GAME|TYPE OF GAMES| GAMES DEFINITION|KNOWLEDGEABLE_SITE
A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun,
and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct
from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and
from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological
elements. However, the distinction is not clear-cut, and many games are also
considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator
sports or games) or art (such as jigsaw puzzles or games involving an artistic layout such as Mahjong, solitaire, or some video games).
Games are sometimes played
purely for enjoyment, sometimes for achievement or reward as well. They can be
played alone, in teams, or online; by amateurs or by professionals. The players
may have an audience of non-players, such as when people are entertained by
watching a chess championship. On the other hand, players in a game may
constitute their own audience as they take their turn to play. Often, part of
the entertainment for children playing a game is deciding who is part of their
audience and who is a player.
Key components of games are
goals, rules, challenges, and interaction. Games generally
involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both. Many games help develop
practical skills, serve as a form of exercise, or otherwise perform
an educational, simulational, or psychological role.
Attested as early as 2600 BC, games
are a universal part of the human experience and are present in all cultures. The Royal
Game of Ur, Senet, and Mancala are some of the oldest known
games.
Definitions
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein was
probably the first academic philosopher to address the definition of the
word game. In his Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein
argued that the elements of games, such as play, rules, and competition,
all fail to adequately define what games are. From this, Wittgenstein concluded
that people apply the term game to a range of disparate human
activities that bear to one another only what one might call family
resemblances. As the following game definitions show, this conclusion was not a
final one and today many philosophers, like Thomas Hurka, think that
Wittgenstein was wrong and that Bernard Suits' definition is a good answer
to the problem.
Gameplay elements and
classification
Tools
Games are often classified by the
components required to play them (e.g. miniatures, a ball, cards, a
board, and pieces, or a computer). In places where the use of leather is
well-established, the ball has been a popular game piece throughout recorded
history, resulting in a worldwide popularity of ball games such as rugby, basketball, soccer
(football), cricket, tennis, and volleyball. Other tools are
more idiosyncratic to a certain region. Many countries in Europe, for instance,
have unique standard decks of playing cards. Other games such as chess may
be traced primarily through the development and evolution of its game pieces.
Many games
tools are tokens, meant to represent other things. A token may be a pawn on a
board, play money, or an intangible item such as a point scored.
Games such
as hide-and-seek or tag do not use any obvious tool;
rather, their interactivity is defined by the environment. Games with the same
or similar rules may have different gameplay if the environment is altered. For
example, hide-and-seek in a school building differs from the same
game in a park; an auto race can be radically different depending
on the track or street course, even with the same cars.
Rules and aims
Whereas games
are often characterized by their tools, they are often defined by their rules.
While rules are subject to
variations and changes, enough change in the rules usually
results in a "new" game. For instance, baseball can be played
with "real" baseballs or with wiffleball. However, if
the players decide to play with only three bases, they are arguably playing a
different game. There are exceptions to this in that some games deliberately
involve the changing of their own rules, but even then there are often
immutable meta-rules.
Rules
generally determine the time-keeping system, the rights and
responsibilities of the players, and each player's goals. Player rights may
include when they may spend resources or move tokens.
The rules of a
game may be distinguished from their aims. For most competitive games,
the ultimate aim is winning: in this sense, checkmate is the
aim of chess. Common win conditions are being first to amass a certain
quota of points or tokens (as in Settlers of Catan), having
the greatest number of tokens at the end of the game (as in Monopoly),
or some relationship of one's game tokens to those of one's opponent (as in
chess's checkmate).
There may also be intermediate aims, which are tasks that move
a player toward winning. For instance, an intermediate aim in football is to
score goals, because scoring goals will increase one's likelihood of winning
the game, but isn't alone sufficient to win the game.
