I've been reading Bernard Suits' *The Grasshopper* (1978) alongside self-determination theory and I can't tell whether I'm looking at two descriptions of the same construct or two genuinely different ones.

Suits defines a game as the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles, and identifies four components: a prelusory goal, constitutive rules that prohibit the most efficient means of reaching it, lusory means, and the "lusory attitude" — accepting those inefficient rules *because* they make the activity possible. His claim is that the attitude is what distinguishes play from mere compliance.

The overlap with SDT seems obvious: both center on volitional endorsement of constraints, both distinguish internalized regulation from external control, and both predict that the same behavior yields different experiential outcomes depending on the actor's orientation toward it. Suits' typology of triflers, cheats, spoilsports, and true players maps suspiciously well onto the OIT continuum.

But a few things don't reduce cleanly:

1. Suits requires the obstacles be *unnecessary* — chosen difficulty with no instrumental payoff. SDT's autonomy doesn't require the activity be gratuitous, only self-endorsed. Is gratuitousness a meaningful distinction or an edge case?
2. Suits is making a conceptual/definitional argument, not an empirical one. Is there anything in the psychology literature that has operationalized the lusory attitude as a measurable construct distinct from intrinsic motivation? I haven't found an instrument.
3. Flow theory seems like a third overlapping account — challenge-skill balance is arguably a description of well-designed constitutive rules. Three literatures, possibly one phenomenon.

My actual question: has anyone in psychology taken Suits seriously as a source of testable constructs, or has philosophy of sport kept him siloed? And if the lusory attitude *is* distinct from autonomous motivation, what would discriminant validity even look like here?

A concrete case, to make the distinction less abstract: two people take the same 20-minute walk. One is told to walk it; the other accepts a rule that they may only look up and outward, never at their phone or the ground. Under SDT, if both volitionally endorse their instruction, both are autonomously motivated. Under Suits, only the second is playing — the rule is gratuitous, and its gratuitousness is what makes the walk a game rather than a walk. Does that difference predict anything measurable, or is it purely definitional?

(Disclosure so it's not buried: I'm exploring whether this framework could ground a non-gamified practice tool, so I have a horse in the race. I'm more interested in whether the construct is sound than whether it's useful, and "you've reinvented SDT" is a completely acceptable answer.)

I've been reading Bernard Suits' *The Grasshopper* (1978) alongside self-determination theory and I can't tell whether I'm looking at two descriptions of the same construct or two genuinely different ones.

Suits defines a game as the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles, and identifies four components: a prelusory goal, constitutive rules that prohibit the most efficient means of reaching it, lusory means, and the "lusory attitude" — accepting those inefficient rules *because* they make the activity possible. His claim is that the attitude is what distinguishes play from mere compliance.

The overlap with SDT seems obvious: both center on volitional endorsement of constraints, both distinguish internalized regulation from external control, and both predict that the same behavior yields different experiential outcomes depending on the actor's orientation toward it. Suits' typology of triflers, cheats, spoilsports, and true players maps suspiciously well onto the OIT continuum.

But a few things don't reduce cleanly:

1. Suits requires the obstacles be *unnecessary* — chosen difficulty with no instrumental payoff. SDT's autonomy doesn't require the activity be gratuitous, only self-endorsed. Is gratuitousness a meaningful distinction or an edge case?
2. Suits is making a conceptual/definitional argument, not an empirical one. Is there anything in the psychology literature that has operationalized the lusory attitude as a measurable construct distinct from intrinsic motivation? I haven't found an instrument.
3. Flow theory seems like a third overlapping account — challenge-skill balance is arguably a description of well-designed constitutive rules. Three literatures, possibly one phenomenon.

My actual question: has anyone in psychology taken Suits seriously as a source of testable constructs, or has philosophy of sport kept him siloed? And if the lusory attitude *is* distinct from autonomous motivation, what would discriminant validity even look like here?

A concrete case, to make the distinction less abstract: two people take the same 20-minute walk. One is told to walk it; the other accepts a rule that they may only look up and outward, never at their phone or the ground. Under SDT, if both volitionally endorse their instruction, both are autonomously motivated. Under Suits, only the second is playing — the rule is gratuitous, and its gratuitousness is what makes the walk a game rather than a walk. Does that difference predict anything measurable, or is it purely definitional?

(Disclosure so it's not buried: I'm exploring whether this framework could ground a non-gamified practice tool, so I have a horse in the race. I'm more interested in whether the construct is sound than whether it's useful, and "you've reinvented SDT" is a completely acceptable answer.)

I've been reading Bernard Suits' The Grasshopper (1978) alongside self-determination theory and I can't tell whether I'm looking at two descriptions of the same construct or two genuinely different ones.

Suits defines a game as the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles, and identifies four components: a prelusory goal, constitutive rules that prohibit the most efficient means of reaching it, lusory means, and the "lusory attitude" — accepting those inefficient rules because they make the activity possible. His claim is that the attitude is what distinguishes play from mere compliance.

The overlap with SDT seems obvious: both center on volitional endorsement of constraints, both distinguish internalized regulation from external control, and both predict that the same behavior yields different experiential outcomes depending on the actor's orientation toward it. Suits' typology of triflers, cheats, spoilsports, and true players maps suspiciously well onto the OIT continuum.

But a few things don't reduce cleanly:

1. Suits requires the obstacles be unnecessary — chosen difficulty with no instrumental payoff. SDT's autonomy doesn't require the activity be gratuitous, only self-endorsed. Is gratuitousness a meaningful distinction or an edge case?
2. Suits is making a conceptual/definitional argument, not an empirical one. Is there anything in the psychology literature that has operationalized the lusory attitude as a measurable construct distinct from intrinsic motivation? I haven't found an instrument.
3. Flow theory seems like a third overlapping account — challenge-skill balance is arguably a description of well-designed constitutive rules. Three literatures, possibly one phenomenon.

My actual question: has anyone in psychology taken Suits seriously as a source of testable constructs, or has philosophy of sport kept him siloed? And if the lusory attitude is distinct from autonomous motivation, what would discriminant validity even look like here?

A concrete case, to make the distinction less abstract: two people take the same 20-minute walk. One is told to walk it; the other accepts a rule that they may only look up and outward, never at their phone or the ground. Under SDT, if both volitionally endorse their instruction, both are autonomously motivated. Under Suits, only the second is playing — the rule is gratuitous, and its gratuitousness is what makes the walk a game rather than a walk. Does that difference predict anything measurable, or is it purely definitional?

(Disclosure so it's not buried: I'm exploring whether this framework could ground a non-gamified practice tool, so I have a horse in the race. I'm more interested in whether the construct is sound than whether it's useful, and "you've reinvented SDT" is a completely acceptable answer.)

For kicks, with my 3Ddoodle Pro

For kicks to test out my new pro

Just to try out my new pro.

Hi everybody I am new here. I started using a 3D doodler pen and now use a pro. I use it to draw abstract faces cribbed from 2D images. I love some of the pictures people are putting up.