On Games and Play

Humans, more particularly adults, rarely play. Play is unstructured. A good example of this, is that if you give two people a ball they might kick it about. As soon as these people think about structure, perhaps say a scoring system, this becomes a game. The thing is, games are all about rules and possibilities. As humans, we like possibilities. Unfortunately we don’t like infinite possibilities, if everything is possible; there are no rules. With no rules, there are no goals and we like goals much more than we like possibilities. You see goals give us a chance to improve, better ourselves and also to compete. As humans, we like to feel that we have improved ourselves in some way. More than this though, our egos appreciate the opportunity to prove that we are better than other people. Games with rules, allow us to do this. Play does not.

Back to possibilities, it is actually much more interesting to restrict the number of possibilities available. With fewer possibilities it becomes possible to comprehend what is possible and it becomes easier to master the available possibilities. Rules allow this restriction of possibility and many of the greatest games have simple, yet robust rule sets. In reality, chess has very few rules. Chess in fact, probably hits the sweet spot in terms of restriction of possibility. Because the rules restrict what is possible, it becomes not only easy to understand the game, but also easy to predict what may happen. The trick is that it is impossible to know how a game will play out. No matter the standard of two players, they will each have their own unique style. Even accounting for this, there is a certain randomness to even the most carefully considered play.

Rules are the most important thing about games. It’s why our games often have some sort of independant authority, who ensures that the rules are being properly followed. You see if there’s one thing that can ruin a game, it is inconsistencies in how its rules are enforced. Computer games in particular fall foul of this. It is not unusual to find gamers almost universally deriding certain sections of games. This is often because the game has broken its own rules, making its world less believable and breaking the sense of immersion. The best games have rules which are enforced correctly every time.

Not only this, the best games have rules which allow the game to border on chaos, without ever reaching it…