Games & Virtual Worlds Series

What is a Game?

Understanding Games: How Video Games & Board Games Work

Michael Filimowicz, PhD

Published in

Understanding Games

11 min readJan 3, 2023

Working definitions and interesting introductions to games are helpful, so here are a few to help you get the idea of ‘games.’

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
— Will Smith in Bad Boys II
The thing about the habitus, Bourdieu often noted, was that it was so ingrained that people often mistook the feel for the game as natural instead of culturally developed. This often leads to justifying social inequality, because it is (mistakenly) believed that some people are naturally disposed to the finer things in life while others are not.
Along with Bourdieu’s notion of a “feel for the game” came his theory of the game itself. Bourdieu understood the social world as being divided up into a variety of distinct arenas or “fields” of practice like art, education, religion, law, etc., each with their own unique set of rules, knowledge, and forms of capital. While fields can certainly overlap — education and religion, for example, overlap in many religiously-based colleges and universities in the United States — Bourdieu sees each field as being relatively autonomous from the others.
Each field has its own set of positions and practices, as well as its struggles for position as people mobilize their capital to stake claims within a particular social domain. In art, for example, Bourdieu noticed that each generation of artists sought to overturn the established positions of those who came before them, only to be critiqued by the next generation of “avant-garde” artists who sought their own powerful positions within the field. Much like a baseball or football field, social fields are places where people struggle for position and play to win.
— “Habitus: Pierre Bourdieu,” RoutledgeSoci.com, Social Theory Re-wired
A game is a structured activity organized around a goal with arbitrary rules.
— John Danaher
A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are different from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements.
— Wikipedia
Oh, thunder only happens when it’s raining
Players only love you when they’re playing
— Fleetwood Mac
Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and… Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do.
— Mark Twain
Games are a type of play activity, conducted in the context of a pretended reality, in which the participant(s) try to achieve at least one arbitrary, nontrivial goal by acting in accordance with rules.
— Ernest Adams

Throughout these statements, we see that many aspects of life can be compared to games, and that the concept of games has been used by philosophers (Wittgenstein’s concept of language games, for example) and social scientists (Bourdieu’s aforementioned passage). There’s also the fact that many things in life seem very game-like to us, and this is something we know intuitively. The pursuit of a degree, for example, is a strategic move for college students in the larger game of finding gainful employment. It’s clear that games are pervasive.

People play games for a wide variety of reasons, including the mental stimulation, the thrill of acting in ways that are frowned upon in real life, the need to escape, the desire to lose oneself in a fantastical world, the thrill of competition, the desire to discover new sides of oneself, and many others.

While those working in the gaming industry tend to focus on the game’s rules and mechanics, players seeing the game for the first time tend to be more concerned with the game’s aesthetics and visuals. In this book, we will oscillate between these two points of view, discussing both the theoretical underpinnings of what it means for an activity to be game-like and the sensory, affective, and cognitive processes that are activated by playing video games.

Play is an important part of childhood development, and it often involves the use of imagination and the ability to pretend. Games are a common form of play, and many games involve elements of pretending or make-believe. For example, when children play dress-up, they might pretend to be a firefighter or a princess. When they play a game of make-believe, they might imagine that they are pirates on a treasure hunt.

Similarly, many board games and video games involve pretending or acting out roles. For example, in a role-playing game, players might pretend to be characters in a fantasy world, and in a strategy game, players might pretend to be generals or leaders of armies. The ability to pretend and use one’s imagination is an important part of the human experience, and it is closely related to the ability to play and enjoy games..

Play

Because of its emphasis on human behavior, cognition, and motivation, psychology provides a useful jumping-off point for understanding the nature of play while building games. Psychological principles can help game designers understand the factors that keep players interested, entertained, and learning from their games. By studying player reactions to various game aspects, developers may craft more engaging and satisfying play sessions. Game designers can gain a great deal from the study of psychology, which lays the groundwork for examining factors like motivation, emotion, learning, attention, and social interaction. Designers can create more interesting and successful games by using psychological knowledge to game mechanics, stories, and aesthetics in order to engage players, improve their experiences, and reach their goals.

