The term “Game

What is a game?

To understand computer games, we need to understand what games are in general. What does the term “game” mean?

Let’s start with the most popular source of information—Wikipedia. It offers the following definition of a game:

ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Игра [1]: A game is a type of meaningful, non-productive activity where the motive lies not in the outcome, but in the process itself . The term “game” is also used to describe a set of objects or programs designed for such activities.

This is too narrow a definition. This definition can only encompass children’s play, not all forms of play. Okay, let’s look at what we do have.

This definition is based on only two facts: 1) play is an unproductive activity (it doesn’t bring material benefit), 2) play is directed at itself, not at achieving results (it’s not a means to an end, which clearly contrasts with the term “work”). But is this true? Let’s check.

Is play an unproductive activity? Any productive activity can be transformed into a game, if desired. For example, consider harvesting (the most “productive” activity). Harvesting can easily be transformed into a game-like competition by inviting participants to compete against each other. This immediately refutes both of the premises underlying the term “game.”

As we can see, in practice, separating play from productive activity is quite arbitrary. Right before our eyes, the proposed definition of play has crumbled to pieces, and Wikipedia’s authority on gaming has plummeted to zero.

Johan Huizinga “The Man Who Plays” p.33 [2]: Seriousness tends to exclude play, while play easily includes seriousness.

 

Let’s consider a more specialized definition of play. Dutch philosopher Johan Huizinga, who studied the phenomenon of play extensively, defined play in his 1938 book “Man the Player” as follows:

Johan Huizinga “The Man Who Plays” p.25 [2]: Play is voluntary behavior or activity that occurs within certain established boundaries of place and time, according to voluntarily assumed but absolutely obligatory rules, with a goal that lies within itself; accompanied by feelings of tension and joy, as well as a sense of “otherness” in comparison with “everyday life.”

Here, the game’s self-directed focus is also mentioned, but there’s no contrast between it and work and seriousness. This definition isn’t so easily criticized, and certainly won’t be dispelled by a couple of practical examples. If you look closely, you’ll notice that it doesn’t explain the essence of the game in simpler terms; the entire definition is simply a list of known properties of the game. The properties of the game are as follows:

– fun (the process itself is enjoyable);

– keeps you in suspense (the outcome of the game is unknown: will I win or not);

– limited in space and time (playground – “magic circle”);

– has a set of rules (game mechanics);

– gives freedom within the rules (improvisation of players);

– repeatable (any game can be played again);

– role change (the participant can behave in a way that he does not behave in ordinary life);

– simulates (the game depicts scenes from real life).

 

As we see, the essence of the game is made up of opposites: it’s fun, yet tense; the game confines us to clear rules, yet offers greater freedom than we’ve had before; it allows players to take a break from their everyday role by trying on any other role, yet still continues to depict the real world.

Are you noticing a pattern? For those unfamiliar with the table of computer game genres , we’ll clarify that when we just listed the main game properties, we also listed all the main categories of computer game genres:

– casual games (fun), – action (competition),

– strategies (rules), – open world (improvisation),

– role-playing games (role), – simulators (simulation).

 

Play in animals

Play is not an artificial invention of humanity, but a natural need of any highly developed organism . Games emerged long before the advent of humans, among higher mammals (carnivores, even-toed ungulates, odd-toed ungulates, rodents, and primates).

In simpler organisms (mollusks, worms, insects, reptiles), experience is passed down from generation to generation in the form of unconscious instincts. Highly developed animals have far fewer instincts; the bulk of information from the older generation is passed on after the birth of the young, during their maturation (juvenile period), and this information is transmitted through play. Through play, young animals learn and refine behavioral patterns from adults, adopting their behavioral style, skills, and abilities.

