Ancient Egyptiansenet game board inscribed forAmenhotep III with separate sliding drawer, from 1390 to 1353 BC, made of glazed faience, dimensions: 5.5 × 7.7 × 21 cm, in theBrooklyn Museum (New York City).
Agame is a structured type ofplay, usually undertaken forentertainment orfun, and sometimes used as an educational tool.[1] Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (such asjigsaw puzzles or games involving an artistic layout such asmahjong,solitaire, or somevideo games).
Games have a wide range of occasions, reflecting both the generality of its concept and the variety of its play.[2] Games are sometimes played purely for enjoyment, sometimes for achievement or reward as well. They can be played alone, in teams, or online; by amateurs or by professionals. The players may have an audience of non-players, such as when people are entertained by watching achess championship. On the other hand, players in a game may constitute their own audience as they take their turn to play. Often, part of the entertainment for children playing a game is deciding who is part of their audience and who participates as a player. A toy and a game are not the same. Toys generally allow for unrestricted play, whereas games present rules for the player to follow.
Key components of games are goals,rules,challenge, and interaction. Games generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both. Many games help develop practicalskills, serve as a form of exercise, or otherwise perform an educational,simulational, orpsychological role.
Attested as early as 2600 BC,[3][4] games are a universal part of human experience and present in all cultures. TheRoyal Game of Ur,Senet, andMancala are some of the oldest known games.[5]
Ludwig Wittgenstein is well known in the history of philosophy for having addressed the definition of the wordgame. In hisPhilosophical Investigations,[6] Wittgenstein argued that the elements of games, such asplay, rules, and competition, all fail to adequately define what games are. From this, Wittgenstein concluded that people apply the termgame to a range of disparate human activities that bear to one another only what one might callfamily resemblances. As the following game definitions show, this conclusion was not a final one, and today many philosophers, likeThomas Hurka, think that Wittgenstein was wrong and that Bernard Suits' definition is a good answer to the problem.[7][2]
Roger Caillois
French sociologistRoger Caillois, in his bookLes jeux et les hommes (Games and Men)(1961),[8] defined a game as an activity that must have the following characteristics:
fun: the activity is chosen for its light-hearted character
separate: it is circumscribed in time and place
uncertain: the outcome of the activity is unforeseeable
non-productive: participation does not accomplish anything useful
governed by rules: the activity has rules that are different from everyday life
fictitious: it is accompanied by the awareness of a different reality
Creative expression isart if made for its own beauty andentertainment if made for money.
A piece of entertainment is aplaything if it isinteractive. Movies and books are cited as examples of non-interactive entertainment.
If no goals are associated with a plaything, it is atoy.(Crawford notes that by his definition, (a) a toy can become a game element if the player makes up rules, and (b)The Sims andSimCity are toys, not games.) If it has goals, a plaything is achallenge.
If a challenge has no "active agent against whom you compete," it is apuzzle; if there is one, it is aconflict.(Crawford admits that this is a subjective test. Video games with noticeablyalgorithmicartificial intelligence can be played as puzzles; these include the patterns used to evadeghosts inPac-Man.)
Finally, if the player can only outperform the opponent but not attack them to interfere with their performance, the conflict is acompetition.(Competitions includeracing andfigure skating.) However, if attacks are allowed, then the conflict qualifies as a game.
Crawford's definition may thus be rendered as an interactive, goal-oriented activity made for money, with active agents to play against, in which players (including active agents) can interfere with each other.
Other definitions, however, as well as history, show that entertainment and games are not necessarily undertaken for monetary gain.
Other definitions
"My conclusion is that 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 favour of less efficient means, and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity." Bernard Suits[2]
"A game is a form of art in which participants, termedplayers, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal." (Greg Costikyan)[10] According to this definition, some "games" that do not involve choices, such asChutes and Ladders,Candy Land, andWar are not technically games any more than a slot machine is.