Five Kinds of Play Proposed by John R. VandenBerghe

Creative Director at Ubisoft, Jason VandenBerghe suggested a framework for categorizing players and figuring out what drives them to play certain games in his talk titled “The 5 Domains of Play: Applying Psychology’s Big 5 Motivation Domains to Games.” Here we’ll examine VandenBerghe’s five areas of competence.

Five-Factor Theory

VandenBerghe’s research is grounded in the well-established five factor model of personality, also known as the Big Five personality traits, which is a widely accepted framework for understanding personality. The five factors are openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. An easy to remember acronym can be derived from the names of these characteristics: OCEAN.

Openness: This trait refers to a person’s willingness to try new things and be open to new experiences. People who are high in openness are curious, imaginative, and open-minded.

Conscientiousness: This trait refers to a person’s level of organization, responsibility, and self-discipline. People who are high in conscientiousness are reliable, hardworking, and orderly.

Extraversion: This trait refers to a person’s level of socialization and outgoingness. People who are high in extraversion are outgoing, assertive, and energetic.

Agreeableness: This trait refers to a person’s level of cooperativeness and likability. People who are high in agreeableness are friendly, compassionate, and easy to get along with.

Neuroticism: This trait refers to a person’s level of emotional stability. People who are high in neuroticism are more likely to experience negative emotions such as anxiety, anger, and sadness.

These characteristics lead to visible patterns of motivation and behavior, such as the pursuit of novelty by those who are receptive to new experiences or the pursuit of social harmony by those who are pleasant. VandenBerghe, drawing on his knowledge of the Five Factor Model, said that people play video games to alleviate the same needs they have in real life, needs they can’t meet any other way.

Five Types of Play

VandenBerghe found a connection between the five qualities of the Five Factor Model and the five domains of play that might satisfy them, or the aspects of a game that players might be encouraged to seek out.

Novelty. This goes along with the first characteristic, receptivity to new information and experiences. Players who enjoy the unexpected benefit from games with a wide range of mechanics. Those who are easily bored look for games that offer constant change rather than a sense of continuity and stability.

Challenge. For VandenBerghe, conscientiousness is linked to a preference for difficulty, and perhaps more particularly, to the desire to exert oneself and maintain some measure of control over one’s environment. Players that seek a lot of difficulty in their entertainment typically have a penchant for games that call for a high level of skill and precision. Players who prefer games with a low level of difficulty tend to favor sandbox games and those with similar levels of freedom and few objectives.

Stimulation. This is especially true when it comes to interacting with other people. These gamers have a penchant for multiplayer games, such as party games. Those who would rather not be constantly stimulated will enjoy games where they can participate as the only genuine player.

Harmony. This refers to getting along with other people and linking that drive to the characteristic of agreeableness. In his opinion, games that encourage teamwork are more likely to promote social peace, whereas games that encourage competition are more likely to promote social strife.

Threat. People with high neuroticism scores on OCEAN tests tend to enjoy games with a high threat quality (an element of danger or frightening content — anything that is likely to elicit negative emotions). That is to say, folks who are prone to feeling bad emotions actively seek them out. Players of survival horror games are also included in his definition.

Facets

Every one of these categories, according to VandenBerghe, may be broken down into six distinct “facets:” tension, provocation, gloom, humiliation, addiction, and danger are just a few of the additional aspects of games that make up threat.

Keep in mind that these characteristics are not hard and fixed. There is no discrete beginning or end to these qualities; instead, they exist on continuous scales. Further, they don’t always accurately portray what gamers always enjoy because their tastes can fluctuate. We might be in the mood for fast-paced action one day, and a leisurely-paced adventure game with plenty of visual variety the next.