 

The behavior of simpler animals is strictly regulated by instinct; they don’t play, and therefore, they can’t be trained. In the play of higher animals, however, there are numerous random factors (the personal qualities of the participants, misunderstandings, mistakes, changing environmental conditions) that can distort the information being transmitted, allowing the next generation to acquire new knowledge, which increases the adaptability of the entire species. (For example, if a tiger grows up in the wild within a pack, it will naturally perceive people as enemies or prey. If, however, a tiger grows up and plays in a circus cage from birth, its attitude toward people will be completely different. It will live not by the rules of its own species, but by the rules transmitted to it by humans, who make certain evaluative reactions to its actions (the training process). A counterexample: Mowgli children raised in the wild adopt their behavior patterns from animals, leaving no trace of human culture in them.)

Rules of behavior are only effectively learned in childhood. In adulthood, when receptivity to games declines, it is very difficult to change an individual’s behavior.

 

Thus, play in animals is a way of transmitting accumulated experience from generation to generation, a method more complex than genetically determined instincts . Instincts are rigid rules of behavior ingrained in an organism before birth (in other words, natural scripts). Play is a manifestation of the free will of living organisms (in other words, intelligence—the ability of an organism to independently set and adopt new rules of behavior).

 

Play in the history of mankind.
Ritual play.

The theory of evolution asserts that humans evolved from apes, and the primary reason for this evolutionary step was labor. We won’t discuss this rather controversial assertion (in the memory of all our ancestors, not one animal species has ever transformed into another, despite the many mutations occurring in each generation; all changes occurred only within species). Let’s look a little further: humans learned to work, began using stones and sticks while hunting, and decided to walk on two limbs to free their hands. All of this is clear and has been thoroughly explained in scientific works. But how did ordinary pack animals evolve into the human community that has filled the entire globe and changed its appearance beyond recognition?

 

What truly distinguishes us from animals isn’t labor (many animals work just as hard as we do), but civilization—the ability to create complex, multi-level social structures —and culture—the transmission of accumulated, non-practical knowledge from generation to generation . Where did these qualities come from in humans? To answer this question, we need to take a closer look at the structure of primitive tribes. We won’t delve into this topic in depth here (a detailed description can be found in Huizinga’s book “Homme der Play”); we’ll simply outline the following conclusions:

Primitive humans, like apes, had the opportunity to play. The difference is that humans transformed the natural play of young individuals to suit their own needs, transforming play into a ritual, a cult. References to certain types of rituals have survived to our era: dancing around a fire, initiation rites, celebrations, and sacrifices. Ritual games became the foundation and the connecting link that united the pack into a more complex structure—a tribal society.

Thanks to the emergence of rituals, certain human beings acquired roles that didn’t exist in nature. A priest is neither a worker, nor a gatherer, nor a hunter, nor a pack leader, nor a youngster. Such roles are not found in other animal species; they are unnecessary in nature. Nevertheless, it is a very important role.

The priest is the creator of rituals; he devises them, ensures their proper execution, develops and complicates them. Priests were formed from the most inquisitive people who, in their free time, observed the rest of society, contemplated nature, and pondered what they saw. They tried to convey everything they saw to their children in every possible way. The best way proved to be play.

Thus, the game that taught young men practical skills eventually began to teach far more impractical things: knowledge and ideas. Soon, the ritual spread to all members of society, not just the youth. The first ideas, presented humorously during rituals, accumulated over the generations. Descendants absorbed all the information passed down from their ancestors and also added something new of their own. The usefulness of rituals became obvious, and very soon, the disparate game rituals transformed into a coherent religion with rigorous rules—a cult. The first primitive theories of world order emerged—ideas of pagan deities—elemental phenomena given human form. Simultaneously, the game rules of rituals shaped the rules of conduct within the community.

Johan Huizinga “The Man Who Plays” p.20 [2]: In the forms of cult games, humanity felt its way into order in human society itself, laying the foundations of its simplest forms of government.

This is the first step toward the emergence of culture and civilization—the preservation and enhancement of the impractical (artistic) experience of our ancestors . Cult is the prehistoric root of modern culture.