An aim
identifies a sufficient
condition for successful action, whereas the rule identifies
a necessary
condition for permissible action. For example, the aim
of chess is to checkmate, but although it is expected that players will try to
checkmate each other, it is not a rule of chess that a player must checkmate
the other player whenever possible. Similarly, it is not a rule of football that
a player must score a goal on a penalty; while it is expected the player will
try, it is not required. While meeting the aims often requires a certain degree
of skill and (in some cases) luck, following the rules of a game merely
requires knowledge of the rules and some careful attempt to follow them; it
rarely (if ever) requires luck or demanding skills.
Skill, strategy, and chance
A game's tools
and rules will result in its requiring skill, strategy, luck,
or a combination thereof, and are classified accordingly.
Games of skill include games of physical skill,
such as wrestling, tug of war, hopscotch, target
shooting, and stake, and games of mental
skills such as checkers and chess. Games of
strategy include checkers, chess, Go, animal,
and tic-tac-toe,
and often require special equipment to play them. Games of
chance include gambling games (blackjack, Mahjong, roulette,
etc.), as well as snakes and
ladders and rock, paper, scissors; most
require equipment such as cards or dice. However, most games
contain two or all three of these elements. For example, American
football and baseball involve both
physical skill and strategy while tiddlywinks, poker,
and Monopoly combine
strategy and chance. Many cards and board games combine all three; most trick-taking
games involve mental skill, strategy, and an element of
chance, as do many strategic board games such as Risk, Settlers of
Catan, and Carcassonne.
Single-player games
Most games require multiple players. However, single-player games are unique in respect to the type of challenges a player faces. Unlike a game with multiple players competing with or against each other to reach the game's goal, a one-player game is a battle solely against an element of the environment (an artificial opponent), against one's own skills, against time, or against chance. Playing with a yo-yo or playing tennis against a wall is not generally recognized as playing a game due to the lack of any formidable opposition. Many games described as "single-player" may be termed actually puzzles or recreations.
Multiplayer games
A multiplayer game is a game of several players who
may be independent opponents or teams. Games with many
independent players are difficult to analyze formally using game theory as
the players may form and switch coalitions. The term
"game" in this context may mean either a true game played for
entertainment or a competitive activity describable in principle by
mathematical game theory.
Game theory
John Nash proved that games with
several players have a stable solution provided that coalitions between players
are disallowed. Nash won the Nobel prize for economics for
this important result which extended von Neumann's theory of zero-sum games.
Nash's stable solution is known as the Nash equilibrium.
If cooperation
between players is allowed, then the game becomes more complex; many concepts
have been developed to analyze such games. While these have had some partial
success in the fields of economics, politics, and conflict,
no good general theory has yet been developed.
In quantum game
theory, it has been found that the introduction of quantum
information into multiplayer games allows a new type
of equilibrium
strategy not found in traditional games. The entanglement of
players' choices can have the effect of a contract by preventing
players from profiting from what is known as betrayal.
Types
Sports
 |
| Image by play.google.com |
Many sports require special equipment and dedicated
playing fields, leading to the involvement of a community much larger than the
group of players. A city or town may set aside
such resources for the organization of sports leagues.
Popular sports
may have spectators who
are entertained just by watching games. A community will often align itself
with a local sports team that supposedly represents it (even if the team or
most of its players only recently moved in); they often align themselves
against their opponents or have traditional rivalries. The concept of fandom began
with sports fans.
Certain
competitive sports, such as racing and gymnastics,
are not games by definition such as Crawford's (see above) – despite the
inclusion of many in the Olympic Games – because competitors do not
interact with their opponents; they simply challenge each other in indirect
ways.
Tabletop games
A tabletop game is a game where the
elements of play are confined to a small area and require little physical
exertion, usually simply placing, picking up, and moving game pieces. Most of
these games are played at a table around which the players are seated and on
which the game's elements are located. However, many games falling into this
category, particularly party games, are more free-form in their play and can
involve physical activity such as mime. Still, these games do not require a
large area in which to play them, large amounts of strength or stamina, or
specialized equipment other than what comes in a box.
