The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness
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The Game, the Player, the World: Looking
for a Heart of Gameness
Keynote presented at the Level Up conference in Utrecht, November
4th-6th 2003.
Jesper Juul: &The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness&. In Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference Proceedings, edited by Marinka Copier and Joost Raessens, 30-45. Utrecht: Utrecht University, 2003.
paper proposes a definition of games. I describe the classic game
model, a list of six features that are necessary and sufficient for something
to be a game. The definition shows games to be transmedial: There is
no single game medium, but rather a number of game media, each with its own
strengths. The computer is simply the latest game medium to emerge. While
computer games
are therefore part of the broader area of games, they have in many
cases evolved beyond the classic game model.
definition, game history, computer game history.
Introduction
is there an affinity between computers and games? Why do we play games on
computers rather than using any other recent technology such as the telephone,
TV, microwave ovens, cars, or airplanes? Computers appear to work as enablers
of games, supporting and promoting games much in the way that the technologies
of the printing press, cinema, and television have promoted storytelling.
But how do we explain this affinity?
intention here is to claim the existence of a classic game model; a
standard model for creating games, a model that appears to have been constant
for several thousand years. While computer games were initially based almost
exclusively on the classic game model, we can point to several ways in which
they have evolved from their non-electronic roots.
many definitions of games have been attempted, my goal here is to create a
game definition capable of explaining what relates computer games to other
games and what happens on the borders of the field of games. But what should
the definition to look like? We are probably interested in understanding both
the properties of the games themselves (the artifact designed by the game
developers), how you interact with them as a player, and what the relation
is between playing and, say, working. So let's assume that a good game definition
should describe three things: 1) The kinds of systems set up by the rules
of a game (the game). 2) The relation between the game and the player
of the game (the player). 3) The relation between the playing of the
game and the rest of the world (the world).
demonstrated by Bernard Suits (1978), the simplest way to test a game definition
is to test it for being either too broad or too narrow. To set up the test
before the definition, I will assume that Quake III, EverQuest,
checkers, chess, soccer, tennis, Hearts,
Solitaire and pinball that open-ended simulation
games such as Sims and Sim City, gambling, and games of pure
and that traffic, war, hypertext fiction, free-form
play and ring-a-ring-a-roses are not games. The definition should be able
to tell what falls inside from what falls outside the set of games, but also
to explain in detail why and how some things are on the border of the definition.
The existence of borderline cases is not a problem for the definition as long
as we are able to understand why a specific game is a borderline case.
Some previous definitions
method I am applying here is to go through seven previous definitions of games,
pick out their similarities and point to any modifications or clarifications
needed for our current purpose. But before going over the previous definitions,
we should note that the definitions do not necessarily try to describe the
same aspect of games: Some focus purely on the game as such, some focus purely
on the activity of playing a game. Additionally, it turns out that many things
can be expressed in different ways. When one writer mentions goals and another
mentions conflict, it is possible to translate between them: The notion of
conflict entails (conflicting) the notion of goals seems to entail
the possibility of not reaching the goal, and thereby also a conflict. We
will get back to this, but let us simply list seven game definitions which
we will then categorize afterwards:
Definition
Roger Caillois 1961, p.10-11.
[...] an activity which is essentially: Free (voluntary), separate [in
time and space], uncertain, unproductive, governed by rules, make-believe.
Bernard Suits 1978, p. 34.
To play a game is to engage in activity directed towards bringing about
a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by rules, where
the rules prohibit more efficient in favor of less efficient means,
and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such
Avedon & Sutton Smith 1981, p.7.
At its most elementary level then we can define game as an exercise
of voluntary control systems in which there is an opposition between
forces, confined by a procedure and rules in order to produce a disequilibrial
Chris Crawford 1981, chapter 2.
I perceive four common factors: representation [&a closed formal
system that subjectively represents a subset of reality&], interaction,
conflict, and safety [&the results of a game are always less harsh
than the situations the game models&].
