[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-seo-591508-105":3,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":80,"doc-detail-591508-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"ok",{"site_id":7,"language":8,"slug":9,"title":10,"keywords":11,"description":12,"schema_data":13,"social_meta":73,"head_meta":75,"extra_data":77,"updated_unix":79},105,"en","exploring-the-uncanny-valley-to-find-the-edge-of-play-part-1","exploring the Uncanny Valley to Find the edge of Play - Part 1","","This article examines the boundary where play turns into dread, focusing on the emotion of “the uncanny.” It argues that play is difficult to define and to demarcate, prompting the need for an instrument capable of distinguishing play from nonplay. Using “the uncanny” as a surveying tool, the text links psychological and psychoanalytic ideas, literary and art-historical perspectives, robotics and evolutionary biology, marketing narratives, and evidence from survey respondents to pinpoint the moment surprise becomes shock and play drains away.",{"@graph":14,"@context":72},[15,34,55],{"@type":16,"itemListElement":17},"BreadcrumbList",[18,23,27,31],{"item":19,"name":20,"@type":21,"position":22},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",1,{"item":24,"name":25,"@type":21,"position":26},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",2,{"item":28,"name":29,"@type":21,"position":30},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/","Research & Report",3,{"item":32,"name":10,"@type":21,"position":33},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/exploring-the-uncanny-valley-to-find-the-edge-of-play-part-1/591508/",4,{"url":32,"name":10,"@type":35,"image":36,"author":41,"headline":10,"publisher":44,"fileFormat":47,"inLanguage":8,"description":12,"dateModified":48,"datePublished":49,"encodingFormat":47,"isAccessibleForFree":50,"interactionStatistic":51},"DigitalDocument",{"url":37,"@type":38,"width":39,"height":40},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/exploring-the-uncanny-valley-to-find-the-edge-of-play-part-1/591508.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":42,"@type":43},"supergirl","Person",{"url":19,"name":45,"@type":46},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-10-30","2026-10-15",true,{"@type":52,"interactionType":53,"userInteractionCount":30},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":54},"ViewAction",{"@type":56,"mainEntity":57},"FAQPage",[58,64,68],{"name":59,"@type":60,"acceptedAnswer":61},"Why does the article focus on “the uncanny” when studying play?","Question",{"text":62,"@type":63},"Because the uncanny lies right at the boundary of play; feeling uncanny is described as the moment when play begins draining away and dread replaces pleasure.","Answer",{"name":65,"@type":60,"acceptedAnswer":66},"What problem does the article identify about defining play?",{"text":67,"@type":63},"Play is “notoriously hard to define” and even harder to demarcate, since playful situations vary widely across time and place and players differ from one to the next.",{"name":69,"@type":60,"acceptedAnswer":70},"How does the article use etymology to explain the uncanny?",{"text":71,"@type":63},"It traces the English “uncanny” to the German adjective unheimlich, connecting the concept to the negation of heimlich (“homely”), which yields an unfamiliar yet disturbingly familiar sense.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":32,"og:type":74,"og:title":10,"og:site_name":45,"og:description":12},"article",{"robots":76,"canonical":32},"index,follow",{"doc_id":78,"site_id":7},591508,1792892036,{"code":4,"msg":81,"data":82},"success",[83,87,91,95,100,105,110,114,119,122,126],{"id":22,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":84,"show_sort_weight":85,"slug":86},"Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":26,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":88,"show_sort_weight":89,"slug":90},"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":33,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":92,"show_sort_weight":93,"slug":94},"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":96,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":97,"show_sort_weight":98,"slug":99},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":101,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":102,"show_sort_weight":103,"slug":104},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":106,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":107,"show_sort_weight":108,"slug":109},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":111,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":29,"show_sort_weight":112,"slug":113},8,30,"research-report",{"id":115,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":116,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":118},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":117,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":120,"show_sort_weight":117,"slug":121},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":123,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":124,"show_sort_weight":123,"slug":125},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":127,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":25,"category_name":128,"show_sort_weight":96,"slug":129},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":81,"data":131},{"doc_id":78,"user_id":132,"nickname":42,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":111,"category_name":29,"doc_title":10,"doc_description":12,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":30,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":22,"is_downloadable":22,"audit_status":22,"page_count":139,"language":140,"language_code":8,"site_id":7,"html_lang":8,"table_of_contents":141,"faqs":142,"seo_title":143,"seo_description":12,"update_tm":144,"read_time":145,"preview_page_count":4},962088121634,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_9964176cb1d06d4a9deccf72a44ae3dc","exploring