Slide Deck: What is a Game?
Game to Play: Lonliness
Video: Extra Credits: What is a Game?
If you randomly asked a person to answer the question “what is a game?,” you would probably get a wide range of answers. Or, potentially, just blank stares. I mean, it’s a game, right? A game is… a game. It’s something you do when you don’t have to do anything else? It’s what kids play?
Now if instead you asked “name a game,” well then you’d probably get a whole list of games, ranging from card games to board games to video games to sports. We can inherently “know” what a game is when we see it, but actually putting a definition to it can be difficult without having a more critical analysis.
Some of my favorite definitions of a game include:
“Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” - Bernard Suits
and
“A game is a system in which players engage in artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.” - Salen & Zimmerman, Rules of Play
McGonigal provides a simple framework - a set of four defining traits - that will serve well as we begin to consider what a game is:
In playing a game, there is something that the player is working to achieve. Some goals are defined by the creator of the game and are incredibly obvious, such as:
But many goals are player driven. These could include:
We will have many more discussion about the different types of goals throughout this course.
Rules define how a player interacts with the game and provides the mechanisms by which the player can achieve their goals. Rules force a player to work creatively within the confines of a particular space.
Humans love feedback. We need to know when we are progressing (ever check your grades along the way in a class?). Have you ever seen someone fall off from an exercise routine becuase they “weren’t seeing results fast enough?” This is one of the reasons gamification works. It adds a layer of concrete, measurable, visible feedback to everyday activities. Feedback tells us that what we are doing within the rules of the game is actually helping us to move toward our goal.
Or more broadly called “the magic circle,” voluntary participation is the agreement of players to work within the agreed upon rules. For example, playing golf doesn’t really “work” if you decide to just pick up the ball and drive the cart to the hole. You have to agree to the arbitrary rules of the game system you are working with.