 

It’s worth noting that rituals emerged long before speech emerged in humans. Speech was a consequence of the development of primitive cults. Practical knowledge could be passed on to descendants through personal example, silently, but impractical knowledge had to be transmitted in a different way. Thanks to unconventional ritual games, people developed imagination—the ability to store immaterial ideas in their minds and manipulate them: breaking them down, combining them, creating similar ideas, and further developing them. Evolving human tribes, where each participant stored a multitude of personal ideas in their minds, were able to create a symbolic system for representing their ideas. At first, these were simple gestures, body movements, or entire dances, then images on hard surfaces (cave paintings), but later, one of the priests hit upon the idea of ​​using vocal sounds as symbols. This is how speech was formed. (You can see a projection of the history of human development in the process of development of newborn children: babies know how to play from birth, but the skill of speech appears only after some time, and only under the condition of active communication with adults).

Speech, in turn, provided another impetus for the accumulation of non-practical experience, since explaining something with words is much easier than demonstrating with fingers. Meanwhile, previous forms of communication—play and ritual (the transmission of non-practical experience through gestures, postures, and movements)—remained part of human cultural life.

 

Speech game

So, play became ritual, and ritual gave birth to symbols, fantasy, and speech. Speech became the primary means of exchanging non-practical experience—thoughts. The priests exchanged their animal-like attire for woven garments and called themselves philosophers. Now, to explain something to society, there was no need to dance, imitate plants, animals, or deities; one could simply communicate it through speech.

But don’t think that with the advent of speech, people suddenly became serious and abandoned play. Philosophers are the same priests who changed the mode, but not the method, of their work. They reached all their conclusions in a playful manner.

Johan Huizinga, “Man at Play,” p. 15 [2]: When playing, the speaking spirit continually leaps from the realm of the material to the realm of thought. Every abstract expression is a speech image; every speech image is nothing other than a play on words. Johan Huizinga “The Man Who Plays” p.9 [2]: That is, a person not only plays with meanings, but the meanings themselves are products and components of the game.

The sayings of ancient philosophers now seem to us to be a true source of wisdom, preserving the fundamental ideas upon which all subsequent cultural heritage was built. But in ancient times, philosophizing was merely a play on words. The most intelligent members of society competed in oratory. One of the favorite forms of the game was asking tricky questions that could not be answered correctly (the symbol of philosophy is a question with no clear answer). Essentially, philosophy was a simple question-and-answer game. For the most part, these were invented to stump one’s opponent, but in the process of thought, new ideas were coined, and culture was enriched by them.

 

We can trace the history of games, culture, and art to the present day (again, all of this is detailed in Johan Huizinga’s book “Man the Player”), but we’ll limit ourselves to the following: forms of play have existed in all areas of human society throughout all historical eras. Only in the late 19th century did rationalism come into fashion, industrialization began, bourgeois revolutions swept the globe, and play began to be eradicated from all corners of the world, as a relic of the old Tsarist past. The world began to be ruled not by high titles, military glory, and a code of honor (elements of play), but by soulless economic efficiency and expediency.

However, in the modern world, we are now witnessing a new round of social evolution. Previously, business displaced autocratic power based on cult and play. But, once in power, business itself eventually became a game. Before our very eyes, all spheres of activity from which play was eradicated a couple of centuries ago are suddenly regaining their playful qualities.

Gamification is the process of adding game elements to one’s work. Gamification is ostensibly aimed at increasing work efficiency, but in reality, it’s meant to satisfy people’s thirst for freedom. People want to feel more human, and to do so, they need to play , not perform repetitive tasks like a simple microorganism guided by instinct. With a standard job, people enjoy playing in their free time (this could be television, games, music, other arts, sports, religion, participation in public life—any activity that allows them to play an unusual role, compete, or observe someone else’s game). With gamification, people are encouraged to enjoy playing right at work—not working, but playing their job. A well-established work process is always based on a spirit of competition, rewarding achievements, and identifying winners.

