What is a game?

[rant]How often does this happen? You lie down, attempting to sleep, and your mind refuses to rest because it's too busy forming all sorts of thoughts that could be strung together as an essay? That's what happened, and so I might as well get that written down so that I can sleep in peace.[/rant]

When reading Joshua's lj post about this topic, I was strongly reminded of a philosopher's comment regarding Socrates' policy on having strict definitions in order to dwell on the meaning. I wish I can provide the name of that philosopher, and the exact quote, but sad to say, I can't find the Reason and Persuasion lecture notes that mentioned it, so here's the gist.

If Socrates were asked "What is a game?", he'll ask that you define it in terms of what all games have in common, because that would be the logical thing to do. The problem, if I recall correctly, with that would be that the word "game" is really more of a broad category, or "family", as the philosopher-whose-name-escapes-me said, and all of its members would be further divided into sub-categories because they don't all share enough characteristics to accurately define what a game is.

For instance, a child throwing a ball at a wall and catching it repeatedly could be considered a game (at least that philosopher viewed it as such when elaborating on his point). Soccer is a game. Chess is a game. The Sims is a game. Mad Magazine (board game version) is also a game. Do they all have something in common that accurately defines what a game is? I would think not, because they're all vastly different. Soccer is a physical sort of game that has to be played in two teams, and the objective would be to score more points than the other team in order to win. Chess is a two-player board game, and the winner is one who's able to checkmate the opponent's King. The Sims is a computer game where you play god and control the fates of a bunch of characters, and there's no end state at all, because the game continues regardless of how successful or unsuccessful your characters are (unless they all die, but still, the game doesn't officially end). The first example doesn't even have any form of competition at all, never mind that there's no other way to end that game but to stop. The last one is really about being the first to go bankrupt, which goes against the convention of traditional board games where the winner is the one who makes the most money as the winner in this case is the biggest loser.

I agree with his criticism (and it's a pity I can't properly credit him for it), but that doesn't really answer the question on what a game is, so I'll try to give a definition and describe the differences as well, because these two together would give a better picture of what a game is. A strict definition of a game is an activity where one or more people partake in it and observe whatever rules it has in order to achieve an objective. A game can be competitive in nature, a leisure activity, a physical one, a virtual one, or can be a combination of these or others. Often, a game is played because the player/s want/s to achieve some sort of goal, whether it's to de-stress, to socialise, to pass away the time, to be challenged, to get rewards, to become famous, to be in control and feel good about oneself, to have fun, or to "escape" from the real world. Not all games can be won (or lost, for that matter), and not all games have an end state. Some games pit people against each other (eg. Monopoly), and some games require co-operation from all the players to win (eg. Dungeons and Dragons). I'm not too sure if there's a game that has no rules. Even if the rule is "There are no rules", that arguably would still be counted as a rule, because it sets the expectations of the game, no matter how contradictory it sounds.

The other question will be tackled later.