Rules of Play: Magic Circles and Meaningful Play

During our tutoring meeting today, the notion of 'magic circles' was brought up. Wikipedia defines the term as "the membrane that encloses synthetic worlds such as FPSs, online social environments, and MMORPGs". The term seem to have been introduced by Johan Huizinga in the 30's (in the book Homo Ludens), and applied to gaming in the book Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals by Salen and Zimmerman.

Magic circles seems to be quite strongly related to immersion and engrossment, and even if we don't have much use for the term 'magic circles' itself, I think that we should check out the book Rules of Play. The authors also write about 'meaningful play'; when the actions that the game system affords the player seem enticing and make sense in pursuing the goal(s) of the game. This notion of 'meaningful play' seems highly relevant for us.