David Kelley 1988, p.50.
a game is a form of recreation constituted by a set of rules that specify
an object to be attained and the permissible means of attaining it.
Katie Salen & Eric Zimmerman 2003, p.96.
A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict,
defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.
are probably more commonalities than differences in these definitions. But
if we return to the idea that we want to look at games on three different
levels, we can sort the points of the individual definitions according to
what they describe. For example, &rules& describes games as a formal
system. That a game is &outside ordinary life& describes the relation
between the game and the rest of the world. But that a game has an &object
to be obtained& describes the game as formal system and the relation
between the player and the game. If we take &goals& and &conflict&
to be different ways of expressing the same concept, this allows us to gather
all the points of the definitions under ten headings:
The game as formal system
The player and the game
The game and the rest of the world
Fixed rules (Huizinga)
Rules (Caillois)
Rules (Suits)
Procedure & rules (Avedon & Sutton-Smith)
Formal system (Crawford)
Rules (Kelley)
Rules (Salen & Zimmerman)
Uncertain (Caillois)
Disequilibrial outcome (Avedon & Sutton-Smith)
Changing Course (Kelley)
Quantifiable outcome (Zimmerman & Salen)
Bringing about a state of affairs (Suits)
Opposition (Avedon & Sutton-Smith)
Conflict (Crawford)
Object to be obtained (Kelley)
Interaction
Interaction (Crawford)
Goals, rules, and the world
Artificial conflict (Zimmerman & Salen)
&Separate&
Outside ordinary life / proper boundaries (Huizinga)
Separate (Caillois)
No material interest (Huizinga)
Unproductive (Caillois)
&Not work&
Free / voluntary (Caillois)
Voluntary control systems (Avedon & Sutton-Smith)
Recreation (Kelley)
Less efficient means
Less efficient means (Suits)
Social groupings
Promotes social groupings (Huizinga)
Representation (Crawford)
Make-believe (Caillois)
Safety (Crawford)
The loose ends
issue of fiction in games is tricky since it depends much on the games we
are looking at. For the time being, suffice to say that some games
have a fictional element, but that it is not universal to games.
The game and the player: A second look at goals
list of examples gives us two border case examples around the concept of goals:
Sims and Sim City are often labeled games even if they do not
have explicit goals. While the games' designer, Will Wright, claims that they
are not games but toys (Costikyan), they are nevertheless often categorized
as &computer games&.
proposal here is to be more explicit about the player's relation to the game
by splitting the concept of goals into three distinct components, namely:
1) Valorization of the possible outcomes: That some outcomes are described
as positive, some as negative. 2) Player effort: That as a player you have
to do something. 3) Attachment of the player to an aspect of the outcome.
As a player you agree to be happy if you win the game, unhappy if you loose
the game. This is part of what we may term the game contract and curiously
happens even in a game of pure chance.
Separate and unproductive: Negotiable consequences
the definition of Roger Caillois, games are both separate in time and
space from the rest of the world and unproductive. It is fairly easy
to find examples of games that transgress the first aspect: It is after all
possible to play chess by mail, in which case the game overlaps daily life,
both in the sense that the time span of the game overlaps a non-game part
of life, and in the sense that it is possible to consider the moves one wants
to play while going around one's daily business. Likewise, many net-based
strategy games stretch over months or even years. The second feature, unproductive,
is dubious if productivity can mean something other than the production of
physical goods. Caillois' suggestion is that even gambling does not produce
anything. From an economic viewpoint, this is problematic since gambling is
in fact a huge industry. Let us note that it is possible to bet on the outcome
of any game,
and that many people do make a living playing games.
