Games are social activities in which people compete and cooperate for fun, enjoyment, achievement or rewards. They may involve an audience of non-players, such as in a sport like chess or a spectacle like a jousting tournament; or they may be purely social, with no external observer at all (such as tug of war). They can be played alone or with other players, by amateurs or professionals, on a tabletop or in the field, with physical, electronic or virtual equipment. They can be competitive, challenging, skill based, immersive, narrative driven or abstract.
Crawford defines a game as something that is a system in which “players engage in an artificial conflict defined by rules that results in a quantifiable outcome” and includes the elements of luck, skill and competition. He also adds that a game can be analyzed formally using mathematical game theory. Other definitions of game include the one in Webster’s New World College Dictionary (4th Edition 2010), which states: “a contest or effort to win or achieve by means of skill or chance.”
Attempts to define a game have tended to focus on the interaction between players and the way that it affects their feelings and emotions. However, there is a significant problem with this approach, which is that the emotions that are created and experienced by players vary enormously depending on the context in which the game is played. Trying to define a game in terms of the way it makes people feel is therefore difficult and often irrelevant.
There are also problems with the logical basis of any definition of game. As with many cultural phenomena, the ways that games are used and viewed change as society changes. Any definition of a game that does not take this into account is likely to be inaccurate and out of date, as new examples of games emerge and existing ones are adjusted in relation to changing norms.
A key part of any definition of a game must also be how it defines what is and is not a game. This is a crucial issue because it has a direct impact on the design of games. If you have a definition of a game that excludes something that is clearly a game, such as a board game or an online game, then it is very difficult to create useful designs for those games.
A good definition of a game must also be able to describe the kinds of things that are not a game. This is a much harder task, but it is essential if you want to make sure that your definition does not accidentally leave anything out that is a game (so that it is too narrow) or accept things that are clearly not games (so that it is too broad). This sort of careful work is very important if you are going to try to create useful definitions of the kinds of games that exist in society.