Defining games
I held a presentation on games in the National Seminar for Philosophy Students (Filosofian opiskelijoiden kansallinen seminaari, FOKS in Finnish) last saturday. It was mostly just basic stuff on (the study of) games, with some quotes from Wittgenstein, Suits, Juul and Salen & Zimmerman. As an ending I presented a loose argument that a minimum definition of games has to include only three points: separation, conflict and rules. Separation means that a game is in some sense separate from the surrounding reality usually both spatially and temporally. (The line of separation is commonly called ’the magic circle’.) This can also be extended to cover the concept of artificiality commonly associated with games, and Juul’s demand that games must have “negotiable consequences”. ...