Digital Play as Experimental Folding

Abstract

We learn through all experiences, but not all learning transforms us. Play is assumed to disrupt traditional learning, focusing on digital play, we argue that disruption depends on how play folds. Drawing on Deleuzian concepts of folding, we argue that digital play creates different learning conditions than formal approaches – characterised by disruption, experimentation, and unpredictability. Folding brings unfamiliar elements – roles, constraints, responsive environments – into temporary contact with players’ existing experiences, creating magic circles. Folding creates bounded spaces where different rules apply and settled patterns are disrupted. What happens within the fold can be unfolded, with learning unpacked and carried into new contexts. 

We analyse eight types of digital play – roleplay, simulations, traditional play, virtual play, hybrid play, game-making, gamification, and playfulness – and use an example of each type to imagine how folding might operate in that context. From our analysis, we highlight four different ways in which folding can disrupt and engage, by: providing delightful sensory experiences; unsettling and reconfiguring identities; expanding possibilities; and creating altered rhythms and temporalities.  

Our analysis posits that transformative learning emerges from genuine folding – creating magic circles open to radical uncertainty in play – not simply from adding game mechanics to predetermined structures. Understanding the affordances of folding can enable transformative play rather than using predictable game structures to repackage digital education. The question is then whether we are open to the unconstrained whimsy and embracing of uncertainty that happens when we use play to disrupt and create genuinely transformational experiences.