Abstract
Authors are addressing the question of classification on the material of a collection of games of contemporary children aged from the first to the ninth grades (1600 entries, from 81 observed classes, schools; gathered with the help of students visiting the field). In processing the data the inspiration by I.
Opie and P. Opie has been applied twice.
First in an elaboration of their system of the so-called basic motifs; second in an elaboration of their idea of a so-called basic game in classifying from the bottom up. In both classifications emerged two substantive dimensions of games: activity of corporal subjects versus roles in the game.
The first contains the poetics of drives (oral, anal, scopic etc.; in their various transformations), the second cultural and moral relations (Oedipal and its derivatives) working with the former – in patterns like cooperation, competition, bullying, ritualized transformation of some into others, purgative ritual.