 

Play in art

The word “game” has a slightly different meaning in the field of art.

Playing is the reproduction of a work of art (examples: playing a role in a play, playing music).

Play is only one stage of art. Let’s examine the structure of art as a whole to see the role of play within it.

 

The structure of art (using theatre as an example)

 

Separation	Name	Role	Action	Image
Nature	1. Reality	Life (nature, other work)	Contemplation, a source of inspiration
Art	2. Creativity	Author	Rethinking, creating
	3. Game	Actor	Reproduction, performance
	4. Spectacle	Viewer	Contemplation, a source of inspiration

 

1. Realityis a source of information. People observe the world around them: nature, animals, things, other people. They look at what already exists in reality; there are no other sources of information besides nature itself. Everything they see accumulates in their consciousness.

 

2. Creativityis the processing of information. Having collected information, a person begins to manipulate it in their mind: combining some ideas, breaking others apart, applying the properties of one object to another, and rebuilding mental images in every possible way. (A more understandable analogy: a person receives construction blocks from the real world; in their mind, they begin to construct something new from them and achieve a result. But everything they achieve is not their own invention, pulled out of nowhere; all the components of their thoughts already existed in nature. All our fantasies are composed only of what we have already seen in life.) The participant in this process is the author, the creator.

The artist attempts to bring the resulting mental image to life. Thought can be transformed into any form of perceptible information: light, sound, movement, form. The chosen method of presenting information determines the type of art.

 

3. A game(art object) is a form of information transfer. If a static art form is chosen, the result of the creative process will be an object (a building, a sculpture, a painting, a book). If a dynamic art form is chosen, the result of the creative process will be a game (music is a game of sounds, dance is a game of bodies, a production is a game of actors). The participant in this process is the performer, the performer (actor, musician). Moreover, any performance is the author’s own. That is, the performance itself depends not only on the choice of source (the work of art), but also on who will perform this work (the performers).

 

4. Spectacle(show, performance) – the perception of information. The work of art has been created, but that’s not all; creation is not the end of art. The final step remains: making the artificial object part of real life – showing it to others or performing the resulting performance. A participant in this process is the spectator, observing the performance or the object. Only by conveying their idea to another person can the artist consider their creative duty fulfilled. (Creating works of art into a void, solely for oneself, is merely an excuse for incompetent creators. Every artist wants to be heard.)

When an object or a game is shown to another person, it becomes part of real life, and therefore can in turn become a source of inspiration for that other person. Here, the artistic process comes full circle. A work created from another work clearly demonstrates the mechanism of cultural experience accumulation, which has been successfully operating for thousands of years.

 

Computer games

Let’s examine computer games, dividing them into their artistic stages. The role of author is played by the game developer, and all other roles are shared between the finished computer program (video game) and the player. It turns out that the player: 1) directly plays, 2) watches the show in which they participate, and 3) and, thanks to interactivity, has so much freedom that they can be considered a co-creator of the performance that unfolds on screen . The “video game + player” duo encompasses all three levels of art: creativity, play, and spectacle.

 

Separation	Name	Participant
Nature	1. Reality	Source of inspiration
Art	2. Creativity	Author
		Video game + player
	3. Game
	4. Spectacle

 

Thus, the expression “Computer games are art” isn’t simply a statement that games are yet another art form. It’s practically an equals sign: “Computer games = art.” Everything we previously called art forms is part of computer games (architecture is level design, sculpture is modeling, art is textures and sprites, dance is model animation, music is soundtracks, theater is scripted scenes, and cinema is video inserts); all levels of art (creativity, play, spectacle) are present in even the simplest computer game. Video games are a unique meta-art, combining all the achievements of previous art forms .

Video games cannot replace life itself, but they can perfectly quench the human thirst for new sensations, sights, thoughts, knowledge – everything that the field of art gives us.