Separation
is a special issue in live action role-playing games, where the games may
be played in spaces also used for &normal life&. In these cases,
specific descriptions have to be made as to what interactions are allowed
between non-playing people and players.
a step back, we can see that the notion of separate and the notion
of games being unproductive are quite similar in two respects, 1) both
specify what interactions are possible (and allowed) between the game activity
and the rest of the world and 2) both are clearly not perfect boundaries,
but rather fuzzy areas under constant negotiation.
Caillois claims that a game played involuntarily is not a game, we need to
make a distinction between a given game and a given playing of a game. All
copies of Quake III do not suddenly cease to be games because someone is making
money playing it. And since all games are potential targets of betting and
of professional playing, I suggest that games are characterized by being activities
with negotiable consequences: A specific playing of a game may have
assigned consequences, but a game is a game because the consequences are optionally
assignable on a per-play basis. That games carry a degree of separation from
the rest of the world follows from their consequences being negotiable.
A new definition:
6 game features
The game definition I propose finally has 6 points: 1) Rules: Games
are rule-based. 2) Variable, quantifiable outcome: Games have variable,
quantifiable outcomes. 3) Value assigned to possible outcomes: That
the different potential outcomes of the game are assigned different values,
some being positive, some being negative. 4) Player effort: That the
player invests effort in order to influence the outcome. (I.e. games are challenging.)
5) Player attached to outcome: That the players are attached to the
outcomes of the game in the sense that a player will be the winner and &happy&
if a positive outcome happens, and loser and &unhappy& if a negative
outcome happens. 6) Negotiable consequences: The same game [set of
rules] can be played with or without real-life consequences.
A game is a rule-based formal system with a variable and quantifiable outcome,
where different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts
effort in order to influence the outcome, the player feels attached to the
outcome, and the consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable.
The game as formal system
The player and the game
The game and the rest of the world
Variable and quantifiable outcome
Valorization of outcomes
Player effort
Player attached to outcome
Negotiable consequences
1, 2, and 4 describe the properties of the game as a formal system.
3 describes the values assigned to the possible outcomes of the system
- the goal that the player must strive for.
4-5 describe the relation between the system and the player. (Feature
4 describes both the fact that the game system can be influenced by player
input and that the player does something.)
6 describes the relation between the game activity and the rest of the
point merits further elaboration:
1. Fixed rules
have rules.
The rules of games have to be sufficiently well defined that they can either
be programmed on a computer or sufficiently well defined that you do not have
to argue about them every time you play. In fact, the playing of a non-electronic
game is an activity that in itself involves trying to remove any unclearness
in the game rules: If there is disagreement about the rules of the game, the
game is stopped until the disagreement has been solved. In a commercial game,
the developer will (hopefully) have made sure that the rules are unambiguous,
but what about non-commercial games? A non-electronic and &folk&
(i.e. non-commercial) game tends to drift towards becoming unambiguous, not
in the sense that they don't require ingenuity to play, but in the
sense that it doesn't require ingenuity to uphold the rules. This explains
some of the affinity between games and computers - and the fact that a several
thousand year old non-electronic game is easily implementable in a computer
program: The drive towards unambiguity in games makes them ripe for implementation
in a programming language.
borrow some concepts from computer science, the rules of any given game can
be compared to a piece of software that then needs hardware
to actually be played. In games, the hardware can be a computer, mechanical
contraptions, the laws of physics, or even the human brain.
2. Variable and quantifiable outcome
something to work as a game, the rules of the game must provide different
possible outcomes. This is pretty straightforward, but for a game to work
as a game activity, the game must also fit the skills of the player(s).
Consider this game of tic-tac-toe:
1. X places in the
2. O places in the bottom middle.
3. X places in the bottom right corner.
4. O has no choice but to block the top left.
5. X places in the middle right square, and thereby threatens on two squares
simultaneously (left middle, top right).
6. At this point, O has lost simply due to the fact that the first
move (bottom middle) was a mistake.
is a general property of tic-tac-toe: If your opponent begins with the middle,
you must always place your first piece in the corner, otherwise you
will loose to a reasonably intelligent opponent.
