Since this is a blog about game design, I thought it would be valuable for me to present my best understanding about what a game actually is. How do you reliably identify a game? Especially if there are things that are game-like but you're not sure if they're games or not, a solid definition can help make distinctions like that.
I have put some significant thought into this question and here are characteristics that I belive must all be satisfied in order for something to qualify as a game:
- It is an activity in which there are knowing, willing, participants
- These participants are players
- Unknowing participants may exist, but they are not players
- For example, if you are playing a game of tag in a train station, other people may factor into the game, but they are not playing the game.
- Some participants are not players even if they are knowingly, willingly, engaged in the activity. Umpires and referees, for example.
- The players agree to a set of constrainted behaviors
- These constraints form the rules of the game
- For example, in chess, the players have constraints on:
- when they may move a piece
- how pieces may be moved
- For example, in chess, the players have constraints on:
- These constraints form the rules of the game
- The game has a defined termination state - it tells you when it is over
- For example, a game may end after a certain amount of regulated time has elapsed
- Football, timed chess, etc.
- Or it may end after a certain condition is satisfied, like a number of actions taken or one or more players out of resources
- Agricola, Monopoly
- For example, a game may end after a certain amount of regulated time has elapsed
- After play, the game will rank and / or sort players
- this usually means into winners and losers
- This does not mean that ties are not possible, only that the game itself will evaluate the players and rank them. Ties are equal rankings.
So by this rubric, I can judge whether something is a game or not. Let's try it out:
- Golf
- When playing with multiple people, golf clearly satisfies all the conditions.
- When playing alone, the player can decide on the sorting condition - previous best score, course par, handicapped par, etc., are all valid sorting mechanisms for solo golf play
- Cards Against Humanity
- Not a game unless the players make it one. By default, the game has no defined termination condition and no defined sorting mechanism.
- By the base rules, CAH is more akin to a toy - an object used for amusement - than a game.
- Toys and amusements and activities may all share some elements in common with games, but they are not themselves games
- Basketball
- All players are knowing, willing participants
- There are knowing, willing, non-player participants - referees, etc.
- They have agreed to a set of constrained behaviors
- limited contact
- must dribble to move
- etc
- The game ends when time is up (certain exceptional cases notwithstanding, and in those cases there are defined termination conditions)
- It sorts winners and losers along team lines by the number of points scored
- Basketball is clearly a game
- Catch
- No defined end condition - you play until you don't want to play any more
- No winners and losers
- Not a game
- A ball is a toy, catch is an activity you can engage in with a ball — I'd call it an amusement because it's typically for recreation
Most sports are games. Bowling is a game. So is croquet. I cannot say all sports are games because I don't know enough sports to be certain that they all fit the rubric, but I suspect that all sports are games, because they end and make winners and losers of their participants.
The reason that I crafted this definition is because I wondered what constitutued a game and how to sort games from game-like or game-adjacent things. And one reason I wanted to do that was because I had begun to suspect that my favorite kind of "game", tabletop roleplaying games, were not actually games at all.
By this rubric, they are (typically) not. They don't tell you when they're over - even the dreaded Total Party Kill isn't necessarily the end of any given game. And when they do end, they don't (again, typically) rank or sort players. There may be in-game rewards (wealth, status, improvement) or meta-game rewards (experience points or some other currency that doesn't exist in the game world but has power there), but there's no concept of winning or losing the game. A battle in the game might be won or lost. Characters in the game may triumph over others or one another. But the game itself declares no winners or losers.
The exception to these is competitive tournament play, which adds a layer of rules to the base activity in order to make it a game and is vanishingly rare compared to other modes of play to begin with. The fact that tournament play adds rules for termination and sorting players is essentially proof that RPGs are misnamed, and are not games at all.