the net raiders

Here’s a question that I’ve always thought was interesting. It was something I was presented with a year ago when I started at the Art Institute to work on my BS in Game Art and Design, and has just recently been brought to my attention again. So here we go!

What is a “game”?

Think about it for a minute. What are the essential parts of a game that make it a game. A lot of the time you get answers like; entertaining, storyline, rules, objectives, challenge, user interface, environment, etc. But are all games entertaining? Do all games have a storyline? When you play games like “the floor is lava” (which means you’re probably broke) there is no user interface. Same with sports. There’s nothing between you and the game.

Generally in these discussions we manage to break down the term “game” into two things; rules and objectives. And that’s all a game really is. You have a set of rules that you must follow in order to complete an objective. The challenge in the game comes from the rules and the objective. Everything else is subjective material that isn’t necessary for you to be able to play the game. Given of course you need chess pieces to play chess, or cards to play Solitaire.

Here’s my next question; What is the difference between a game, and a sport? For this, I have no answer for you. Generally people consider it something in which your body must be involved to be a sport, aka not video games. However a lot of people consider Chess or Poker as a sport (I don’t). I encourage you to think about this, and explore how limited we are by our use of language to convey ideas that seem so easy to grasp in our minds.