This incidentally explains why tic-tac-toe is a children's game, and this
is where we find that there is a subjective aspect to games: As a child, tic-tac-toe
remains interesting because you still find the choices mentally challenging.
Once you figure out the principle, you will achieve a draw every time you
play. Variable outcome depends on who plays them, i.e. if players always achieve
a draw or if a master player plays his/her best against a beginner, it does
not really work as a game activity.
games provide features for ensuring a variable outcome. For example, Go, golf,
or fighting games like Tekken allow for handicaps for the players in
an attempt to even out skill differences. A few racing games arguably cheat
to even out the skill differences between players: In Gran Turismo 3,
players who are trailing behind on the race track automatically drive faster
than the leading players, allowing them to catch up.
players themselves may feign ineptitude in order to bring some uncertainty
about the outcome - the Tekken player may pla the race
game player may simply drive slowly or even reverse the car, the chess player
may try especially daring strategies. We might term this player-organized
criticality - in the same way that players try to uphold the rules, the
players may also try to uphold ensure a variable game outcome.
quantifiable outcome means that the outcome of a game is designed to be beyond
discussion, meaning that the goal of Pac Man is to get many points,
rather than to &move in a pretty way&.
Since playing a game where the participants disagree about the outcome is
rather problematic, this undergoes the same development as the rules of a
game, towards unambiguity.
3. Valorization of the outcome
simply means that some of the possible outcomes of the game are better than
others. In a multiplayer game, the individual players are usually assigned
conflicting positive outcomes (this is what creates the conflict in a game).
values of the different outcomes of the game can be assigned in different
ways: It can be a statement on the box (&Defend the Earth&); it
can be stated in the inst it can be signaled by the fact
that some actions give a high by virtue of there only
being one way of progressing and mak or it can be implicit
from the setup - being attacked by hostile monsters usually means that the
player has to defend him/herself against them.
is a tendency that the positive outcomes are harder to reach than the negative
outcomes - this is what make a game where it was easier
to reach the goal than not to reach it would likely not be played very much.
4. Player effort
effort is another way of stating that games are challenging, or that games
contain a conflict, or that games are &interactive&. It is a part
of the rules of most games (expect games of pure chance) that the players'
actions can influence the game state and game outcome. The investment of player
effort tends to lead to an attachment of the player to the outcome
since the investment of energy into the game makes the player (partly) responsible
for the outcome.
5. Attachment of the player to the outcome
Attachment
of the player to the outcome is a psychological feature of the game activity
which means that there is a convention by which the player is attached to
specific aspects of the outcome. A player may actually feel happy if he/she
wins, and actually unhappy if he/she looses. Curiously, this is not just related
to player effort: A player may still feel happy when winning a game of pure
chance. As such, attachment of the player to the outcome is a less formal
category than the previous ones in that it depends on the player's attitude
it is part of what we may term the &game contract&
or lusory attitude (Suits, p.38-40) that the player agrees to by playing.
The spoilsport is one who refuses to seek enjoyment in winning, or refuses
to become unhappy by loosing.
6. Negotiable consequences
game is characterized by the fact that it can optionally be assigned
real-life consequences. The actual assignment can be negotiated on a play-by-play,
location by location, and person to person basis. So while it is possible
to bet on the outcome of any normally for-fun-game, it is impossible to enter
a casino in Las Vegas and play without betting money.
a player loses a game and faces horrible consequences from this, it is then
a question of honor to conform to the negotiated outcome. We should probably
emphasize that there is a difference between the actual operations of the
game and the outcome of the game. The only way for a game to have negotiable
consequences is to have the operations and moves needed to play
the game are predominantly harmless. Any game involving actual weapons has
strong non-negotiable consequences. This is in itself a point of contention
since especially sports carry a lot of injuries and even death with them.
