doubt, secrecy, mystery, and even travesty can be transformed into play activity, but it must be immediately pointed out that this transformation is necessarily to the detriment of the secret and mysterious, which plays exposes, publishes, and somehow expends. In a word, play tends to remove the very nature of the mysterious."

-- Roger Caillois, Man, Play and Games (1958)
Translated by Meyer Barash, 1961. p 4.

I can only wonder what Caillois would think of this statement in light of video games. His argument is based almost entirely on the thrust that traditional games reveal their rules as a means to creating competition.

Video games, as I have argued recently are specifically different from other types of games because their rules are hidden in their algorithms.

From my perspective, Caillois is accurate insofar as traditional games are concerned. In fact, I would use his point of view on this matter as a point in my argument that video games are different than traditional games!