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Animals and invaders populate the space of Janet Murray's counter-response.

Secret agency is at issue in Frasca's response, which denies the application of Aristotle to the open-ended interactivity of gaming.

Literature scholars eager to understand gaming have made early inroads. Markku Eskelinen sets up serious checkpoints.

J. Yellowlees Douglas adds more titles to Eskelinen's catalog of limnal games.

Stuart Moulthrop complicates the idea of self-contained games.

Chris Crawford adduces the algorithms of games against dramatic conventions.

First Person, second section: What is Ludology? Editors Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin see a disciplinary shift away from ill-advised analogies toward analyses of the gaming situation itself.

Stuart Moulthrop (re)mediates the interpretation (narrativists) vs. configuration (ludologists) debate by going macropolitical.

"Playing with play," John Cayley sets ludology on an even playing field with literature, but without literary scholarship's over-reliance on 'story,' 'closure,' and 'pleasure.'