2025, dec 29 - what do people say they think games are?

[droqen]

i made a bleet asking people to share definitions of games. i may edit this opening post to be the summary.

[A -> B]

[droqen]

raw notes below:

[droqen]

I went to the reference library and grabbed a shit load of books. None of the books I expected were here (not in this section anyway) but lots by authors I recognized. And, unfortunately, my old enemy: Games: Agency as Art. I grabbed some random books too.

* It's nice going to the library and finding adjacent books. It's much more satisfying than going to Wikipedia and getting lost. Maybe I need to describe the difference someday but for now I think it's just worth stating as a touchstone. I'll get back to that.

[droqen]

this adventure has lead me down a path of trying to understand play, rather than games. the way that 'games' are defined is very silly. will 'play' make any more sense? i theorize not

[droqen]

paying close attention to a changing system.

[droqen]

my go l is not to redefine games. i'll state that for myself. so, like, what the hell do i want? i'm currently sifting through definitions of games which center largely around

- rules, and a system or systems
- a player who makes decisions or takes actions, in order to alter the outcome
- more simply, we could just say a player, one who plays, or play.

Suits describes "a voluntary attempt", so even more broadly, there is some agent, acting at the dead center of each definition of games that I encounter.

[droqen]

idiosyncratic/personally provided definitions
- failure is part of the cultivated aesthetic experience
- when pixels dance to your baton
- ". . . anything you are still wrong about. so puzzles stop being games once solved . . ."
- a repeating set of chores that evoke surprisingly strong emotions
- voluntary / interactive / uncertain outcome / goal / has rules / has a force acting against the player / if there are multiple players (with opposing goals) they can impact one another

from books and stuff, still idiosyncratic but with more reach
- selection of idiosyncratic means / the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles
- a series of interesting choices
- closed, formal system that engages players in a structured conflict and resolves its uncertainty in an unequal outcome
- a problem-solving activity, approached with a playful attitude
- a system of rules in which agents compete by making ambiguous endogenously meaningful decisions ('endogenously' is roughly synonymous with 'intrinsically motivated', i.e. decisions which are meaningful due to the individual finding or making 'their own' meaning in them)
- a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome (blah so boring and dry! it just has all the expected bits)
- voluntary activity or occupation (this is "play", not games)
- manipulation that indulges curiousity (this is "play", not games)
- activities performed for self-amusement that have behavioral, social, and psychomotor rewards (this is "play", not games)
- free movement within a more rigid structure (this is "play", not games)

credit given for quotes in this kinopio

[droqen]

what is my purpose? i would like to understand what a game is without gameplay, or even, what a game is without play. it follows then that i must understand what a game is without a player. i notice that many definitions of games are given in two parts: a game is a set of formal qualities regarding the artifact + some experiential qualities. what is the purpose of connecting these two? for example, the definition "a repeating set of chores that evoke surprisingly strong emotions" could be separated out into two aspects. "a repeating set of chores" may have any output, and then any input may "evoke surprisingly strong emotions". what can be learned from this?

inputs, formal parts
- a repeating set of chores
- a series of choices
- a system of rules in which agents compete by making decisions
- activities performed
- an attempt to overcome obstacles
- has a goal
- has rules
- has or is a system
- a force acts against the player
- ("has a player" is taken for granted, almost never specified as part of the definition)
- manipulation
- has an outcome
- a problem-solving activity
- engages players
- closed, formal system
- structured conflict

outputs, experiential parts
- (choices are) interesting
- (decisions are) endogenously meaningful
- (result of activities is) behavioral rewards
- (result of activities is) social rewards
- (result of activities is) psychomotor rewards
- (obstacles are) unnecessary [i don't think this counts as experiential, it's more formal]
- (attempts, participation, etc are) voluntary
- (outcome is) uncertain [i don't think this counts as experiential, it's more formal]
- (activity is) approached with a playful attitude
- indulges curiousity

not sure if this is really a proper dichotomy at this point but something i want to examine

[droqen]

a nonlinear set of states.

[droqen]

from: https://www.ericzimmerman.com/assets/pdfs/MCJ_Zimmerman.pdf
via, conversationally: https://bsky.app/profile/mattweiner19.bsky.social/post/3mb5yghkdyc2t

Revised definition of the idea of the magic circle: ". . . when a game is played, new meanings are generated. These meanings mix elements intrinsic to the game and elements outside the game."

[droqen]

ok, my basic premise

- there is a formal structure that lies above and beyond games, a superset within which games are a successful pattern.

- this formal structure is "a nonlinear set of states." the reason for videogames' blowing up is related to computation because computation has enabled the vastly improved authoring of nonlinear sets of states, giving birth to a brand new raw material.

- given the raw material of "a nonlinear set of states," questions arise: 1, what states shall we present? and 2, exactly how shall they be organized nonlinearly?

- at the same time as games, we get computer GUIs, wikis, the internet. we now have LLMs. all these practice different interfaces for exploring different nonlinear state spaces. and we also have games.

[droqen]

i want to get back to games. so, all these different definitions of games -- actually, let's look at "a game is when pixels dance to your baton" and "a game is a type of soft where you move around a critter or creature" -- these are descriptions of the kind of agency-centric illusion produced by games, as though what the player is doing is waving a baton to make pixels dance, or moving a critter or creature. while this is of course one way to look at it, another way to look at it is that the pixels or critter or creature in question has a finite number of states, predetermined by the nature of the program, and this is the agency-metaphor which has been authored and provided to you for navigating the state-space.

other definitions describe choices, chores, rules, agents competing, goals, conflicts obstacles, attempting to overcome obstacles, we can add in attempting to achieve goals and win conflicts. it is true that many games have these. my question is why? if i look at the base material that i've defined, some force has drawn countless artists and players to participate in the creation of these dramas via mechanisms of limiting players' abilities to navigate nonlinear state-spaces. nonlinear state-spaces are inherently very complex to navigate. linearity is easy to navigate, while nonlinear state-space--which may have countless dimensions--gets incredibly complicated very quickly.

computers make it very easy to create a very large and uninteresting state-space (for example, by putting a player on an empty 100x100 grid and allowing them to move around to any space on the grid, you have already created a huge state-space of 10,000 positions, and these states are not very interesting because they are so similar), so the work of a programmer-designer involves limiting the state-space to maximize the average interestingness of all states.

[droqen]

well, a good programmer-designer, anyway ;)

[droqen]

can i make it pithier?

there is a superset above games, which contains the set of all games. this category is defined as "a nonlinear set of states." this definition is intentionally vague about all of these things that most game definitions tend to include:

- how is the nonlinear structure organized and navigated?
- how is the player limited from moving through the nonlinear structure?
- what is the intended function, outcome, or purpose, of the artifact?
- what does the player do?
- is there even a player?

of course, it is not a complete definition. it includes a very great number of obviously non-game things. for example, we might describe life as being 'a nonlinear set of states' depending on our perspective on free will and the passage of time (although in that case a game would also not be nonlinear... okay, this is not relevant)

[droqen]

the definition is also very intentionally exclusive of what i called "outputs, experiential parts". considering the broad potential space for emotional expression, it seems at best useless and at worst harmfully limiting to try and box in what games are 'for'. to specify that choices must be 'interesting', that action must be 'endogenous', that rewards must be of a certain type, even that participation must be 'voluntary', these are all doomed to slip straight into a great ocean of exceptions. it seems the obvious path is to, then, exclude such things from our definitions and leave that up to taste manifestos which have their own specific non-definitional value!