What Is a Game?
The word game is a broad and ambiguous term, which encompasses anything from a simple board game like Connect Four or Tic Tac Toe to immersive virtual worlds like Fortnite. It has a long history as a form of entertainment, competition, skill and art, as well as a tool for social interaction, problem-solving, and even health.
While it is difficult to pin down a precise definition of a game, scholars have a variety of different approaches and perspectives. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman define a game as a system in which players compete against each other or against a common game mechanic to complete an abstract challenge, where engagement in the challenge elicits an emotional response from the players. They further explain that a key aspect of games is the inseparability of rules from their ends, which allows players to choose whether or not to abide by the game’s rules. This makes games transformative in nature as they provide a framework of interplay, connection and space in which players can engage with each other and content in different ways.
In a more formal definition, Burgun describes games as “closed formal systems that involve structured conflict with unequal outcomes for the participants.” While this is an excellent starting point, it still leaves room for much debate, as the outcome of any given game can vary from player to player and even from one game to another. This is why it is important to consider how a game is being designed and what the goals, challenges, and outcomes are in order to ensure that all players are having a positive experience.
The first step in designing a game is coming up with an objective. Often times, this is done by looking at what the game is meant to represent in terms of the players’ lives, their values, beliefs and cultural norms. This provides a context for the design process that can inform what type of gameplay is desired by the designer, what type of skills are required to play the game and how difficult it is to win or lose.
Once the objective is established, the designers can start to create the game by drawing the path for the game, which in many cases is as easy as dividing a piece of paper into spaces. This step is similar to creating the grid for a race-to-the-end board game, such as Candyland or Chutes & Ladders. This type of game is the most straightforward to design, as all it really requires is a line that the tokens are meant to go from one end to the other and a way to determine how far they must travel.
Research on video games has traditionally relied on self-report to measure the frequency of play and the perceived benefits or harms of gaming behaviour. However, this method has serious limitations that should be addressed to improve the validity of digital research and to increase public trust in scientific findings, especially when they are related to personal health.