Huizinga

A free and voluntary activity that stands outside “ordinary” life, being “not serious” yet simultaneously absorbing the player intensely. It occurs within its own boundaries of time and space, proceeds according to fixed rules, and creates order within this temporary world. Games create social groupings that often surround themselves with secrecy and emphasize their difference from the common world.

In Huizinga’s view, play and games are not just recreational activities but foundational elements of human culture that precede culture itself. He saw gaming as a meaning-making activity that helps shape civilization through ritual, law, poetry, philosophy, and art.

Caillois

An activity that is essentially free (voluntary), separate (confined within limits of space and time), uncertain (outcomes cannot be predetermined), unproductive (creating neither goods nor wealth), governed by rules (under conventions that suspend ordinary laws), and make-believe (accompanied by awareness of a second reality). Caillois further categorized games into four fundamental types:

He also described a spectrum from paidia (unstructured, spontaneous play) to ludus (structured activities with explicit rules and goals).

Chris Crawford

  1. Creative expression is art if made for its own beauty and entertainment if made for money.
  2. A piece of entertainment is a plaything if it is interactive. Movies and books are cited as examples of non-interactive entertainment.
  3. If no goals are associated with a plaything, it is a toy. (Crawford notes that by his definition, (a) a toy can become a game element if the player makes up rules, and (b) The Sims and SimCity are toys, not games.) If it has goals, a plaything is a challenge.
  4. If a challenge has no “active agent against whom you compete,” it is a puzzle; if there is one, it is a conflict. (Crawford admits that this is a subjective test. Video games with noticeably algorithmic artificial intelligence can be played as puzzles; these include the patterns used to evade ghosts in Pac-Man.)
  5. Finally, if the player can only outperform the opponent but not attack them to interfere with their performance, the conflict is a competition. (Competitions include racing and figure skating.) However, if attacks are allowed, then the conflict qualifies as a game.

Bogost

What makes games unique as a medium is their procedurality - their ability to express ideas through processes, systems, and rule-based models of how things work. Unlike static media that represent through description or depiction, games represent through simulation and player interaction with systems.

  1. Games are expressive through their rules and mechanics, not just their visual or narrative content
  2. The procedural systems of games make claims about how things work in the world
  3. Players engage with these claims by interacting with the system
  4. The persuasive power of games comes from this procedural representation and player interaction

Rather than defining games in terms of their formal characteristics (as Huizinga, Caillois, or Suits did), Bogost focuses on how games function rhetorically - how they make arguments and express ideas through their computational processes and the player’s engagement with those processes.

Bernard Suits

“To play a game is to engage in activity directed toward bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by rules, where the rules prohibit more efficient in favor of less efficient means, and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity.” Or, as he puts it more succinctly: “Playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.” Key elements of Suits’ definition include:

  1. Prelusory goal - The objective that can be described independently of the game (like “getting a ball into a hole”)
  2. Constitutive rules - Rules that prohibit the most efficient means to achieve the goal (like “you can’t pick up the golf ball and place it in the hole”)
  3. Lusory attitude - The player’s acceptance of these inefficient means specifically to make the game possible

What makes Suits’ definition particularly insightful is his recognition that games deliberately create inefficiency. In golf, the most efficient way to get the ball in the hole would be to walk up and place it there, but the rules prohibit this in favor of less efficient means (hitting it with clubs from a distance). Players willingly accept these inefficient constraints for the sake of the activity itself.

Martin Feige

Feige approaches games from an aesthetic and philosophical perspective, drawing on phenomenology and the philosophy of art. His definition emphasizes games as aesthetic objects that create particular kinds of experiences through interaction. For Feige, games are a form of aesthetic practice that creates a specific experiential space through rule-governed interactions. Games establish what he calls a “ludic world” (spielweltliche Raum) - a space with its own internal logic and significance separate from everyday reality.

Key aspects of Feige’s conception include:

  1. Games as aesthetic objects that we experience through active engagement rather than passive consumption
  2. The importance of the player’s subjective experience and perspective in constituting the game
  3. Games as creating their own self-contained reference systems with internal meaning
  4. The concept of “ludic subjectivity” - a particular mode of being that players adopt when engaging with games

Feige emphasizes that computer games in particular represent a unique aesthetic form that cannot be fully understood through traditional theories of art or play. They require their own philosophical framework that accounts for their interactive, rule-based nature and the specific kind of experiential space they create.

Winnerling & Pfister

Games are complex cultural artifacts with procedural systems that create meaningful play experiences through rules and player interaction. They function as a unique medium for historical representation, combining ludic (play-based) elements with narrative structures. Unlike traditional historical texts, games allow players to interact with and potentially reshape historical narratives through their choices and actions. Winnerling and Pfister emphasize that games exist in a dual state: as both playable rule systems and as historical objects in themselves.

Feminist Perspectives

Jane McGonigal - While known more for her work on gamification, her definition of games emphasizes four key traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation. In “Reality is Broken” (2011), she views games as structures that can create positive emotions and be harnessed for real-world problem-solving.

Mary Flanagan - In “Critical Play” (2009), she examines games through a feminist lens, defining critical play as “play that creates or occupies alternative structures.” Her work explores how games can embody or challenge social values and norms.

Mia Consalvo - While not offering a single concise definition, her work on “Gaming Capital” expanded how we understand games by incorporating the paratextual elements (guides, forums, cultural discussions) as essential to what constitutes a game experience.

Adrienne Shaw - A queer game studies scholar whose work on identity and representation has helped redefine games as cultural texts embedded in systems of power and identity formation.

Bonnie Ruberg - In “Video Games Have Always Been Queer” (2019), they argue for understanding games through queer theory, suggesting that games inherently contain elements of queerness in their ability to create alternative spaces and experiences outside normative structures.

Anna Anthropy - A transgender game designer and theorist who has argued for expanding definitions of games beyond mainstream commercial understandings, emphasizing accessibility in game creation and queer experiences in gaming.

Avery Alder

See also Being Goblin