"A game is a form of play with goals and structure." (Kevin J. Maroney)[11]
"A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome." (Katie Salen andEric Zimmerman)[12]
"A game is anactivity among two or more independentdecision-makers seeking to achieve theirobjectives in somelimiting context." (Clark C. Abt)[13]
"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 outcome." (Elliot Avedon andBrian Sutton-Smith)[14]
"To play a game is to engage in activity directed toward bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by specific rules, where the means permitted by the rules are more limited in scope than they would be in the absence of the rules, and where the sole reason for accepting such limitation is to make possible such activity." (Bernard Suits)[15]
"When you strip away the genre differences and the technological complexities, all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation." (Jane McGonigal)[16]
Gameplay elements and classification
Games can be characterized by "what the player does".[9] This is often referred to asgameplay. Major key elements identified in this context are tools and rules that define the overall context of game.
Games are oftenclassified by the components required to play them (e.g.,miniatures, aball,cards,a board and pieces, or acomputer). In places where the use of leather is well-established, the ball has been a popular game piece throughout recorded history, resulting in a worldwide popularity of ball games such asrugby,basketball,soccer (football),cricket,tennis, andvolleyball. Other tools are more idiosyncratic to a certain region. Many countries in Europe, for instance, have unique standard decks ofplaying cards. Other games, such aschess, may be traced primarily through the development and evolution of their game pieces.
Many game tools are tokens, meant to represent other things. A token may be a pawn on a board,play money, or an intangible item such as a point scored.
Games such ashide-and-seek ortag do not use any obvious tool; rather, their interactivity is defined by the environment. Games with the same or similar rules may have different gameplay if the environment is altered. For example, hide-and-seek in a school building differs from the same game in a park; anauto race can be radically different depending on thetrack orstreet course, even with the same cars.
Rules and aims
Games are often characterized by their tools and rules. While rules aresubject to variations and changes, enough change in the rules usually results in a "new" game. For instance,baseball can be played with "real" baseballs or withwiffleballs. However, if the players decide to play with only three bases, they are arguably playing a different game. There are exceptions to this in that some games deliberately involve the changing of their own rules, but even then there are often immutablemeta-rules.
Rules generally determinethe time-keeping system, the rights and responsibilities of the players, scoring techniques, preset boundaries, and each player's goals.
The rules of a game may be distinguished from its aims.[17][18] For most competitive games, theultimate aim is winning: in this sense, checkmate is the aim of chess.[19] Common win conditions are being the first to amass a certain quota of points or tokens (as inSettlers of Catan), having the greatest number of tokens at the end of the game (as inMonopoly), or some relationship of one's game tokens to those of one's opponent (as in chess'scheckmate). There may also beintermediate aims, which are tasks that move a player toward winning. For instance, an intermediate aim in football is to score goals, because scoring goals will increase one's likelihood of winning the game, but is not alone sufficient to win the game.
An aim identifies asufficient condition for successful action, whereas the rule identifies anecessary condition for permissible action.[18] For example, the aim of chess is to checkmate, but although it is expected that players willtry to checkmate each other, it is not a rule of chess that a playermust checkmate the other player whenever possible. Similarly, it is not a rule offootball that a player must score a goal on a penalty; while it is expected the player will try, it is not required. While meeting the aims often requires a certain degree of skill and (in some cases) luck, following the rules of a game merely requires knowledge of the rules and some careful attempt to follow them; it rarely (if ever) requires luck or demanding skills.
Skill, strategy, and chance
A game's tools and rules will result in its requiring skill, strategy,luck, or a combination thereof and are classified accordingly.
"Single-player game" redirects here. For single-player video games, seeSingle-player video game.
Most games require multiple players. However, single-player games are unique in respect to the type of challenges a player faces. Unlike a game with multiple players competing with or against each other to reach the game's goal, a one-player game is a battle solely against an element of the environment (an artificial opponent), against one's own skills, against time, or against chance. Playing with ayo-yo or playingtennis against a wall is not generally recognized as playing a game due to the lack of any formidable opposition. Many games described as "single-player" may be termed actuallypuzzles orrecreations.
Multiplayer games
"Multiplayer game" redirects here. For multiplayer video games, seeMultiplayer video game.