the Uncanny Valley to Find the edge of Play  \n•  \nScott G. Eberle  \nPlay often rewards us with a thrill or a sense of wonder. But, just over the edge of play, uncanny objects like dolls, automata, robots, and realistic animations may become monstrous rather than marvelous. Drawing from diverse sources, literary evidence, psychological and psychoanalytic theory, new insights in neuroscience, marketing literature, robotics, and new testimony from survey respondents, this article pinpoints a moment when surprise turns to shock and play drains away. Play is surely difficult to define, but demarcating its porous boundary—where what one moment creates joy can, in the next, cause dread—is a useful step toward describing this shifting phenomenon.  \nPlay is notoriously hard to define, and it is yet harder to demarcate. The task challenges even the sharpest thinkers.1 Because play is so various, because playful situations diverge so widely over place and time, and because players vary so much from one to the next, it is difficult to mark confidently the most basic thing: where play leaves off and where something else less pleasurable or less wholesome begins. As a practical result of the hazy nature of play, the several disciplines interested in the subject often retreat to their corners where their specialties allow them to speak with assurance about only a narrow slice of play. Thus the discussion of this broad subject itself tends to narrow. And a narrowed view brings us no nearer to drawing a boundary for play. Play is solabile and our views are so particular that when the premier scholar of play, the folklorist Brian Sutton-Smith, observed the problem, he surmised that we can hope to know play only by the purposes we ascribe to it; we can see in play only our own ideologies, biases, disciplinary training, and “rhetorics” reflected.“We fall into silliness,” he concluded.2 Avoiding silliness is perhaps not the least of the difficulties that studying play presents; before we can define play, we must locate it. But finding the fuzzy border of play is not impossible if we  \n© 2009 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois  \nhave recourse to an instrument that is sensitive enough to divide the territory between that which is play and that which is not.  \nThis article searches for the outer edge of play byusing a cluster of emotions as a surveying tool. We start with the feeling of “the uncanny.” The uncanny lies just astride the boundary of play. This disquieting, unnerving, spooky, and somewhat sickly sensation contrasts with the pleasure and ease we feel at play; beginning to feel unnerved and spooked isto start to feel the sense of play draining away. Noticing where play leaves off also offers a view of where play begins. Understanding the uncanny (and so marking offa region for play) is a problem beyond any single discipline, in fact it requires some casting about. Instead of a short trip back to the old neighborhood, exploring the disputed horizon between play and nonplay requires an excursion abroad through etymology, the intellectual history of psychology and psychoanalysis, literature, art history, robotics, ethology and evolutionary biology, the history of the advertising and marketing of dolls, the recent insights of neuroscience and perceptual psychology, the perceptions of everyday players themselves, and the recent inventions of popular culture. However winding, the journey in the end rewards the traveler with a surer sense of the territory of play.  \nLocating the Uncanny  \nThe first step into the borderland between play and nonplay begins with the slightly peculiar word uncanny itself. The English word is often used to render a more specific and, for our purposes, useful German adjective unheimlich, whose root heimlich—which translates as “homely”—when negated becomes, literally,“the unhomely,” das Unheimliche. The unhomely carries the sense of the unfamiliar, the strange, or the disquietingly (but no","cbCaijpxrvIeAhsX","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaijpxrvIeAhsX","pdf",304031,28,"English","# Locating the Uncanny\n## The uncanny as a linguistic and conceptual boundary\n## From unheimlich to unsettling realism","[{\"question\":\"Why does the article focus on “the uncanny” when studying play?\",\"answer\":\"Because the uncanny lies right at the boundary of play; feeling uncanny is described as the moment when play begins draining away and dread replaces pleasure.\"},{\"question\":\"What problem does the article identify about defining play?\",\"answer\":\"Play is “notoriously hard to define” and even harder to demarcate, since playful situations vary widely across time and place and players differ from one to the next.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the article use etymology to explain the uncanny?\",\"answer\":\"It traces the English “uncanny” to the German adjective unheimlich, connecting the concept to the negation of heimlich (“homely”), which yields an unfamiliar yet disturbingly familiar sense.\"}]","exploring the Uncanny Valley to Find the edge of Play - Part 1 | PDF",1792072626,71]