What is a Game?
Jack Martinez-Kearns
Prof. Roberts
MEA 300
9/4/2017
A game is any interaction with preset rules, a player, a goal, and some obstacle or impediment to reaching this goal. As stated in chapter 1 “The Art of Computer Game Design” by Chris Crawford, there are 5 types of games: board games, card games, athletic games (sports), and computer games (video games).
Chess, for example, is a board game in which the goal is to capture the opposing player’s king. The impediment to this is the opposing player’s pieces, which block access to the king and can capture the player’s pieces. The rules dictate the type of movement each piece is allowed to make in certain scenarios. Also stated by Crawford, an important aspect of a game is that its rules should cover all scenarios within the game; No situation should arise that cannot be answered by the rules. Chess (again, for example) does this successfully by having an exact playing surface in each match, exact piece configuration at the start of each match, and specific parameters each piece must follow while making a movement.
There are exceptions to this, however. Baseball, for example, is certainly a game; however, the playing surface varies from venue to venue. The dimensions of the outfield change drastically at different ballparks. To limit the amount of confusion and guesswork that arises from this fact, each ballpark has identical dimensions for the infield, and ballparks have what are known as “ground rules” in which certain rules are made specifically to accommodate the dimensions of the venue. For example, Tropicana Field, home of the Tampa Bay Rays, has an enclosed roof with multiple maintenance catwalks. These catwalks sometimes stop a baseball in mid-air. To accommodate this occurrence, the Rays have made a ground rule stating that balls that strike the roof or any structure attached to the roof is out-of-play and doesn’t count. Therefore, although some games may have variable playing conditions, the rules should be able to accommodate for this.
