Yea?  And I always come back to this conclusion:  To me, games are supposed to be about fun.  Tom V. has it pegged right.

Eric, I think you can be way too literal at times and you certainly can be very determined to prove your point.  Maybe I’m determined to prove my point too.  But, in my opinion, ya gotta be able to see the forest through the trees… to what’s practical. But if we disagree, then no worries.  Eh mate?

Also in just my own opinion, your’s and Yehuda’s articles are much todo about nothing.  The articles presented, to me, are both high-brow, overly complicated and way too technical for this issue. 

However, to your point: games can be about other things too, I guess.  I can realistically see that.  So I concede your point.  You guys can buy all of the “high art” games you want.  “Creative medium” them all you want too… and more power to you!

In the meantime I’ll stick to buying my games for the fun factor. (play, laugh & escape) : )

--------------

And good luck to you, Mr. Boardgame Company that produces games primarily as a creative medium!  Commercially, I’m thinking you’ll need it.  : )

Cheers!

Ryan B.

Does it matter if a game is commercially successful?  No.  Commercial success merely insures ready availability.  It denotes nothing about the quality, value or significance of a game.  The most popular and possibly the most significant(?) games in the world are commercial failures: Go, Chess, Shogi, Checkers etc.

There’s no moral mandate here.  If you wish to select and define your games only by your subjective fun quotient that’s fine, but that isn’t the way I define and select my games and there’s no requirement or need that we agree.  We don’t have to agree.  For instance I find the game So Long Sucker very interesting.  I also find it fascinating, amazingly perplexing and very unpleasant to play (ie definitely Not Fun).  But, I think it is a great game—it does and investigates and reveals things no other game does as well—and I’d like to play much more of it.  So, I’ve assembled a set of poker chips and bring them with me to game nights.  So Long Sucker even gets played now and then.  It still isn’t fun, in fact I’d call it vomitus and degrading, but wow, what a game!  I learn something every time I play.  I don’t expect you to like So Long Sucker or even to consider it “Fun”.  I don’t consider it “fun”.  I do however expect you to recognise it as a game.

Oh, and AFAIK So Long Sucker isn’t commercially available and likely never will be.  Fairly soon it will even pass into the public domain.

"Does it matter if a game is commercially successful?  No.”

(LOL) OK, I give up.  White Flag!

I’m DEFINITELY going to play “Flip and Punch” at my next games meeting!

"The most popular and possibly the most significant(?) games in the world are commercial failures: Go, Chess, Shogi, Checkers etc.”

Not to be picky, but you can’t be one of the most popular and significant games in the world and be a commercial failure--excepting, perhaps, the Mancala games.  Go boards and Chess pieces don’t just grow on trees.

Eric, your definition of a game is too limiting.  “Grand Theft Auto” is not a game because it only inolves one person and neither is target practice.  I prefer to define game as follows:
A game is an interactive story told by some number of participants governed by a set of rules.

Stories are just as ambiguous concepts as games, so I may be substituting one set of vague ideas for another, but all games are a form of an older medium: Storytelling, but the difference is that the participants can manipulate the story from within it instead of witnessing the story from without.  That’s why games are art, because they’re works of fiction.

Eric, great job of backing up Yehuda’s article (that I personally think is brilliant.) There are tons more examples in a similar vein- is music supposed to be pretty? Is a novel supposed to be entertaining? They’re just mediums- the audience and market (which are what people tend to focus on) determine what qualities it should have for those particular audience and markets. It also may be responsible for the negative reactions here, since this site is all about fun games, as opposed to a theory heavy site like Yehuda’s (or mine.)

However, I do disagree with your definition of game, but that’s one of those heavily debated definitions (like art!) I do recommend, to anyone interested in the theory behind games (so not Ryan B.) checking out the book “Rules of Play.”

I suspect that Eric and Yehuda both really failed to make the point they kind of wanted to make.

