Game Playing: Is it all about Breaking the Rules?
Interestingly (but not surprisingly), there is a lot of recent material (psychology papers/ articles/ essays) which comes at the psychology of game playing from the gaming perspective.
Steve Nicholl’s article that I have previously referenced gives a good ‘primer’ in the basic psychological analysis of games and play. What strikes me is the contrast between the general meaning of ‘playfulness’ and the constraints of ‘rules’, which are obviously core to Piaget’s view (explained in the article) of the third and final stage of game play development – playing with rules.
In Guy Claxton’s Hare Brain Tortoise Mind, an explanation of intuition considers how it is important that you have not become too entrenched in a problem: ‘But if one is too steeped in the problem, the danger is that the grooves of thought become so worn that they do not allow a fresh perception, or a mingling of currents of ideas to occur’
Just Seven Things 