Game culture and material culture have always been closely linked. Analog forms of rule-based
play (ludus) would hardly be conceivable without dice cards and game boards. In the act of
free play (paidia) children as well as adults transform simple objects into multifaceted toys
in an almost magical way. Even digital play is suffused with material culture: Games are not
only mediated by technical interfaces which we access via hardware and tangible peripherals.
They are also subject to material hybridization paratextual framing and processes of de- and
re-materialization.