The question is not whether games are supposed to be fun, (In nearly all cases, they are.) but that we should also write about the other things that games are.

Things like why people play games, why they play specific games. What kinds of little worlds are being simulated.

A lot of this sort of writing seems mostly to keep sociologists and writers employed, but frequently, one can see important shifts in thought and belief by looking at a group’s leisure
activities.

I think it’s kind of pointless trying to argue wether “fun” should be included in the definition of the word “game”. However, I think Eric has clearly shown that it is useful to have a very wide concept of a “game”, from which the “fun” and the “goal” are excluded. Should we use the word “game” for this broader concept or should we restrict it to the more limited idea that would include “fun”?

Personally, I side with Eric here since I find it more appropriate to add detail to a general concept (i.e. by saying “fun game") than to remove detail from a specific concept.

On another note, I also like the definition of a game given in mathematics, which slightly differs from Eric’s definition. From wikipedia: “A game consists of a set of players, a set of moves (or strategies) available to those players, and a specification of payoffs for each combination of strategies.” The difference here being that payoffs (or goals) are included in the definition.

Is there a profile toggle on BGN I can flip to filter out far-reaching theoretical intellectualism?  Premises posited here recently are either bordering on or have stepped right on over the “Oh, please” line.

FUN

Tic-tac-toe IS fun… when you’re 5.  When it isn’t fun anymore to you, than you don’t play it anymore.  But until then, you play it because it’s fun.

Hockey and football ARE fun.  If they weren’t, they would be ignored - no one picks up the oblong ball and says that they are going to explore the acts and acceptance of aggression in modern culture.  They start to play because it’s fun.  The rest is analysis.  You may later choose to strive for excellence, or make it a profession, but it starts and likely continues because it is fun.

If two people were playing the punch-game example, it would be because they thought it was fun - maybe they love the idea of macho competition, maybe they want to hit someone and understand it has to be mutual, maybe they’re just drunk, but for it to be played, it would have to be fun.  For them.

Gaming is a mental exercise, it is a fun activity, it is a hobby.  For designers and publishers, it is likely a business.  Business - something else that has rules for interaction between participants, by the way.  But for the business to be successful, the games have to be fun.

ART

Game as art?  This is the trap because it is a belief so many people want to have - if games are art, then the obscene amounts of money and/or time I spend on this hobby become somehow more worthwhile… I can discuss this at cocktail parties and not feel like I am wasting my life away… if games are art, then my efforts and devotion are legitimized.

Game design is a craft.  Like the games themselves, it has rules.  Game visual design is a craft.  It, too, has rules.

I believe that the very best pieces of game design, the pinnacles of the craft, are likely definable as works of art.  The pinnacle examples of any craft deserve this designation.  But the mode itself, the “medium” of games, is not art in and of itself.  Think of it like furniture - every end table that fits the definition is a piece of furniture, but nor every end table is a work of art.

DEFINITION

“A game is a set of rules that govern interaction among two or more participants.”

This definition, if accepted, has almost no limit to its application.  Politics, marriages, school, driving, dinner ettiquette, and the workplace all have rules that govern interaction between participants.  Are these games?  And, before anyone prepare some long-winded answer that will answer that they are, I think we need to take a look at what this site is about.

The site is about boardgames.  Yehuda’s post was about boardgames (and perhaps other types of competitive endeavors that fall into a traditional categorical definition of “Games").  By taking this to the next step, you have made the idea less tenable than it was before.  How’s that go - if everything’s a game, than the term loses all meaning.  If everything’s a game, then nothing is.  But, to address this more fully, I think we need to take a look at games as a medium.

MEDIUM

Movies are moving pictures projected in some fashion.  Books are words printed on pages, bound in some way.  Music is manipulation of sounds in some pattern.  A painting is pigments on a surface.  A game is.... what?  Programmed for video?  A cardboard board and wood pieces?  Drawings on a paper?  Eleven men colliding together every 30 seconds or so?  “Game” is more a state of mind than a medium.  Hell, books, paintings, music and movies can all be games.