Dexterity and
coordination games
This class of
games include any game in which the skill element involved relates to manual
dexterity or hand-eye coordination, but excludes the class of video games (see
below). Games such as jacks, paper football, and Jenga require
only very portable or improvised equipment and can be played on any flat level
surface, while other examples, such as pinball, billiards, air hockey, foosball,
and table hockey require
specialized tables or other self-contained modules on which the game is played.
The advent of home video game systems largely replaced some of these, such as
table hockey, however air hockey, billiards, pinball, and foosball remain
popular fixtures in private and public game rooms. These games and others, as
they require reflexes and coordination, are generally performed more poorly by
intoxicated persons but are unlikely to result in injury because of this; as
such the games are popular as drinking games. In
addition, dedicated drinking games such as quarters and beer pong also
involve physical coordination and are popular for similar reasons.
Board games
 |
| Image by licenceglobal.com |
Board games use as a central tool a board on which
the players' status, resources, and progress are tracked using physical tokens.
Many also involve dice or
cards. Most games that simulate war are board games (though a large number
of video games have
been created to simulate strategic combat), and the board may be a map on which
the players' tokens move. Virtually all board games involve
"turn-based" play; one player contemplates and then makes a move,
then the next player does the same, and a player can only act on their turn.
This is opposed to "real-time" play as is found in some card games, most
sports, and most video games.
Some games,
such as chess and Go,
are entirely deterministic, relying only on the strategy element for their
interest. Such games are usually described as having "perfect
information"; the only unknown is the exact thought
processes of one's opponent, not the outcome of any unknown event inherent in
the game (such as a card draw or die roll). Children's games, on the other
hand, tend to be very luck-based, with games such as Candy Land and Chutes and
Ladders having virtually no decisions to be made. By some
definitions, such as that by Greg Costikyan, they are
not games since there are no decisions to make which affect the outcome. Many
other games involving a high degree of luck do not allow direct attacks between
opponents; the random event simply determines a gain or loss in the standing of
the current player within the game, which is independent of any other player;
the "game" then is actually a "race" by definitions such as
Crawford's.
Most other
board games combine strategy and luck factors; the game of backgammon requires
players to decide the best strategic move based on the roll of two dice.
Trivia games have a great deal of randomness based on the questions a person
gets. German-style
board games are notable for often having rather less of a
luck factor than many board games.
Boardgame
groups include race games, roll-and-move games, abstract
strategy games, word games, and wargames,
as well as trivia and
other elements. Some board games fall into multiple groups or incorporate
elements of other genres: Cranium is one popular example, where players
must succeed in each of four skills: artistry, live performance, trivia, and
language.
Card games
 |
| Image by gameskinny.com |
Card games use a deck of cards as their central tool.
These cards may be a standard Anglo-American (52-card)
deck of playing cards (such
as for bridge, poker, Rummy,
etc.), a regional deck using 32, 36, or 40 cards and different suit signs
(such as for the popular German game skat), a tarot deck of
78 cards (used in Europe to play a variety of trick-taking games collectively
known as Tarot, Tarock or Tarocchi games), or a deck specific to the individual
game (such as Set or 1000 Blank White Cards). Uno and Rook are
examples of games that were originally played with a standard deck and have
since been commercialized with customized decks. Some collectible
card games such as Magic: The Gathering are
played with a small selection of cards that have been collected or purchased
individually from large available sets.
Some board
games include a deck of cards as a gameplay element, normally for randomization
or to keep track of game progress. Conversely, some card games such as Cribbage use
a board with movers, normally to keep score. The differentiation between the
two genres in such cases depends on which element of the game is foremost in
its play; a board game using cards for random actions can usually use some
other method of randomization, while Cribbage can just as easily be scored on
paper. These elements as used are simply the traditional and easiest methods to
achieve their purpose.
Dice games
 |
| Image by androidauthority.com |
Dice games use several dice as
their central element. Board games often use dice for a randomization element,
and thus each roll of the dice has a profound impact on the outcome of the
game, however, dice games are differentiated in that the dice do not determine
the success or failure of some other element of the game; they instead are the
central indicator of the person's standing in the game. Popular dice games
include Yahtzee, Farkle, Bunco, Liar's dice/Perudo, and Poker dice.
