The lusory attitude is the psychological attitude required of a player

Player (game)

A player of a game is a participant therein. The term 'player' is used with this same meaning both in game theory and in ordinary recreational games....

 entering into the play

Play (activity)

Play is a term employed in ethology and psychology to describe to a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment...

 of a game

Game

A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements...

. To adopt a lusory attitude is to accept the arbitrary rules of a game in order to facilitate the resulting experience of play.

The term was coined by Bernard Suits in the book The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia, first published in 1978, in which Suits defines the playing of a game as "the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles". He also offers a fuller definition:

"To play a game is to attempt to achieve a specific state of affairs [prelusory goal], using only means permitted by rules [lusory means], where the rules prohibit use of more efficient in favour of less efficient means [constitutive rules], and where the rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity [lusory attitude]."