Russell Davies presentation on "pretending" and "barely games" from the Playful conference is a wonderful exploration of the importance of pretending to fun and games, a subject often missing when we talk about why and how games work. But it's not just a matter of dressing up. A successful pretending object has to delicately balance pretending affordance with not making you look like an idiot. That's why so many successful pretending objects are also highly functional. As anyone who's been down the Tactical Pants rabbit-hole can tell you it's easy to obsess for ages about exactly the right trouser configuration for your equipment (ooh-er), all with a perfectly straight face. But every now and then you have a moment of self-awareness and realise you're just pretending to be a cop or a soldier from the future or Val Kilmer. And of course, what you're really doing is both things at once. You're being practical and thinking about function and you're pretending. But you need some plausible
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