What Is a Game?
A game is an interactive experience where the objective is to achieve a goal through the player’s actions. The goal can be a challenge, competitiveness, skill based or even an artistic valve. There are many ways of interpreting games, and the concept can mean something different for each person. However, some common characteristics can be found:
When players first enter a game world, they begin engaging with the different components of the game. These can be physically akin to tabletop games, or digital like the game interface and virtual characters in video games. This initial choice of engagement starts the process of entering the magic circle, the ludological agreement that the player has consented to abide by the rules and boundaries of the game. The player can then make choices that shape their experience within the game.
The game rules in most games are not arbitrary. They are a critical part of the magic circle as they define the integrity of gameplay. This is because the goals and challenges of a game are often subordinate to the rules of the game, which means that breaking the rules makes the ends of play unattainable. This makes it important for the game designers to incorporate aspects of interaction alibis into their design that provide structure and frameworks for players to abide by the rules of the game, and to engage with the game’s ends of play.
This can be done through the use of story, costumes, instructions, presentation and representations to support players in their decisions and actions. It also includes a sense of structure and predictability through the use of the rules of the game, as well as feedback from the game itself. This feedback can be in the form of visual and auditory elements in digital games or through social and narrative interactions with other players in physical games.
Another key aspect of games are the objectives that are set by the designers and players. These are the challenges and goals that the game is designed to fulfil, but can be interpreted in different ways by players. For example, some games are a pure entertainment experience, others are educational, while still others are applied to specific fields and disciplines.
There is a growing body of research demonstrating the links between gaming and wellbeing. Studies have shown that playing video games increases levels of autonomy, competence and relatedness, as well as reducing extrinsic motivations. However, many of the most important factors in predicting gaming behaviour and wellbeing remain unknown due to a lack of access to games company data. This has led to calls from the UK parliament to require games companies to release anonymized high-level data for independent scientific research into gaming and wellbeing.
One way of interpreting games is to look at them as the structured conflict between players that results in a series of unequal outcomes for each party. This echoes Burgun’s definition of games as closed formal systems that create unequal outcomes for the participants, and it is supported by Tracey Fullerton who argues that games are a kind of social activity in which players engage with each other and their environment through structured conflict with an unequal outcome.