On Games

There are two kinds of games that people can play. The settings can vary from eight bodies around the farmhouse table to two strangers at 35,000 feet, 11 hours into a 17-hour flight. In both cases, what makes the activity a “game” is that it involves variables. If there wasn’t some element that injected uncertainty into the game, then it wouldn’t be a game. It would be completely predictable: the red piece would always win and the blue piece would always lose.

But that’s not how games work. It is the unknown element of who will come out ahead this time that means the difference between a game and, say, a meeting with a timeshare “consultant.” In a game, the outcome is unknown at the outset. With the timeshare carny, the outcome is certain to end, every time, in one of two specific outcomes. You either sign up for the worst real estate investment of your life, or you walk away wondering how you got suckered into wasting an entire afternoon with an obnoxious schlepper of bad deals when you could have been diving with the pretty fishies or getting quietly gerschnickered under an umbrella on the beach. But I digress....

In the world of legitimate games, there are wide ranges of sophistication. And here (finally) is the thesis of this particular rant: it's the source of variables involved that separate the sophistication level of games.

In some games, usually the farmhouse-after-supper variety, it's the roll of the dice or the random deal of cards that mixes up the outcomes (that, plus the age of the players and if/how much moonshine has been consumed). In others, the variables involve two human minds learning first what the rules of engagement are, and then discovering the millions of ways you can playfully break them, just because it's fun and you can.

I like both.