Arguably, part of the fascination with some sports such as boxing or motor
sports lie in the fact that they are dangerous. But yet it is part of how
we treat these games that injuries should be avoided. There will be a public
outrage if Le Mans has slack security precautions.
even so, all games have some officially sanctioned non-optional consequences,
namely in that they make take the time and energy of the players, and, more
prominently, the attachment described in point 5: that games are allowed to
make the players happy or unhappy, to hurt or boost their pride. But then
again, only within certain negotiable limits, since there are some quite well-known
transgressions such as excessive sulking (being a poor loser), excessive boasting,
leaving the game prematurely if one is losing. Especially the amount of permissible
teasing and provoking of other players is not set in stone. In actuality,
there is a continuous breaking of these ideals: friendships may end over negotiations
in M players may get angry that their loved ones didn't protect them
in a game of Counter-Strike. However, it is apparently an ideal for game-playing
that this kind of thing should not occur. It seems that the explicitly negotiated
consequences concern aspects that the players can consciously control - such
as the exchange of goods - but that involuntary and less controllable reactions
such as joy or sorrow require a testing of the waters and are generally less
clearly defined.
A special issue regards professional sports. According to Roger Caillois,
the professional player or athlete is working rather than playing (p.6). This
quickly becomes rather counterintuitive since a contest such as a marathon
may include professional athletes as well as amateurs who are running &for
the fun of it&. This would logically mean that the marathon is and isn't
a game at the same time. A better description is to say that even professional
players are playing a game, but in this specific game session,
the consequences have been negotiated to be financial and career-determining.
Perhaps the reason why we can discuss whether professional sports are games
or not is that we associate the game rules with the context they are usually
used in. We tend to not think of something as a game if we have only seen
it performed without serious consequences. Hence, even though the rules governing
the stock market or elections could be used for game purposes, we do not consider
them games, and though soccer is played professionally, we consider it a game
because we are also aware that it is being playing in non-professional settings.
The game diagram
diagram form, all of this can be visualized as two circles as things considered
games having all 6 features within the inner circle, borderline or game-like
cases falling in the outer circle, and decidedly non-game cases falling outside
the outer circle as well:
with the borderline cases: Pen and paper Role-playing games are not normal
games because with a human game master, their rules are not fixed beyond discussion.
Open-ended simulations like Sim City fall outside because they have no explicit
goals, i.e. no explicit value attached to the possible outcomes of
the game, but what happens in the game is still attached to the player, and
the player invests effort in playing Sim City.
completely outside the set of games, free-fo hypertext
fiction tends to be a question of browsing a story that doesn' structured
play like ring-a-ring-a-roses has rules, bu movies and
storytelling tend to have values attached to the outcome even if there is
watching Conway's game of life unfold or watching a fireplace qualifies
as a watching a system with rules and variable outcome, but no values are
assigned to t the player is not attached to the outcome,
and no player effort required.
shares most of the game features, namely rules (traffic laws), variable outcome
(you either arrive or you don't arrive safely), value attached to outcome
(arriving safely is better), player effort, and players attached to the outcome
(you actually arrive or do not), but the consequences of traffic are not
optional - moving in traffic always has real-life consequences. The
same applies to the concept of noble war such as war waged respecting the
Geneva Convention.
Transmedial gaming
definition of games proposed here does not tie games to any specific medium
or any specific set of props. Furthermore, we know that many games actually
move between media: Card games are played on computers, sports continue to
be a popular computer game genre, and computer games occasionally become board
games. Since this to my knowledge has not been explored in any systematic
way, we can take a cue from discussions of stories: Narratives can not be
viewed independently, an sich, but only through a medium like oral
storytelling, novels, and movies. But we can see that narratives exists since
they can be translated from one medium to another:
This transposability
of the story is the strongest reason for arguing that narratives are indeed
structures independent of any medium. (Chatman 1978,
it is clear that something can be passed between a novel and a movie and back,
it is also clear that not everything passes equally well. For example, novels
are strong in creating inner voices and thoughts, while movies better at conveying
can therefore view games in a similar perspective: While there is no single
or set of props that is the game medium, games do exist, and do contain
recognizable features whether being card games, board games, computers games,
sports, or even mind games. Looking at all these, it is quite clear that there
is no set of equipment or material support common to all games. What
is common, however, is a specific sort of immaterial support, namely
the upholding of the rules, the determination of what moves and actions are
permissible and what they will lead to. This can conveniently be described
as computation, which is in actuality provided by human beings (in
board games or card games), computers, or physical laws (in sports).