If I were going to open up a philosophical discussion on “games,” meaning would be paramount.  What is a a game?  I think after a while I would realize that Eric’s definition might be right, and then realize that this discussion is in a world of trouble.

Games aren’t a medium.
Games aren’t necessarily fun.
Games are interactions.
Except when they’re solitaire or solitary.
Games are a meta-medium.  Perhaps this is it?
Etc.

The only defining aspect of games that I found is that:  Games are PLAYED.  Not participated in - I can participate in this discussion, but it’s not a game.  Not engaged in - I am fully engaged in my relationship with my daughter, but that’s not a game either.

Though this is contrary to the above article, I believe this may be the only absolute when all else is removed.

If I cannot act in some way, make some decision, affect the outcome in some way, then it is not a game.  I must be able to PLAY the game.

Starting from this point, maybe there’s something that can be said about games as a whole.  And, truly, I believe that part two of any definition of a game is the answer to one question - is it in some way fun?

Christopher

Dave - I agree with the general thrust of Yehuda’s article--broadly, that [board]games can be used as a medium through which an artist may convey meaning--but I disagree with his assumption/generalizations that nobody is doing it or has even considered it and his dismissal of a large body of work on the basis of outdated ideas about what constitutes art. 

In its context as a follow-up to his previous article http://jergames.blogspot.com/2006/04/are-games-art.html it is by no means apparent that this is directed solely to Artists, as he states in his most recent reply.  His first article (which I also have questions about) is specifically about whether games as we know them are art.

I have to agree with Frank here.  After all, Eric, you’ve played Qwirkle more than any other game this year, not because it has somehow challenged your views or broadened your philosophy of life, but because it is easy to teach and fast to play with enough strategy to give you the kind of enjoyment you look for in a game.

That said, I think that game designers are free to stretch the popular definition of game as much as they wish, and you and other writers are free to write about it (and it could very well be an interesting read).  But writing that “Games are not supposed to be fun” is like writing “clothes are not supposed to be comfortable.”
Maybe “Column titles are supposed to be misleading?”:)

Hi Christopher,

Instead of comparing “games” to “books”, compare to “literature”. You could make the same argument about “movies are moving pictures projected in some fashion “ etc, and then say, “Literature is… what?” Does this mean that literature is not art?

Not all games are played. Perhaps only good games are played. But it is not the playing that makes them games. Your table analogy is revealing: I am reminded of “arty” tables which could never be used for “normal” table purposes. This is similar to the earlier example of cars which are not and cannot be driven, but are still cars.

So the point is that the reason why you play them and the reason why you buy them may well be because they’re fun, but it doesn’t follow that a game which fails to be fun therefore fails to be a game.

Incidentally, solitaire games are also interactions - they’re interactions with the pieces and even the mechanics.

So, a game is an interaction with rules governing it. Abstract, yes. But that’s as specific as you can get without ruling out some things that are definitely games.

Now, I agree with you that this is purely philosophical and completely irrelevant to normal life (hell, when *isn’t* philosophy irrelevant to normal life?!). But I think that it is still important to consider.

Eric, the response of mine you quoted came from my misunderstanding of what Yehuda was trying to say (I didn’t really think he was trying to be literal--now I realize he was).  I was actually defending him.

I agree with much of what you say here.  But I also agree with Christopher Bartlett that your definition of a game is too broad.  It might need only a small tweak (I’m not quite sure how I’d do it), but as it stands now, almost every activity between two or more people is a game.  What about war?  That has rules, particularly if all the participants pledge to follow the Geneva Convention.  My project at work?  That fits, all the more so if the engineers use collaborative software.  Going to a prostitute?  Training a pet?  Planning a wedding?  All games.  But, as Christopher says, if everything’s a game, it strips any usefulness from the concept.  It’s fine for making a point, but a narrower definition would actually make the discussion worth having.