The Card Players byLucas van Leyden (1520) depicting a multiplayer card game
A multiplayer game is a game of several players who may be independent opponents or teams. Games with many independent players are difficult to analyze formally usinggame theory as the players may form and switchcoalitions.[20] The term "game" in this context may mean either a true game played for entertainment or a competitive activity describable in principle by mathematical game theory.
John Nash proved that games with several players have a stable solution provided that coalitions between players are disallowed. Nash won theNobel prize for economics for this important result which extendedvon Neumann's theory ofzero-sum games. Nash's stable solution is known as theNash equilibrium.[21]
If cooperation between players is allowed, then the game becomes more complex; many concepts have been developed to analyze such games. While these have had some partial success in the fields of economics, politics andconflict, no good general theory has yet been developed.[21]
Inquantum game theory, it has been found that the introduction ofquantum information into multiplayer games allows a new type of equilibrium strategy not found in traditional games. Theentanglement of player's choices can have the effect of a contract by preventing players from profiting from what is known asbetrayal.[22]
Association football is a popular sport worldwide.
Many sports require special equipment and dedicated playing fields, leading to the involvement of a community much larger than the group of players. A city or town may set aside such resources for the organization of sports leagues.
Popular sports may havespectators who are entertained just by watching games. A community will often align itself with a local sports team that supposedly represents it (even if the team or most of its players only recently moved in); they often align themselves against their opponents or have traditional rivalries. The concept offandom began with sports fans.
Lawn games
Lawn games are outdoor games that can be played on alawn, an area of mowed grass (or alternately, on graded soil) generally smaller than asports field (pitch). Variations of many games that are traditionally played on a sports field aremarketed as "lawn games" for home use in a front or back yard. Common lawn games includehorseshoes,sholf,croquet,bocce, andlawn bowls.
A tabletop game is a game where the elements of play are confined to a small area and require little physical exertion, usually simply placing, picking up, and moving game pieces. Most of these games are played at a table around which the players are seated and on which the game's elements are located. However, many games falling into this category, particularlyparty games, are more free-form in their play and can involve physical activity such as mime. Still, these games do not require a large area in which to play them, large amounts of strength or stamina, or specialized equipment other than what comes in a box.
Dexterity and coordination games
This class of games includes any game in which the skill element involved relates to manual dexterity or hand-eye coordination but excludes the class of video games (see below). Games such asjacks,paper football, andJenga require only very portable or improvised equipment and can be played on any flat level surface, while other examples, such aspinball,billiards,air hockey,foosball, andtable hockey, require specialized tables or other self-contained modules on which the game is played. The advent of home video game systems largely replaced some of these, such as table hockey; however, air hockey, billiards, pinball and foosball remain popular fixtures in private and public game rooms. These games and others, as they require reflexes and coordination, are generally performed more poorly by intoxicated persons but are unlikely to result in injury because of this; as such, the games are popular asdrinking games. In addition, dedicated drinking games such asquarters andbeer pong also involve physical coordination and are popular for similar reasons.
Parcheesi is an American adaptation of aPachisi, originating in India.
Board games use as a central tool a board on which the players' status, resources, and progress are tracked using physical tokens. Many also involvedice or cards. Most games that simulate war are board games (though a large number of video games have been created to simulate strategic combat), and the board may be a map on which the players' tokens move. Virtually all board games involve "turn-based" play; one player contemplates and then makes a move, then the next player does the same, and a player can only act on their turn. This is opposed to "real-time" play as is found in some card games, most sports and most video games.
Some games, such aschess andGo, are entirely deterministic, relying only on the strategy element for their interest. Such games are usually described as having "perfect information"; the only unknown is the exact thought processes of one's opponent, not the outcome of any unknown event inherent in the game (such as a card draw or die roll). Children's games, on the other hand, tend to be very luck-based, with games such asCandy Land andChutes and Ladders having virtually no decisions to be made. By some definitions, such as that byGreg Costikyan, they are not games since there are no decisions to make which affect the outcome.[10] Many other games involving a high degree of luck do not allow direct attacks between opponents; the random event simply determines a gain or loss in the standing of the current player within the game, which is independent of any other player; the "game" then is actually a "race" by definitions such as Crawford's.
