Sports and games share many defining features, among them the aspects of playfulness and competition, and new forms of gamified sports and sportified gaming are emerging from the intersections of game and sports cultures. In this essay, we explore a sports competition CrossFit Open 2018 through its various levels of gamefulness and playfulness, asking: In what ways is the CrossFit Open a game? How can it be played? How and whom does it invite to play? In our reading, we present the CrossFit Open as a current pinnacle of the hybridization of sports and games, combining playful forms of exercise with high-level competition, gamified measuring of performance, and participatory play in social media – a game in which the field of
play exceeds the limits between offline and online environments.
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