reason why the card game Hearts is transferable to a computer is that
the computer can uphold and compute the rules that would normally be
upheld by humans, and that the computer has the memory capacity to
remember game state and the interface to respond to player input.
So the adaptation of board and card games to computers is possible due to
the fact that computers are capable of performing 1) the operations defined
in the rules of the games, operations that is normally be performed by humans,
and 2) the keeping track of the game state which is normally done using cards
and board pieces. What we have is therefore an ecology of game media that
support gaming, but do so differently, and of games that move between different
media, sometimes with ease, sometimes with great difficulty.
qualifies as on of the most broadly implemented games, since chess is available
as a board game, on computers, as well as being played blind, where
the players keep track of the game state in their head. Sports are somewhat
special in that the properties of the individual human body are part of the
game state. This means that there is less of a clear distinction between the
game state and the rest of the world, and that the rules are less clearly
defined (hence the need for an umpire).
Game implementations and game adaptations
that there are differences in the way that games move between media. Card
games on computers should be considered implementations since it is
possible to unambiguously map one-to-one correspondences between all the possible
game states in the computer version and in the physical card game. Sports
games on computers are better described as adaptations since much detail
is lost on the level of the rules and game state since the physics model of
the computer program is a simplification of the real world, and in the interface
because the player's body is not part of the game state. Adapting soccer
to computers is therefore a highly selective adaptation.
media support games in three distinct ways:
Computation: How the game medium upholds the rules and decides
what happens in response to player input.
Game state: What keeps track of the current game state.
Interface: How detailed an influence the players have on
the game state. For example, a simple yes/no choice is one bit, whereas
in competitive sports, the detail of the influence is huge since the players
themselves are part of the game state.
distinction between computation and game state is necessary in order to explain
the differences between some of the game media mentioned here. In technical
terms, the distinction between computation and game state corresponds to the
low-level distinction in the computer between CPU (computation) and the RAM
Conclusions
some writers have claimed that games are forever indefinable or ungraspable,
I hope to have indicated that games do have something in common, that
we can talk about the borders between games and what is not games,
and that it makes sense to look at computer games as being the latest development
in a history of games that spans millennia.
definition proposed here describes games mainly as real rule-based systems
that players interact with in the real world. This is a markedly different
description from another common one, namely that of describing games as fictive
worlds. The relation between these two perspectives is something of an ongoing
discussion in games, for game players, and for game designers. In theoretical
terms, the question of fiction in games has been described in different, conflicting
ways. Erving Goffman proposes a principle called rules of irrelevance,
meaning that the specific shape of a piece in a game is not important. This
goes against Crawford's emphasis on the safety on games and Caillois'
mention of make-believe - in both cases, the fictive or make-believe
aspect of games is considered important. The relation between rules and fiction
in games is a huge subject of its own, but suffice to say that it's not an
either/or question.
Discussing
the rules of games, we may have a nagging feeling that games contain a built-in
contradiction: Since we would normally assume play to be a free-form activity
devoid of constraints, it appears illogical that we would choose to limit
our options by playing games with fixed rules. Why be limited when we can
be free? The answer to this is basically that games provide context for actions:
Moving an avatar is much more meaningful in a game environment than in an
throwing a ball has more interesting implications on the playing
field than o a rush attack is only possible if there
are rules specify winning the game requires that the
winning conditio without rules in chess, there are no
checkmates, end games, or Sicilian openings. The rules of a game add meaning
and enable actions by setting up differences between potential
moves and events.