By the way, one thing that definitely needs to be changed is the multi-participant requirement.  Solitaire pasttimes can certainly be games.  Whether they be with a deck of cards, or playing darts solo to improve your score, or a child trying to come up with original ways to make mudpies, they should all be classified as games.

I will disagree with one of Christopher’s comments.  He said, “Tic-tac-toe IS fun… when you’re 5.  When it isn’t fun anymore to you, than you don’t play it anymore.  But until then, you play it because it’s fun.” Agreed, but the point is, that doens’t mean it isn’t a game.  It might be a BAD game (a personal value judgment which I have no intention of defining), but it most certainly is a game.

Games can and should have a very broad definition.  In fact, with every passing year, we see different types of activities, some of which we couldn’t even conceive of earlier, which must be considered games.  I agree in principal with what you and Yehuda are saying.  All that is needed is a slightly tighter definition to make the discussion more meaningful.

Interesting discussion.

But tell me, what is “fun” ?

lol…

I think Christopher is also on the right track:
that the PLAYING makes it a game, and that the players interact with rules that have some separation with the real world (much more limited and very different, or am I the only one who isn’t limited to 10 action points at the beginning of each day?).  The rules define the “little worlds” Frank was writing about, and the players can interact with those worlds however they choose, within the rules, of course.
You may be the most honest person in your job and with your friends, but not afraid to play the traitor in Shadows Over Camelot.  Or you may be an unselfish, giving person to your neighborhood, but not afraid to grab valuable resources your opponents need in an engine-building game.
And when the activity we call A GAME is finished, you may think it was fun, you may never want to play it again, you might have learned something about yourself or your opponents, or you might need counselling to repair the relationships (for those who cannot see the boundary between games and real life).

Brett- fair enough. At least it seems like we’re on the same page as agreeing that these kinds of discussions (on the finer points) are worthwhile, whereas others are arguing that these ideas are worthless “far-reaching theoretical intellectualism”. Something that I find very worthwhile.

For what it’s worth, in another discussion about this I have come to know that there have been additional games that fit my definition.

The example given was Yoko Ono’s Chess set with all white pieces. I think it was implied was that this was actually an installation somewhere. You sat down and played, with the expectation of learning various messages about war. (I didn’t say it was good art, only art.) Some may have found the play itself fun, others not, but either way the message was conveyed.

Furthermore to the discussion I was reminded that many RPGs could be considered art, although in this case you would have to separate the RPG’s designer from the scenario designer from the GM from the player, all of which may be creating art.

Yehuda

Chris Martin – Hello right back. :)
I used books as an example of a medium (I could have used magazines, newspapers, and others types of conveyance using the printed word).  The designation “literature” is a statement of editorial assumption – in this case, the assumption of high quality.  I think we are simply experiencing crossed wires here, as in this portion I am making a side point on games as a medium (like books, movies, etc.) and not whether they are art.  Sorry for the confusion.

As for whether all games are played – I would answer thus – for a game to be a game, the intention in its creation must be for it to be able to be played, even if it never is.

Interaction between participants was the statement – and I can’t consider pieces and mechanics to be a participant.  They would be considered parts of the rules governing… they don’t get to count twice!  :)

Larry –
Thanks for the kind words.  One clarification… I never said TicTacToe isn’t a game.  I just said eventually it isn’t fun anymore.  It was intended to be fun, and it is fun (even if only for a little while).  Therefore – game!

Jeff –
Thanks.  Yep. I maintain, to paraphrase the Bard, “The playing’s the thing.”

Christopher

This is a great example:

“The example given was Yoko Ono’s Chess set with all white pieces. I think it was implied was that this was actually an installation somewhere. You sat down and played, with the expectation of learning various messages about war. (I didn’t say it was good art, only art.) Some may have found the play itself fun, others not, but either way the message was conveyed.”