Most other board games combine strategy and luck factors; the game ofbackgammon requires players to decide the best strategic move based on the roll of twodice. Trivia games have a great deal of randomness based on the questions a person gets.German-style board games are notable for often having rather less of a luck factor than many board games.
Board game groups includerace games,roll-and-move games,abstract strategy games,word games, andwargames, as well astrivia and other elements. Some board games fall into multiple groups or incorporate elements of other genres:Cranium is one popular example, where players must succeed in each of four skills: artistry, live performance, trivia, and language.
Card games use a deck of cards as their central tool. These cards may be a standardAnglo-American (52-card) deck ofplaying cards (such as forbridge,poker,Rummy, etc.), a regional deck using 32, 36 or 40 cards and different suit signs (such as for the popular German gameskat), atarot deck of 78 cards (used in Europe to play a variety oftrick-taking games collectively known as Tarot, Tarock or Tarocchi games), or a deck specific to the individual game (such asSet or1000 Blank White Cards).Uno andRook are examples of games that were originally played with a standard deck and have since been commercialized with customized decks. Somecollectible card games such asMagic: The Gathering are played with a small selection of cards that have been collected or purchased individually from large available sets.
Some board games include a deck of cards as a gameplay element, normally for randomization or to keep track of game progress. Conversely, some card games such asCribbage use a board with movers, normally to keep score. The differentiation between the two genres in such cases depends on which element of the game is foremost in its play; a board game using cards for random actions can usually use some other method of randomization, while Cribbage can just as easily be scored on paper. These elements as used are simply the traditional and easiest methods to achieve their purpose.
Students inLaos using dice to improve numeracy skills. They roll three dice, then use basic math operations to combine those into a new number which they cover on the board. The goal is to cover four squares in the row.
Dice games use a number ofdice as their central element. Board games often use dice for a randomization element, and thus each roll of the dice has a profound impact on the outcome of the game, however dice games are differentiated in that the dice do not determine the success or failure of some other element of the game; they instead are the central indicator of the person's standing in the game. Popular dice games includeYahtzee,Farkle,Bunco,liar's dice/Perudo, andpoker dice. As dice are, by their very nature, designed to producerandom numbers, these games usually involve a high degree of luck, which can be directed to some extent by the player through more strategic elements of play and through tenets ofprobability theory. Such games are thus popular as gambling games; the game ofcraps is perhaps the most famous example, thoughliar's dice andpoker dice were originally conceived of as gambling games.
Domino games are similar in many respects to card games, but the generic device is instead a set of tiles calleddominoes, which traditionally each have two ends, each with a given number of dots, or "pips", and each combination of two possible end values as it appears on a tile is unique in the set. The games played with dominoes largely center around playing a domino from the player's "hand" onto the matching end of another domino, and the overall object could be to always be able to make a play, to make all open endpoints sum to a given number or multiple, or simply to play all dominoes from one's hand onto the board. Sets vary in the number of possible dots on one end, and thus of the number of combinations and pieces; the most common set historically isdouble-six, though in more recent times "extended" sets such asdouble-nine have been introduced to increase the number of dominoes available, which allows larger hands and more players in a game.Muggins,Mexican Train, andChicken Foot are very popular domino games.Texas 42 is a domino game more similar in its play to a "trick-taking"card game.
Variations of traditional dominoes abound:Triominoes are similar in theory but are triangular and thus have three values per tile. Similarly, a game known asQuad-Ominos uses four-sided tiles.
Some other games use tiles in place of cards;Rummikub is a variant of theRummy card game family that uses tiles numbered in ascending rank among four colors, very similar in makeup to a 2-deck "pack" of Anglo-Americanplaying cards.Mahjong is another game very similar toRummy that uses a set of tiles with card-like values and art.
Lastly, some games use graphical tiles to form a board layout, on which other elements of the game are played.Settlers of Catan andCarcassonne are examples. In each, the "board" is made up of a series of tiles; in Settlers of Catan the starting layout is random but static, while in Carcassonne the game is played by "building" the board tile-by-tile.Hive, an abstract strategy game using tiles as moving pieces, has mechanical and strategic elements similar tochess, although it has no board; the pieces themselves both form the layout and can move within it.