After the classic game model
computer games mostly fall into the classic game model, they also modify and
work with many of the conventions of classic games. We find that games have
changed. So while we can talk about games as being a fairly well-defined form,
computer games also modify the classic game model and the history of computer
games is to a large extent is about breaking with this standard model of games:
While computer games are just as rule-based as other games, they modify
the classic game model in that it is now the computer that upholds
the rules. This adds a lot of flexibility to computer games, allowing
for muc it frees the player(s) from having to enforce
the rules, and it allows for games where the player does not know the
rules from the outset.
The concept of a variable outcome is modified in online role-playing games
such as EverQuest, where the player never reaches a final outcome
but only a temporary one when logging out of the game.
Open-ended simulation games such as The Sims change the classic
game model by removing the goals, or more specifically, by not
describing some possible outcomes as better than others.
Perhaps implicit in the traditional game model is that fact that a game
is bound the game has a specific duration and a specific
location. Location-based games and assassin's games break this concept,
as do some &real-world& games such as Majestic.
The common practice of including semi-official cheat codes in modern computer
games means that the player in many cases is free to modify some of the
b the game acquires a quality of becoming a playground
or a sandbox.
The affinity between computers and games
is there an affinity between computers and games? First of all, because games
are a transmedial phenomenon. The material support needed to play a game (like
the projector and the screen in cinema) is in fact immaterial since
games are not tied to a specific set of material devices, but to the computational
processing of data. Secondly, because the well-defined character of game rules
means that computers can process them. It is then one of the stranger ironies
of human history, that the games played and developed over thousands of years
have turned out to fit the modern digital computer so well.
six game features are necessary and sufficient for something to be a game,
meaning that all games have these six features, and that having these features
is enough to make something a game. While we can imagine any number of other
phenomena that share only some of these traits and some others, the claim
here is that this specific intersection is uniquely productive, allowing for
the huge variation and creativity that we are witnessing in games.
game model is the basis on which games are constructed. It corresponds to
the it is like the canvas of painting or the words of
the novel. The game model doesn't mean that all games are the same, but that
these six features are what games use to be different from each other.
the revolution in games that computers have provided is one of their strongest
contributions to human culture. We like to play games, so now we play computer
Acknowledgements
am indebted to Clara Fernandez, Chaim Gingold, Henry Jenkins, Aki J&rvinen,
Susana Pajares Tosca and Eric Zimmerman for comments & discussions.
References
Avedon, E.M. & Sutton-Smith, Brian: The Study of Games. John
Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1981.
Bateson, Gregory: A Theory of Play and Fantasy. University of Chicago
Press, Chicago, 1972.
Caillois, Roger: Man, play, and games. The Free Press, Glencoe,
New York, )
Chatman, Seymour: Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction
and Film. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1978.
Costikyan, Greg: I Have No Words & I Must Design. 1994.
Available at
Crawford, Chris: The Art of Computer Game Design. 1982.
Available at
Goffman, Erving: Fun in Games. The Penguin Press, New York, 1972
Huizinga, Johan: Homo Ludens. The Beacon Press, Boston, ).
Kelley, David: The Art of Reasoning. W. W. Norton & Company,
New York, 1988.
Suits, Bernard: The Grasshopper. University of Toronto Press, Toronto,
Suits, Bernard:&Tricky Triad: Games, Play, and Sport&. In: Morgan,
William J. & Meier, Klaus V. (eds.): Philosophic Inquiry in Sport.
2nd ed. Human Kinetics, Champaign, Illinois, 1995.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig: Philosophical Investigations. Basil Blackwell,
Oxford, 1958.
Salen, Katie & Zimmerman: Eric. Rules of Play - Game Design Fundamentals.
MIT Press, Cambridge, 2003.