As dice are, by their very nature, designed to produce apparently
random numbers, these games usually involve a high degree of
luck, which can be directed to some extent by the player through more strategic
elements of play and through tenets of probability theory. Such
games are thus popular as gambling games; the game of Craps is
perhaps the most famous example, though Liar's dice and Poker dice were
originally conceived of as gambling games.
Domino and tile games
 |
| Image by mob.org |
Domino games are similar in many
respects to card games, but the generic device is instead a set of tiles
called dominoes,
which traditionally each have two ends, each with a given number of dots, or
"pips", and each combination of two possible end values as it appears
on a tile is unique in the set. The games played with dominoes largely center
around playing a domino from the player's "hand" onto the matching
end of another domino, and the overall object could be to always be able to
make a play, to make all open endpoints sum to a given number or multiple, or
simply to play all dominoes from one's hand onto the board. Sets vary in the
number of possible dots on one end, and thus of the number of combinations and
pieces; the most common set historically is double-six, though in
more recent times "extended" sets such as double-nine have
been introduced to increase the number of dominoes available, which allows
larger hands and more players in a game. Muggins, Mexican Train,
and Chicken Foot are
very popular domino games. Texas 42 is a domino game more similar in its play to a "trick-taking" card game.
Variations of traditional dominoes abound: Triominoes are
similar in theory but are triangular and thus have three values per tile.
Similarly, a game known as Quad-Ominos uses
four-sided tiles.
Some other
games use tiles in place of cards; Rummikub is a variant
of the Rummy card the game family that uses tiles numbered in ascending rank among four colors, very
similar in makeup to a 2-deck "pack" of Anglo-American playing cards. Mahjong is
another game very similar to Rummy that uses a set
of tiles with card-like values and art.
Lastly, some
games use graphical tiles to form a board layout, on which other elements of the
Games are played. Settlers of
Catan and Carcassonne are
examples. In each, the "board" is made up of a series of tiles; in
Settlers of Catan, the starting layout is random but static, while in
Carcassonne the game is played by "building" the board
tile-by-tile. Hive,
an abstract strategy game using tiles as moving pieces has mechanical and
strategic elements similar to chess, although it has no
board; the pieces themselves both form the layout and can move within it.
Pencil and paper games
 |
| Image by codecanyon.net |
Video games
A computer or video game uses one or more input devices,
typically a button/joystick combination
(on arcade games);
a keyboard, mouse, or trackball (computer games);
or a controller or
a motion-sensitive tool (console games). More esoteric devices such as paddle
controllers have also been used for input.
There are many
genres of video games; the first commercial video game, Pong, was a simple simulation of table tennis.
As processing power increased, new genres such as adventure and action games
were developed that involved a player guiding a character from a third-person
perspective through a series of obstacles. This "real-time" element
cannot be easily reproduced by a board game, which is generally limited to a "turn-based" strategy; this advantage allows video games to simulate
situations such as combat more realistically. Additionally, the playing of the video game does not require the same physical skill, strength, or danger as a real-world representation of the game, and can provide either very realistic,
exaggerated or impossible physics, allowing for elements of a fantastical nature,
games involving physical violence, or simulations of sports. Lastly, a computer
can, with varying degrees of success, simulate one or more human opponents in
traditional table games such as chess, leading to
simulations of such games that can be played by a single player.
In more
open-ended computer simulations, also known as sandbox-style games, the game
provides a virtual environment in which the player may be free to do whatever
they like within the confines of this universe. Sometimes, there is a lack of
goals or opposition, which has stirred some debate on whether these should be
considered "games" or "toys". (Crawford specifically
mentions Will Wright's SimCity as an example of a toy.)
Online games
Modern online games are played using an Internet
connection; some have dedicated client programs,
while others require
only a web browser.
Some simpler browser games appeal to more casual gaming demographic groups
(notably older audiences) that otherwise play very few video games.
Business games
0 Comments