**3. Playing games**

In this section, a brief consideration of games and play from a social and, to some extent, historical perspective will be made to support the identification of the characteristic forms and types of pleasure that are elicited when one engages in play. This will provide the means and measure by which the efficacy of the TNAR project can be assessed.

The playing of games has served an important function across much of human history, with board games being discovered in the tombs of the Pharaohs [22], in Roman archaeological digs [23] and evidence of game play and in particular adversarial or gambling games emerging from many ancient civilisations [24, 25]. The vast majority of these games are competitive in nature, being played between two or more participants who seek to defeat their opponents. Well-known examples of ancient games that are still played today are Chess, Backgammon and Go [26]. In relation to the function these games played this is seen to be largely social, with the players deriving satisfaction from interacting, competing, collaborating with and hopefully overcoming their peers [27]. Game playing was often associated with monetary gain through gambling [28] although the focus here is necessarily on non-financial motivations as TNAR has no financial or monetized dimension.

Malaby [29] and Walsh et al. [30] coined the term gaming capital, an extension of cultural capital [31], with a player's skill and mode of play contributing to or reducing their perceived capital in relation to their peers. Thus, an individual's gaming abilities define their position within the community of players and to an extent in wider society, an idea taken to its limits in Ian, M Bank's novel *The Player of Games* [32].

Turning to a consideration of electronic games, pre-C2000 gameplay was primarily designed as a solitary activity, and whilst there are notable exceptions to this, for the most part, the mechanism was one of a single player interacting with a system to achieve specific goals. This dichotomy between multiplayer analogue games and single-player electronic games was highlighted by Zegal et al. [25, 33]. Whilst this certainly is not the case now, with the proliferation of mass multiplayer online games, and arguably was not entirely true even in 2000 if commercial video games are included in the gaming array [27], it is certainly still the case for gamified systems placed in cultural spaces. Here *'the model places the individual and the individual's interaction with the artefact or system at the heart of the agenda'* [34].

It is essential then to consider what motivates a single player, and whilst the single-player model does not necessarily preclude all social incentives, there are certain impetuses that are notably more significant in solo play. To move forward we must explore the experience of play, and more particularly the characteristics or categories that can be used to define it. Fortunately, a number of theorists, not least Roger Caillois [20], Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi [21], Marc Leblanc [35] and Brigid Costello [36], have committed much thought to this, and whilst a detailed examination of the categorisations posited is not possible, a broad overview will provide much of use. Some of these categories are primarily related to social, multi-participant play such as 'fellowship' [35], 'friendship' [21] or 'Competition' [21]. However, others are fundamental to the perceived pleasure and motivation of participants of single-player games, and the gamified systems placed in cultural spaces. These are categorised from the above literature here as challenge, creation and completion and are explored in more detail in the following section.

*Right Game, Wrong Place? A Case Study: Using a Gamified AR Application in a Heritage… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107535*
