“That’s Not A Game” The Game

There is a behaviour I see just often enough from game developers or game reviewers that it gets on my wick. It is the habit of referring to a thing as barely a game or not even a game. This dismissive attitude is even there from serious minds like Mark Rosewater, a man I greatly respect, who argues that Candyland is not a game. The argument is that the actions of Candyland are automated and therefore, players don’t have to make any choices.

I would then sagely point out that there is, in fact, a choice, and that is, the choice to continue playing, and act all smug.

But the real issue is that saying things aren’t games is a delegitimising tactic that can be used to shut out certain components of games media, suggesting that some ideas or concepts for the ways games should work don’t exist, or that some choices or our own subconscious desire to participate in rules structures, aren’t real game mechanics or tools. It’s not like a game needs a lot of rules, or components, to be a game. A number of games are improvisational or purely paratextual – games that exist in response to other things that exist, like word games, or conversational puzzles.

Bernard Suits, in The Grasshopper: Games, Life And Utopia, defines games with a wonderfully intricate, encapsulatory phrase: A Game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.

This definition means that lots of things are games. Don’t-step-on-the-crack is a game. Cup-and-ball is a game. Fetch is a game. The problem people tend to have with this definition is that they’re left unable to say, more broadly: I don’t like what this game does, and keenly feel what it lacks. Which is okay.

If your definition of games is this broad, it means your acceptance of what games can be and can do can be suitably broad. It will give you oddball ideas and weird extra options. And it will also mean you’re a bit less likely to be condescending to games whose crimes are mostly being boring or simple.