Zimmerman’s article seems to be written almost as a correction for or defense against Consalvo’s “narrow” point of view on the magic circle. He does acknowledge the fact that we all bring preexisting knowledge to games when we play them, but he argues that this doesn’t matter, and that the concept of the magic circle is more prominent when playing games. However, his most fascinating claim is that we can, “think of almost any physical or social space as a magic circle.”
Wark actually briefly touches on this theory as well, or at least he seems to imply that he agrees with this notion. I don’t remember the exact page, but he has a section in Gamer Theory that discusses boredom, which is the time in-between play where you seemingly have nothing to do. It sounded like Wark was implying that we are never truly bored and are still playing some sort of game in our state of boredom, which can be seen as implementing the magic circle into “physical and social spaces.”
This reading also supports Wark’s theory of gamespace, because the idea that the magic circle is carried over into real life from games can imply that we are simply carrying out tasks through algorithmic functions as an ends to our means.
Game Studies 