There are objects that support types of play that AREN’T games.  Yo-yos, toy soldiers, baby dolls, a spirograph, and the Yoko Ono chess set.  Why aren’t these games?  No rules for some, no structure, maybe no usage derived from the object itself (a baby playing with a doll may be learning motor skills, but is not using the doll in any meaningful way that derives from the fact that it’s a doll).

Then, you have the Yoko Ono chess set (selected to make her point not because it’s a game, but because it is a placeholder for military conflict).  In these circumstances, is it a game?  It has some rules, sure.  And it has boundaries and traditional pieces and traditional mechanics.  But does it have a point?  It has an artistic point - war is futile, no one wins, you’re all the same, etc.  However, the game in this case is a SYMBOL, not a game.  This does not represent game design, but instead the appropriation of chess iconography to make a statement.  You can’t play it, because no action you choose will affect anything.

To my mind - not a game.

(But your actions in the white chess game *do* affect something: they affect how the road to annihilation progresses. Or you could prevent any death by simply dancing around with your knights.)

I still think that your point about fun doesn’t stand up. Imagine that the first person who designed chess designed it to be loathed by everyone. Would that stop it being a game? Imagine now that chess had in fact been loathed by everyone who played it. Would that stop it being a game? I think that the answer to both must be no, because nothing objective about chess has changed in our thought experiments. In other words, how can someone’s intention for an object or other people’s perceptions of it alter what it *is*? So the fact that tic-tac-toe was intended to be fun is irrelevant, and so is the fact that it is fun for a bit. Neither of those can be what makes tic-tac-toe a game, because both can be dispensed with and still leave a game.

Does this explain it?

I agree with some of what others have commented on previously.  A game definition cannot be considered complete, IMHO, unless the goal of the game is clearly stated.  My personal distinction between ‘game’ and ‘activity’ is that the former gives you things to do in pursuit of something, while the latter just gives you things to do.

To me, the goal is the key - less so the number of players, the game construct itself, etc… What must be present is something to shoot for, as that’s what makes the game interesting enough to want to spend time on.

What I think the original article missed in this thesis (and which your follow-up also seems to miss) is the fact that the game industry itself is a meta-game with clearly outlined rules and goals.  The object of the game is to create games which are popular, fun and ultimately sell well.  Side goals might include charting new thematic / mechanical territory or just coming up with new ideas, but these are (for better or worse, depending on your viewpoint), not the ultimate goal of the game.

I also think that adding games in with books, music and other forms of art is misleading, as their primary purpose is so different: Games are by design a social interaction that, if found compelling/enjoyable/appreciable/fun, will spur players to taking part again (which is probably the best measure of success you can use in gauging whether a game is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ - will you play it again?).  Books, music and paintings can be experienced once and then either retained or discarded; the need for games to have replay value is what makes ‘fun’, in my opinion, at least, a must-have rather than a fringe benefit.

pk

Extremely well-stated Patrick. 

Ryan B.

Patrick, I’ve played Boggle with a young friend in which no score was kept and there were no turns--we just called out words.  I also have an adult friend who likes to play Scrabble, but won’t do it if anyone keeps score; she just likes making interesting words.

In both cases, the goals of the activity were vague and deliberately unstated.  Is either one a game?

Suppose you play FlowerPower with someone who doesn’t care about the final score, but who only wants to make the flower beds as big as possible.  Does that stop it from being a game?  Would it matter if the person didn’t say that that was their objective?

We’ve all played with people who in mid-game, stop trying to win and play only to ensure 1) another player doesn’t win; 2) another player *does* win; 3) *no one* wins; 4) maximum chaos ensues.  Has this activity ceased to be a game?

The best example of all is roleplaying.  Usually in an individual session, player characters will have some goal.  But the roleplaying design itself has no goal.  Players create characters and interact with the referee and their fellow players; there is no overriding objective (at least, there doesn’t have to be).  I have spent entire sessions where we accomplished absolutely nothing, nor was anything set out for us to accomplish, and had a great time.  I feel very strongly that I was playing a game, but some might differ.