Pencil and paper games require little or no specialized equipment other than writing materials, though some such games have been commercialized as board games (Scrabble, for instance, is based on the idea of acrossword puzzle, andtic-tac-toe sets with a boxed grid and pieces are available commercially). These games vary widely, from games centering on a design being drawn such asPictionary and "connect-the-dots" games likesprouts, to letter and word games such asBoggle andScattergories, to solitaire and logic puzzle games such asSudoku andcrossword puzzles.
A guessing game has as its core a piece of information that one player knows, and the object is to coerce others into guessing that piece of information without actually divulging it in text or spoken word.Charades is probably the most well-known game of this type, and has spawned numerous commercial variants that involve differing rules on the type of communication to be given, such asCatch Phrase,Taboo,Pictionary, and similar. The genre also includes manygame shows such asWin, Lose or Draw,Password and$25,000 Pyramid.
Video games are computer- ormicroprocessor-controlled games. Computers can create virtual spaces for a wide variety of game types. Some video games simulate conventional game objects like cards or dice, while others can simulate environs either grounded in reality or fantastical in design, each with its own set of rules or goals.
There are many genres of video game; the first commercial video game,Pong, was a simple simulation oftable tennis. As processing power increased, new genres such as adventure and action games were developed that involved a player guiding a character from a third person perspective through a series of obstacles. This "real-time" element cannot be easily reproduced by a board game, which is generally limited to "turn-based" strategy; this advantage allows video games to simulate situations such as combat more realistically. Additionally, the playing of a video game does not require the same physical skill, strength or danger as a real-world representation of the game, and can provide either very realistic, exaggerated or impossible physics, allowing for elements of a fantastical nature, games involving physical violence, or simulations of sports. Lastly, a computer can, with varying degrees of success, simulate one or more human opponents in traditional table games such aschess, leading to simulations of such games that can be played by a single player.
In more open-ended video games, such assandbox games, a virtual environment is provided in which the player may be free to do whatever they like within the confines of a particular game's universe. Sometimes, there is a lack of goals or opposition, which has stirred some debate on whether these should be considered "games" or "toys". (Crawford specifically mentionsWill Wright'sSimCity as an example of a toy.)[9]
Online games have been part of culture from the very earliest days ofnetworked andtime-shared computers. Early commercial systems such asPlato were at least as widely famous for their games as for their strictly educational value. In 1958,Tennis for Two dominated Visitor's Day and drew attention to theoscilloscope at theBrookhaven National Laboratory; during the 1980s,Xerox PARC was known mainly forMaze War, which was offered as a hands-on demo to visitors.
Modern online games are played using an Internet connection; some have dedicatedclient programs, whileothers require only aweb browser. Some simpler browser games appeal to more casual game-playing demographic groups (notably older audiences) that otherwise play very few video games.[23]
Role-playing games, often abbreviated as RPGs, are a type of game in which the participants (usually) assume the roles of characters acting in a fictional setting. The original role playing games – or at least those explicitly marketed as such – are played with a handful of participants, usually face-to-face, and keep track of the developing fiction with pen and paper. Together, the players may collaborate on a story involving those characters; create, develop, and "explore" the setting; or vicariously experience an adventure outside the bounds of everyday life. Pen-and-paper role-playing games include, for example,Dungeons & Dragons andGURPS.
Business games can take a variety of forms, from interactive board games to interactive games involving different props (balls, ropes, hoops, etc.) and different kinds of activities. The purpose of these games is to link to some aspect of organizational performance and to generate discussions about business improvement. Many business games focus on organizational behaviors. Some of these are computer simulations while others are simple designs for play and debriefing. Team building is a common focus of such activities.
The term "game" can include simulation[25][26] or re-enactment of various activities or use in "real life" for various purposes: e.g.,training, analysis, prediction. Well-known examples arewar games androle-playing. The root of this meaning may originate in the human prehistory of games deduced byanthropology from observingprimitive cultures, in which children's games mimic the activities of adults to a significant degree:hunting, warring,nursing, etc. These kinds of games are preserved in modern times.[original research?]
