Slackful Thoughts

5 January, 2003:

Cory talks about what he thinks makes a game a game in another piece you should read. I basically agree with his taxonomy, but there are a few places we disagree and a few points that I wanted to discuss further, so I'll do that here.

First, neither of us is making a value judgement. We're just trying to discuss what makes a given activity a game instead of some other activity. Many of the activities we're exposed to as children and that are classified as games should not be classified that way. Chutes & Ladders and Candyland are two examples that spring to mind immediately. In neither game does the player exercise any control over the outcome of the game. They nevertheless can be fun for children, and they can even help teach adherence to rules and can serve as a bridge to learning games, but they just aren't games.

I refer to any activity that is all luck as a pastime, rather than a game. I arrived at this mental classification thanks to a book that a friend had in high school. It was all about solitaire games and pastimes that could be played with standard cards. The activities were classified as games or pastimes depending on whether the player exercised control over the outcome. In other words, an activity that required no skill to succeed was a pastime. One of the more entertaining things to do with the book was to deal out a pastime called Clock that had an elaborate layout and rules for moving cards about, yet amounted to nothing more than a laborious method of sorting the cards. You could deal out a Clock layout, and spend a while picking up cards and pretending to ruminate carefully over where you lay it back down. Inevitably, you'd get people asking you what weird solitaire game you were playing, and I was always amused to describe it. Yes, I'm easily amused.

I would argue that Cory didn't include one more element to games, which is the presence of a goal. Without a goal that the players are striving towards, a game lacks focus and becomes ritual, improvisational theater or something else that isn't a game. Yes, this means that some role-playing games do not count as games in my world, but I'm prepared to accept that.

Activities with skill but no luck I usually classify as puzzles. That includes things like logic problems, crossword puzzles, word searches, conventional picture puzzles and trivially solvable games such as tic-tac-toe. Up to this point, Cory and I agree about his taxonomy. I merely provide names for some of his categories. However, I take issue with him adding the category of activities that could be solved as not being games. A taxonomy that categorizes perhaps the most recognizable game to most Americans as not being a game strikes me as counterintuitive at best.

Here's the issue for me. I agree that a game has to have uncertainty for it to qualify as a game. That uncertainty can come from an external randomizer, such as die rolls or a deck of cards. This is the path that the majority of games take. It's necessary for uncertainty to be in a game, because without it, the advantages of a game over other pursuits disappear. Without uncertainty, you're better off reading a novel, watching a movie, going for a hike or participating in many other types of activity. With the uncertainty, you've got something that many other activities do not, which is unpredictability. I delight in the unexpected which can occur in games, and I take great pleasure in the mental exercise of trying to predict where things will go and the challenge of trying to win games.

The uncertainty that is one of the defining characteristics of a game does not have to come from an explicit random element, however. If players cannot see the entire world of possible outcomes of a game, their actions after a certain point essentially become random. The result is what I think of as emergent randomness or chaos if I'm being succinct. Chess is a perfect example.

The best Chess player in the world cannot see every possible result of a match in advance. A mediocre or bad Chess player, such as myself, is barely capable of seeing more than a few moves into the future. Let's say that I'm capable of seeing five moves into the future, and can evaluate whether a given move will improve my position in that time frame. It's towards the end of a game, and I evaluate my current position and decide that two moves are equally beneficial. Since I cannot see more than five moves into the future, I cannot see that one of those moves will seal my victory, while the other allows my opponent a chance of winning. The moves appear identical to me, but they are not in reality. The choice I make is random, and affects my opponent's position. Because my decision is random and not under control of my opponent, that results in uncertainty and is what gives us a game. The more of a game that is visible, the less of a game it is. If a player can correctly see the outcome of every possible move in a game of Chess, it would not be a game for them. This does mean that some activities may be a game for some people and not for others, in the way that tic-tac-toe might be a game for a very small child but not for an adult, but I'm comfortable with that distinction. Without the concept of chaos being a valid random element in a game, the inescapable conclusion is that Chess, Go and Duplicate Bridge are not games, which I think is a silly conclusion. It's difficult to think of many games quite as chaotic as a game of Diplomacy, and there are no explicit randomizers anywhere near that game.

