Level 1.0: What is a Game?

What is a Game, Anyway?

Those of you who have read a little into the Challenges for Game Designers Links to an external site. text may think this is obvious. My preferred definition is a play activity with rules that involves conflict. But the question “what is a game?” is actually more complicated than that:

  • For one thing, that’s my definition. Sure, it was adopted by the IGDA Education SIG (mostly because no one argued with me about it). There are many other definitions that disagree with mine. Many of those other definitions were proposed by people with more game design experience than me. So, you can’t take this definition (or anything else) for granted, just because Ian Says So.
  • For another, that definition tells us nothing about how to design games, so we’ll be talking about what a game is in terms of its component parts: rules, resources, actions, story, and so on. I call these things “formal elements” of games, for reasons that will be discussed later.

Also, it’s important to make distinctions between different games. Consider the game of Three to Fifteen. Most of you have probably never heard of or played this game. It has a very simple set of rules:

  • Players: 2
  • Objective: to collect a set of exactly three numbers that add up to 15.
  • Setup: start by writing the numbers 1 through 9 on a sheet of paper. Choose a player to go first.
  • Progression of Play: on your turn, choose a number that has not been chosen by either player. You now control that number. Cross it off the list of numbers, and write the number on your side of the paper to show that it is now yours.
  • Resolution: if either player collects a set of exactly three numbers that add up to exactly 15, the game ends, and that player wins. If all nine numbers are collected and neither player has won, the game is a draw.

Go ahead and play this game, either against yourself or against another player. Do you recognize it now?

The numbers 1 through 9 can be arranged in a 3×3 grid known as a “magic square” where every row, column and diagonal adds up to exactly 15:

6

7

2

1

5

9

8

3

4

 

Now you may recognize it. It is the game of Tic-Tac-Toe (or Noughts and Crosses or several other names, depending on where you live). So, is Tic-Tac-Toe the same game as Three-to-Fifteen, or are they different games? (The answer is, it depends on what you mean… which is why it is important to define what a “game” is!)