Electronic Arts: Fifa 2003. Electronic Arts, 2003.
ID Software: Quake III Arena. Electronic Arts, 1999.
Maxis: Sim City, 1989.
Maxis: The Sims. Electronic Arts, 2000.
MIT Assassins' guild: Vive la R&volution. Live action role-playing
game, Sunday February 23, 2003.
Namco: Pac-Man. 1980.
Namco: Tekken Tag Tournament. 2000.
Polyphony Digital: Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec. Sony 2001.
Verant Interactive: EverQuest. Sony Online Entertainment, 1999.
By computer games I mean all games played using computer processing power:
PC and Macintosh-based games, console games, arcade games, cell phone games,
It is of course a common assumption, following Ludwig Wittgenstein, that games
cannot be defined.
Consider for example the proceedings we call 'games'. I mean board-games,
card-games, ball-games, Olympic Games, and so on. What is common to them all?
Don't say, 'There must be something common, or else they would not be all
called &games&', but look and see whether there is anything common
I can think of no better expression to characterize these similarities than
'family resemblances', for the various resemblances among members of the same
family: build, features, color of eyes, walk, temperament, etc. overlap and
criss-cross in the same way. And I shall say, 'Games form a family.'
(Philosophical Investigations, segment 66-67.)
As Bernard Suits points out (Suits 1978, p.x), the suggestion that we should
look and see whether there are commonalities to games is a good one, but it
is unfortunately not really an advice that Wittgenstein himself follows.
This table was inspired by Zimmerman & Salen's work on game definitions,
where they provide a more fine-grained table of 8 different game definitions
(2003, p.95).
The possibility of betting hinges on the quantitative outcome of a game -
it is only possible to bet if the outcome is beyond discussion.
In the MIT Assassins' guild game played February 23rd 2003, the rules stated
the following:
Non-Players:
Not everyone in the world is playing in this game. Some non-players (NPs)
like to sleep
others just don't like having toy guns
waved in their faces. [...] NPs may not knowingly affect the game. They may
not be used to hold items or information. They may not help you kill someone.
Do not use the presence of NPs to hide from rampaging mobs that want your
(MIT Assassin's guild 2003, p. 1)
I have often met resistance to the idea that games have formal rules, probably
because it sounds too much like structuralism. But there is a difference.
I think that especially in structuralist narratology, many mistaken assumptions
were made - a story does not really have a simple under
there is no formula for the creation of all stories. Neither is there a formula
for the creation of games. However, every game is a formula for the creation
of the game sessions. There is a limited amount of games that can be played
in tic-tac-toe, Quake III, or chess. In Quake or chess, the number is simply
rather large.
This is an emergent or perhaps 2nd order consequence of the rules of tic-tac-toe:
The rules of tic-tac-toe it is a consequence of
the rules of the game.
Some judged sports such as figure skating rely on the extra layer of judges
to transform the qualitative movement of the skater into a quantitative outcome.
(See Suits 1995 for a discussion.)
Rather much of the enjoyment of role-playing games is due to the flexibility
of the rules.
I am using the term medium in a rather non-technical sense, as a set
of technologies that support a variety of different expressions. Due to the
general plasticity of rule-based systems, we could potentially describe games
as media and game media on a number of different levels:
Games as such can be viewed as an immaterial medium.
Computers as such are a game medium.
A Playstation 2 or any other console is a game medium
A set of cards (combined with a human brain) or any other set of physical
props is a game medium.
Any toolkit or engine for making games (such as RenderWare, Lithtech,
or Half-Life, or Counter-Strike) is a game medium, with the option of
building an infinite number of sub-media on top, each with their own affordances
and constraints.
What is perhaps counterintuitive is that it is very hard to realistically implement
the physics of something like pool, soccer, or bowling in computer games.
In fact, at the time of writing, there are several companies such as Havok
and Mathengine dedicated exclusively to providing simulation of physics in
computer games.