What is a Game

What is a game? Hmmm, what IS a game? A game is not work, although work might be played as a game. A game is not a higher pursuit, although lofty ambitions may be pursued in play. Unlike much of life, a game has rules, it may be won or lost definitively. A game exists in a containted environment, an augmented simulation of a micro-reality.

I submit the true attraction of a game is to offer a player the opportunity to immerse her self into this augmented simulation — to experience a world alternate to the one she wakes up in. A world with concrete structure, and known risks and rewards. I posit further that a game is, at best, a simplified simulation of life with a set of hypothetically obtainable objectives. A game may elicit emotions of great success or failure, but always offer the promise of improvement and the opportunity to try again and again.

Lets take, for example, a simple game - tic-tac-toe. We have a minimal set of rules: You may mark territory any where on the board that has not been marked; If you form a monopoly on territory by creating three consecutive marks, you win the board; If you’re opponent succeeds in forming a monopoly first, you have lost the board; If you both successfully prevent one another from taking the board, there is a draw. While the game may not be engaging for long, it excites both a sense of cunning and the promise of power within the small universe of tic-tac-toe. It fulfills a sense of achievement, and satisfies a human instinct to solve. These pursuits are much more difficult to access and measure in the full spectrum of life.

So what is a game? A game is nothing less than a minified life. A wedge of our journey from beginning to end that may be executed again and again until perfection is effectuated. What more promise could we ask from any avocation.