I don’t necessarily have answers to these questions.  Saying a game must have a goal is compelling and would be useful in narrower discussions.  However, I’m open to people who want to expand the definition of “game” as long as it doesn’t become so open-ended to virtually lose its meaning.

The lovely thing about discussions about definitions is that we are all invested in what must be part of, and what must be excluded from, these definitions.

To someone who thinks that a game must have X, they will resist all attempts to define it otherwise; any use of the term “game” which implies otherwise will lead to another way of expressing just what they need to be so.

My post was mostly about concepts and processes, though I shouted about definitions in the title. I was trying to say that this definition has distracted artists from exploring a potential media, due to the perceived requirements associated with the media - namely, that it also has to be fun. As a result of my title, the discussion got dragged into arguments about my definitions. Frankly, I don’t really care what a game is or isn’t.

Eric’s post is nearly all about definitions, which is why it’s getting dragged into the same arguments. Which may be great for those who really care about what the definition of “game” is.

A while ago I came up with a simple solution to forestall these types of arguments. It works as follows.

“Foobars” are interactive activities with goals and rules that must be fun.

“Foobazzez” are interactive activities with rules that have no goals and must be fun.

“Barblazzes” are interactive activities with rules and goals that need not be fun.

Now those who want to argue about definitions can point at these things and work out which ones are “games” and which are not. If there are not enough categories, we can always create new things.

Regardless of the outcome of this discussion, I can continue to talk about my point. Which is that “barblazzes” tend not to be created because they are often overlooked in favor of “foobars”. Nevertheless, there is room for “barblazzes” to be used in artistic expression. Since my definition of a “barblazz” precludes it from being fun, I don’t have to get into an argument about whether games have to be fun, anymore.

Yehuda

Larry -

In the cases you mention of Boggle and Scrabble, you’re using the game equipment to facilitate an activity which is probably not a game.  It is certainly an example of play, and if the players have all agreed upon the method and goal of the play, it could be considered a game.

In your Flowerpower example, or any example of one or more of the players playing by rules not agreed to by entering into the social contract of “let’s play game X,” I would say they are no longer playing the same game as you. 

In roleplaying, it is often understood that the goal of an rpg is to create story--in your case, through character development (in the writing sense, not XP sense).

And here I go looking for the forrest through all these damned trees.

My last replay sounds really rude. I didn’t mean to imply that just because I don’t like to talk about definitions that one shouldn’t. And I didn’t mean to try to hijack the discussion.

It all sounded different in my head before I posted it. It should have sat there. Sorry.

Yehuda

Not the first or last time, too ... :-(

Really, sometimes I think the name of the website should just be changed to BoardGAMER News.  There used to be such a focus on the games themselves, the fun and everything.  Yes, sometimes we had a few topics with some weight.  But nothing too overwhelming for the common reader.

But now we have all of these deep, philosophical “intellectual” treatments… that are now little different than some of the stuff anyone can find on BGG.  And I think BGG is a great forum to host those conversations. 

Whatever happened to the simple discussion of the games themselves here?  And does commercialism seem to be a dirty word?  Instead, it seems there is a decided strain of columnists delving into all of these obscure “can you top this” intellectual exercises.

Don’t get me wrong, Eric has done a great service with the website.  Overall, improvement has definitely continued under his time at the tiller.

But I just wonder, with articles like these, have we narrowed our overall reading audience, even as we have expanded readership?

I will point out that personally I enjoy Valerie Putnam’s articles.  And there are many, many other good articles here as well.  But I just especially like the blueprint to how she writes.

Brett:  Your interpretations are good ones and are probably ones I’ve used myself at times.  My only point was that it’s easy to get into a gray area and that things aren’t always as black and white as Patrick’s definition would lead us to believe.

