Agonistic, aleatory, vertiginous, mimetic: those are four classes of game, or more accurately four game-elements which can be combined in different ways to create different genres. Mimetic games, obviously, are games in which the players pretend to be someone or something else. In their developed form we don't call these 'games' any more, but 'plays', and furthermore hardly any of us now participate in them. We watch them all the time, and that gives one kind of fun, but the fun of mimesis itself is much rarer - regarded, even, with some suspicion. Charades are no longer popular; and while it's OK for little boys to run round wearing Liverpool shirts or shouting 'I'll be Trevor Francis,' this is strongly frowned upon for even slightly bigger boys. One remembers the games teacher in Kes who ran the whole football session so he could pretend he was Bobby Charlton. Everybody does this in their heads, just like Walter Mitty, but let it show and it's classified as perverse, immature, not an acceptable form of fun at all.

LRB 30 December 1982 | PDF Download