VandenBerghe’s thesis is that as designers, we have the freedom to choose how we want to engage players by determining what kinds of experiences our games will offer, based on the characteristics of games that they value.

Collaborative vs Competitive

Competitive games are games in which players compete against each other to win. The goal is to be the best player or team and to defeat the other players or teams. These types of games often involve ranking systems or scoreboards that keep track of how players are doing relative to each other.

Collaborative games (also called co-op games, for cooperative) on the other hand, are games in which players work together to achieve a common goal. These types of games often involve teamwork and cooperation, and the goal is not to defeat other players, but rather to achieve a shared objective.

Both competitive and collaborative games can be enjoyable and have their own unique set of benefits. Competitive games can foster a sense of accomplishment and can be a great way to challenge oneself. Collaborative games can promote teamwork and social skills and can be a great way to bond with others.

Bibliography & Further Reading

A Game Design Vocabulary: Exploring the Foundational Principles Behind Good Game Design by Anna Anthropy and Naomi Clark
A Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
Advanced Game Design: A Systems Approach by Michael Sellers
An Introduction to Game Studies by Frans Mayra
Basics of Game Design by Michael Moore
Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made by Jason Schreier
Board Game Design Advice: From the Best in the World vol 1 by Gabe Barrett
Building Blocks of Tabletop Game Design: an Encyclopedia Of Mechanisms by Geoffrey Engelstein and Isaac Shalev
Character Development and Storytelling for Games by Lee Sheldon
Chris Crawford on Game Design by Chris Crawford
Clockwork Game Design by Keith Burgun
Elements of Game Design by Robert Zubek
Fundamentals of Game Design by Ernest Adams
Fundamentals of Puzzle and Casual Game Design by Ernest Adams
Game Design Foundations by Brenda Romero
Game Design Workshop by Tracy Fullerton
Game Mechanics: Advanced Game Design by Ernest Adams and Joris Dormans
Game Writing: Narrative Skills for Videogames edited by Chris Bateman
Games, Design and Play: A detailed approach to iterative game design by Colleen Macklin and John Sharp
Introduction to Game Systems Design by Dax Gazaway
Kobold Guide to Board Game Design by Mike Selinker, David Howell, et al
Kobold’s Guide to Worldbuilding edited by Janna Silverstein
Level Up! The Guide to Great Video Game Design, 2nd Edition by Scott Rogers
Narrating Space / Spatializing Narrative: Where Narrative Theory and Geography Meet by Marie-Laure Ryan, Kenneth Foote, et al.
Narrative Theory: A Critical Introduction by Kent Puckett
Narrative Theory: Core Concepts and Critical Debates by David Herman, James Phelan, et al.
Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, Fourth Edition by Mieke Bal
Practical Game Design by Adam Kramarzewski and Ennio De Nucci
Procedural Storytelling in Game Design by Tanya X. Short and Tarn Adams
Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing by Wendy Despain
Rules of Play by Salen and Zimmerman
Storyworlds Across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology (Frontiers of Narrative) by Marie-Laure Ryan, Jan-Noël Thon, et al
Tabletop Game Design for Video Game Designers by Ethan Ham
The Art of Game Design, 3rd Edition by Jesse Schell
The Board Game Designer’s Guide: The Easy 4 Step Process to Create Amazing Games That People Can’t Stop Playing by Joe Slack
The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative by H. Porter Abbott
The Grasshopper, by Bernard Suits
The Routledge Companion to Video Game Studies by Bernard Perron and Mark J.P. Wolf
The Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory by David Herman
The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design by Flint Dille & John Zuur Platten
Unboxed: Board Game Experience and Design by Gordon Calleja
Video Game Storytelling: What Every Developer Needs to Know about Narrative Techniques by Evan Skolnick
Writing for Video Game Genres: From FPS to RPG edited by Wendy Despain
Writing for Video Games by Steve Ince
100 Principles of Game Design by DESPAIN