When a Balloon is Enough: An Attention-Based Account of Toys and Games

Abstract Toys are aesthetic objects. Like games, they are objects whose aesthetic value arises through the user’s interaction. However, toys are also unlike games in some important respects. Many philosophical accounts tend to offer ontological explanations of the difference between toys and games; however, such accounts lead to unintuitive consequences. In this essay, I argue that toys and games are fundamentally forms of play, employing a modified version of Roger Caillois’ account of ‘play’. I further argue that the distinction between toy-play and game-play has to do with the individual’s focus of attention, where the toy-play is ‘object-directed’ attention and the game-play is ‘process-directed’ attention.