Games and Video Games
Before discussing game design, we have to establish what games are and how they work. You might think that everybody knows what a game is, but there are so many kinds of games in the world that it’s best not to make assumptions based on personal experience alone. We’ll start by identifying the essential elements that a game must have, and then define what a game is based on those elements. Then we’ll go on to discuss what computers bring to gaming and how video games are different from conventional games. Finally, we’ll look at the specific ways in which video games entertain people and note some other enjoyable features of video games that you must learn how to design
What Is a Game? Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and . . . Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. —MARK TWAIN, THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
Games arise from the human desire for play and from our capacity to pretend. Play is a wide category of nonessential, and usually recreational, human activities that are often socially significant as well. Pretending is the mental ability to establish a notional reality that the pretender knows is different from the real world and that the pretender can create, abandon, or change at will. Playing and pretending are essential elements of playing games. Both have been studied extensively as cultural and psychological phenomena.
Toys, Puzzles, and Games In English, we use the word play to describe how we entertain ourselves with toys, puzzles, and games—although with puzzles, we more frequently say that we solve them. However, even though we use the same word, we do not engage in play with all types of entertainment in the same way. What differentiates these types of play is the presence, or absence, of rules and goals.
Rules are instructions that dictate how to play. A toy does not come with any rules about the right way to play with it, nor does it come with a particular goal that you as a player should try to achieve. You may play with a ball or a stick any way you like. In fact, you may pretend that it is something else entirely. Toys that model other objects (such as a baby doll that resembles a real baby) might suggest an appropriate way to play, but the suggestion is not a rule. In fact, young children get special enjoyment by playing with toys in a way that subverts their intended purpose, such as treating a doll as a car.
If you add a distinct goal to playing—a particular objective that you are trying to achieve—then the article being played with is not a toy but a puzzle. Puzzles have one rule that defines the goal, but they seldom have rules that dictate how you must get to the goal. Some approaches might be fruitless, but none are actually prohibited.
A game includes both rules and a goal. Playing a game requires pretending and it is a more structured activity than playing with toys or puzzles. As such, it requires more maturity. As children develop longer attention spans, they start to play with puzzles and then to play games. Multiplayer games also require social cooperation, another thing that children learn to do as they mature.
The Definition of a Game
Defining any term that refers to a broad class of human behaviors is a tricky business, because if anyone can find a single counterexample, the definition is inaccurate. Efforts to find unassailable definitions of such terms usually produce results so general as to be useless for practical purposes. The alternative is to acknowledge that a definition is not rigorous but serves as a convenient description to cover the majority of cases. In this book, we’ll use the following nonrigorous definition of a game:
GAME A game is a type of play activity, conducted in the context of a pretended reality, in which the participant(s) try to achieve at least one arbitrary, nontrivial goal by acting in accordance with rules.
There may be exceptions—activities that someone would instantly recognize as a game but that don’t conform to this definition. So be it. The definition is intended to be practical rather than complete.
other views
Many people in fields as diverse as anthropology, philosophy, history, and of course, game design have attempted to define the word game over the years. In Rules of Play, Salen and Zimmerman examine several of these definitions (Salen and Zimmerman, 2003, pp. 73–80). Most, but not all, make some reference to rules, goals, play, and pretending. Some include other elements such as decision-making or the quality of being a system. This book doesn’t try to refute or rebut any of these; it just presents a new definition to stand beside the others. Note that some commentators, such as Raph Koster in A Theory of Fun for Game Design, disparage the distinctions between toys, puzzles, and games as irrelevant (Koster, 2004, p. 36). However, it is important to address them in an introductory text
Before discussing game design, we have to establish what games are and how they work. You might think that everybody knows what a game is, but there are so many kinds of games in the world that it’s best not to make assumptions based on personal experience alone. We’ll start by identifying the essential elements that a game must have, and then define what a game is based on those elements. Then we’ll go on to discuss what computers bring to gaming and how video games are different from conventional games. Finally, we’ll look at the specific ways in which video games entertain people and note some other enjoyable features of video games that you must learn how to design
What Is a Game? Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and . . . Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. —MARK TWAIN, THE ADVENTURES OF TOM SAWYER
Games arise from the human desire for play and from our capacity to pretend. Play is a wide category of nonessential, and usually recreational, human activities that are often socially significant as well. Pretending is the mental ability to establish a notional reality that the pretender knows is different from the real world and that the pretender can create, abandon, or change at will. Playing and pretending are essential elements of playing games. Both have been studied extensively as cultural and psychological phenomena.
Toys, Puzzles, and Games In English, we use the word play to describe how we entertain ourselves with toys, puzzles, and games—although with puzzles, we more frequently say that we solve them. However, even though we use the same word, we do not engage in play with all types of entertainment in the same way. What differentiates these types of play is the presence, or absence, of rules and goals.
Rules are instructions that dictate how to play. A toy does not come with any rules about the right way to play with it, nor does it come with a particular goal that you as a player should try to achieve. You may play with a ball or a stick any way you like. In fact, you may pretend that it is something else entirely. Toys that model other objects (such as a baby doll that resembles a real baby) might suggest an appropriate way to play, but the suggestion is not a rule. In fact, young children get special enjoyment by playing with toys in a way that subverts their intended purpose, such as treating a doll as a car.
If you add a distinct goal to playing—a particular objective that you are trying to achieve—then the article being played with is not a toy but a puzzle. Puzzles have one rule that defines the goal, but they seldom have rules that dictate how you must get to the goal. Some approaches might be fruitless, but none are actually prohibited.
A game includes both rules and a goal. Playing a game requires pretending and it is a more structured activity than playing with toys or puzzles. As such, it requires more maturity. As children develop longer attention spans, they start to play with puzzles and then to play games. Multiplayer games also require social cooperation, another thing that children learn to do as they mature.
The Definition of a Game
Defining any term that refers to a broad class of human behaviors is a tricky business, because if anyone can find a single counterexample, the definition is inaccurate. Efforts to find unassailable definitions of such terms usually produce results so general as to be useless for practical purposes. The alternative is to acknowledge that a definition is not rigorous but serves as a convenient description to cover the majority of cases. In this book, we’ll use the following nonrigorous definition of a game:
GAME A game is a type of play activity, conducted in the context of a pretended reality, in which the participant(s) try to achieve at least one arbitrary, nontrivial goal by acting in accordance with rules.
There may be exceptions—activities that someone would instantly recognize as a game but that don’t conform to this definition. So be it. The definition is intended to be practical rather than complete.
other views
Many people in fields as diverse as anthropology, philosophy, history, and of course, game design have attempted to define the word game over the years. In Rules of Play, Salen and Zimmerman examine several of these definitions (Salen and Zimmerman, 2003, pp. 73–80). Most, but not all, make some reference to rules, goals, play, and pretending. Some include other elements such as decision-making or the quality of being a system. This book doesn’t try to refute or rebut any of these; it just presents a new definition to stand beside the others. Note that some commentators, such as Raph Koster in A Theory of Fun for Game Design, disparage the distinctions between toys, puzzles, and games as irrelevant (Koster, 2004, p. 36). However, it is important to address them in an introductory text
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