Yehuda:  I didn’t think your comment was rude at all.  But how dare you try to re-enter your own discussion?  :-)

Ryan:  Stop worrying the Common Reader.  If he or she feels this discussion is pointless, they won’t click on the Comments link.  And most are discerning enough to realize that this debate is far from typical for this site.  Ain’t nothing wrong with a little intellectualism, my friend.

Larry,

I think it is typical now for this site.  And the key word is “little”, my amigo.  : )

Cheers, and always a pleasure…

Ryan B.

Larry;

I’m certainly not trying to stand on my own soapbox, announcing far and wide that my definition is the best.  I’ve seen what dueling definitions looks like during parliamentary-style debate, and thankfully have no interest in trying to convince anyone that my view is somehow superior to theirs - just how I see it.  It’s clearly stating the obvious to say YMMV, but then I guess I just did.

I should have probably included my personal requirement that a game have competition, though - which is the element that I think your examples were highlighting the lack of?  Doesn’t matter if it’s competition between players or between the players and the game (see: most co-op kid’s games), but there’s got to be a way to decide a winner for it to be a game.

Here’s a thought, though.  Given the wide swath of likes, dislikes, thoughts and opinions in the world (to say nothing of their existence in the microcosm that is the gaming community - witness this thread), is it even possible to design a game that is not fun?  In other words, no matter what you design, someone’s gonna like it, somewhere, right?

pk

I enjoyed both this and Yehuda’s original article.  I have had discussions with a friend about the application of games as a teaching or training tool.  The main reason we brought this up was a way to make training fun.  But that isn’t the reason for the training, just a hopeful byproduct.
A training game could be engaging but not necessarily fun and still be extremely useful.

Cash Flow 101 was created to educate.  Some find it fun.  Is it bought because it is fun.  Sometimes, but that is not its primary purpose.

>> “Does it matter if a game is commercially
>> successful?  No.”

> (LOL) OK, I give up.  White Flag!
> Posted by Ryan Bretsch

Does (should) your opinion of a game substantively change because of the relative commercial success of a game?  I’d hope not.  Commercial success is an attribute of a game, not a factor in the definition of a game.

My own definition of game is similarly simple to Yehuda’s and the other’s discussed.  I view a game as any system which contains one or more goals, methods of achieving those goals and impediments to achieving those goals.  That’s all that’s required.  There may be other bits, but they’re not necessary for a game to exist.  Yeah, some games are pretty crappy, but they’re still definitionally games.  Narrative is certainly not required but may of course be present, and similarly for the other constraints mentioned above.  The game doesn’t even have to be explicit or well documented or fun or enjoyed or even played to be a game.  It just needs goals, abilities and barriers.  The goals, abilities and barriers could be emergent, unknowingly assumed, available only in gestalt or extremely well defined and published via officially agreed-on rules (such as the no-scoring scrabble above), web fora, public meta-discussion etc.

> But tell me, what is “fun” ?

> Posted by Tim Harrison

“Fun” describes anything that I decide is both enjoyable and likeable enough (and they’re different things) to be worth doing for those reasons.

I notice you us the term *design* in reference to games. If we are to think of games as the product of artists and not engineers perhaps *create* would be a more apt term.

Does anyone call themselves a game creator instead of a game designer???

A bit of convenience:

Slashdot turned up a headline today titled “Academic Games are no Fun.”

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/05/130233&from=rss

It is about an attempt to make an educational MMO videogame.

J.C.,

Well… I’m not sure I even understand what you are talking about at this point?  But it’s ok.  Really.  You don’t have to expand upon your position.  : )

At any rate, my point was very narrowly defined towards commercialism and fun.  Nothing more.  And it’s just my own opinion, after all. I think perhaps other people are presuming and expanding my opinions for me?  Who knows.  But I think the thoughts on this are mostly played out.

Cheers,

Ryan B.
“worrying for the common reader...” (LOL)