In that spirit, here are a few of my favorite abstract games, several of which wouldn't count as games to Cory:

Go (many manufacturers, with some great sets available from Samarkand) - Having mounted my defense of pure abstract games with no explicit randomizers above, I should at least discuss which are my favorites. Chess, despite what it may appear, is not one of them. I find Chess to be inelegant and dry, and don't enjoy playing it much. Trying to write up all of my reasons would take a long time and be unconvincing without the traditional accompanying gestures, so I won't bother. I'll say this: everything that Chess is supposed to be, Go actually is. Go is deep, amenable to extensive study, has an effective handicapping system, has aesthetic appeal and elegant rules, and is actually fun.

Zertz (Rio Grande Games) - Zertz is my favorite among the new breed of pure abstracts. Created by Kris Blum, who has launched an ambitious series of abstract games that aim to tie together into a vast network of games yet still stand on their own, it features an interesting board that constantly shrinks. It also has multiple paths to victory, which I find keeps in fresh. Adding to the appeal is a nice production and clean rules that are easy to teach but the implications of which take a while to absorb. Of the other games in the series (GIPF, Tamsk and Dvonn), GIPF is my next favorite.

Take It Easy (Ravensburger) - Take It Easy can best be likened to Bingo, but with a spatial component. It has been criticized occasionally for being nothing more than "multi-player solitaire", but that sells the game short. It's a great game to introduce people to games, as anyone who solves puzzles will feel right at home. Also, the element of competition, while present, is impossible to take personally. The rules are extremely simple, allowing people to jump right in. Even among experienced gamers, if we want to break for something different, we'll sometimes pull this game out.

Call My Bluff (FX Schmid Games, no long in print) - This is a commercialized version of a game some know as Perudo, but with some improvements and a nice production. Some have taken exception to the idea of packaging a folk game and selling it, but I think this is a great game and an improvement over the folk versions floating around, so I'm happy to own it. Call My Bluff is proof that abstract games don't have to be heavy, thinking exercises at heart. Instead, this game relies heavily on luck and bluff (as the name implies), and managed to be a very fast moving diversion as a result. A theme would only get in the way. At the start of the game, each player has five dice, and the last player who still has dice wins. Each round, you roll your dice, and then make bets about what symbols are on everyone else's dice. Eventually, a bet gets called, the dice are revealed, the bet is evaluated and someone loses dice. It's a great warm-up game and can be a nice way to select what longer game gets played.

Backgammon (many manufacturers) - Among the traditional abstract games that are played, this is my favorite, in no small part because of the dice involved. It seems to get overlooked by people, and I think that's a shame. The game play is fast moving; the additional of an explicit randomizer softens the impact of losing and also blurs the edges of the game, transforming it into less of a cerebral experience. I don't feel like I've done a lot of mental heavy lifting when I finish a game. It's play, not work.

Torres (Ravensburger) - Torres has a very loose theme attached that I don't think sticks at all, so I'll pretend it's an abstract. For an abstract game, Torres has a much larger set of rules than the other games listed here, making it a different sort of beast. There are multiple types of pieces and cards involved, so it's a more complex game. With some of the variants of this game, there are no explicit randomizers, so all the chaos comes from the players themselves. For many games, that would result in a very dry experience. However, players have enough options available to them on their turn that it doesn't end up playing out that way. You spend action points to slowly build building and place your pieces in an attempt to score the most points. With cards permitting special moves and enough space on the board to permit a variety of strategies, it plays out differently each time. It won Spiel des Jahres award in 2000 (Germany's most prestigious board game award) and the Games Magazine Game of the Year award in the same year, so it's widely recognized as a great game.

~ Joshua Buergel