In the conditions of transformation of sociocultural reality, its processes, levels, spheres, and new integrative social phenomena emerge, the meaning and role of which in the modern world have yet to be clarified. One of such phenomena is serious play. Traditionally, the playful and the serious, at the intersection of which serious play arises, are positioned as independent and mutually exclusive elements of the social world. We examine what changes in the social reality, in the relations of the playful and the serious, in the position of man in modern social processes make serious play possible and how serious play redetermines the conditions of its occurrence. For this, we used methods of philosophical analysis and hermeneutics: interpretation, conceptualization, comparative analysis. As a theoretical and methodological basis, we used the categorical apparatus of social philosophy, theory of practice, pragmatism, and social epistemology. As a result, we found that serious play is thought of as a social process in the range from an individual to global scale. In serious play, the subject, through the generation of meanings, performs both the production and reproduction of culture in predetermined ontoaxiological bases, and constructs these bases, while realizing the degree of his freedom, responsibility and immersion in the world he creates through his practices. The significance of the results of our research lies in the fact that the concept of serious play at the intersection of serious and game relations reveals the potential of serious play as an element of sociocultural reality. Serious play reflects the level of complexity of modern reality and ensures that a person adapts to the ever-increasing dynamics of this complexity. The trend of gamification registers this in the space of higher education, which causes a change in the role of the university in the modern social world. Serious play redefines the position of a person in the modern, dynamic and individualized social world. For the first time, serious play is conceptualized at the intersection of the playful and the serious as independent and mutually exclusive elements of sociocultural reality and is analyzed in the trend of the gamification of higher education.
