All world’s a game

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After long reflections, I ended up thinking that games are what we do for fun and pretending.

And nothing to add or remove here.

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What does it mean “for fun”?

• You like the process much more than just the result.
• Game contains its own purpose. Can be played without outside reason.
• Leisure, not a job.
• For fun, not for satisfaction.
• Dopamine, not serotonin.

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What does it mean to “pretend”?

• Not necessary for physical survival, or satisfying natural needs in a natural way.

So it even can help surviving, but in some unnatural way. As you may understand by now, the opposite concept to “pretend activity” is “natural activity”.

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And, at last, what does it mean “we do”?

Playing games is an activity. You can’t play by just meditating. At least in your mind you have to do something. But better do something in reality.

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Regarding to game definition, I have to make one important comment:

• Game in strict meaning – it’s what we do for fun AND pretending.
• Game in wide meaning – it’s what we do for fun OR pretending. Sometimes, people call this meaning “metaphorical”

Different people give different meanings to the word “game”, but almost always its something in between those two boundaries.

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Now we can easily understand phrases like:

• “He needs that poker win,  he must pay for his hamster operation. To him, it’s not a game”. (as you see, he does it for the result, but it’s not natural activity, it’s not a job, rules are from poker game)
• “I  understand, our relationship is only a game for you”. (Meaning that her boyfriend brought 777 roses only for fun and pretending he loves her)
• “We should not pursue infantry, it looks too easy. Enemy plays some game with us” (yes, the enemy probably needs some certain result, he retreats only pretending fear. So it’s a game in wide meaning)

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I have to add, that unnatural activity aimed at result can be a ritual, far from being a game. If I avoid a black cat on the way, I’d say I play the game. 

But if it’s some cruel initiation ritual in prehistoric tribes, it’s definitely not a game for initiated man. Because if he fails to complete the ritual, he’ll be dead, so it’s natural for him to try to complete it. But as for viewers, those who decide whether the ritual was completed properly, and whether young man should be granted a right to be adult, it’s a game. It has its own pretending, and its own (how cruel it may sound) fun. 

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Here are some game attributes that didn’t find place in definition, but they are useful for detecting games in real life:

• Liberty to leave activity. It’s a necessary condition for pretending. Game becomes a test or a ritual without it.
• Fixed activity area, so called “game field”. It’s not required, but hugely useful for the game – it allows us to separate natural and pretended worlds.
• Fixed activity time. Also not necessary but extremely useful for separating  natural and game activity. Games surely can be infinite. Online game players’ parents understand it quite well. Game theory also studies infinite games, very useful to model politics for example.
• Rules, accepted by everyone. Rules define boundaries of possible actions, actually it’s “a game field” of its own sort. Interestingly they are also only useful for games not necessary. Game theory studies so-called “open games” where rules are changed along the way. 
• Presence of uncertainty (and it comes with presence of tension). Yes, without uncertainty Game without uncertainty just cant be imagined. It’s extremely valuable. But you get uncertainty just as a conclusion for having free will. And free will is a part of definition already. So I can have the definition unchanged.

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Here are some more useful game markers. With them, you can detect games in culture and directly in your life:

• Game terminology: 
  • turn/round//match
  • player/toy
  • bet/payout/prize
  • win/lose/tie
  • Score/handicap
  • rules/cheater
  • pro/noob
  • And lots of other words (munchkin, levelup, cheap talk etc)
• Phraseological units:
  • Fair play/foul play
  • Level playing field
  • Playing with full deck
  • be in tatters
  • give beans
  • be lame in both legs / one leg
  • spoil somebody’s game
  • lay down at stake
  • 80-th level (super advanced)
  • Your turn (when you expect an answer)

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Ok, enough with definitions. 

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“So why the hell game created humans from an apes? I think labor did” – unsatisfyingly asks me a reader from Barmen town, Prussia. Short answer is – every labor or work is always a turn in some game. If your life does not contain a game, only planned work – you’re a zombie. Or a robot. Or some other strange creature, but not a human.

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If you always do some work that is conditioned naturally, you don’t have any free will. So no personality. I think only animals can be described this way, and even not all animals. Because work (as a type of activity aimed at delayed gratification) is seen even in the animal world. For example squirrels stockpile acorns for winter, birds make nests etc.  

But if it’s impossible to predict behavior only following natural laws, then the creature has free will or some other random behavior. And if a creature has free will and behavior can be predicted naturally, then it’s pretending by my definition! So it’s playing games. At least in a wide sense.

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So what’s useful in games, what can they provide valuable in the natural world? We have words for that – training or payout. And it’s naturally useful for evolution to give dopamine to humans that play games with nice payouts or provide training. For example, a successful hunter receives a microgram of dopamine to motivate him to love his hunting even more to provide the tribe with even more meat. So now our hunter felt his “fun”. By the way, the very focus of most human games is training the mind, not body skills.

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I agree, my definition of the game is quite wide. But it’s not only my feature. Theater actors say they play their roles, they do not just work in theatre. Ok, lets now drop a list of activities, participation in which is called “play”:

• Theater/movies play
• Music play
• sport/competition play
• Artificial games play (tabletop, computer or physical games, like football)

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In following cultural activities the game is not implied by language but its presence is clear enough. And if not, then I propose to read Huizinga, he wrote about it in great detail. I know, reading that book is nearly impossible, so just judge those activities for yourself. Maybe you even used “playing game” metaphors to describe some situations in those activities:

• love/romantic/flirting
• war/combat/duel
• court
• politics
• philosophy
• science 
• poetry
• dance
• myths/fairy tales/storytelling//literature in general
• visual arts

Besides that, people who created a mathematical discipline that studies any people interactions where everybody acts with considering their own interests, somehow came up thinking that the best name for their discipline is “game theory”.

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So I think that such a wide understanding of the word “game” is justified. And indeed it gives its fruits – now we can study radically different human activities with the same methods, and find exciting patterns. 

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So now I will coin names for those basic human games: 

• Game of exploration. Playing with the unknown. How much do you explore to exploit the most? Optimism/pessimism. In game theory: “Optimal stopping”, “Multi-armed bandit”. Basic strategies are “to marry a first comer” and  “wait for a prince”. Bias of valuing the unknown, its “openness” in Big 5. 
• Game of future. Or an investment game.  How much of a present are you gonna give up for the future? Basic strategies are “hardworking” and “living once”. Bias of valuing the future. Big 5 has a conscientiousness trait for that.
• Game of justice. How much are you willing to pay for justice? In game theory it’s “Ultimatum game”, “cooperative bargaining game”. Basic strategies are “to put a head in sand” and “and yet it moves”. All 1$ moral compensation courts are justice games.
• Game of acting. How much are you willing to plan before acting? Extraversion in Big 5. just play the game. Basic strategies are “to start trouble” and “measure trince and cut once”. Bias of taking action value.
• Game of teams. How much are you willing to shift your position for making an alliance? Or “with whom against whom?”. Native game for politics. Here resolve and ego are important. Basic strategies are “trim the sails to the wind” and “go down in the blaze of glory”
• Game of deception.  How much of a useful lie are you gonna act out before acting true? Can you cover/discover true preferences? Games like “Mafia”, “Among us”, “Bluff” or “Cheat”. Signaling and screening games in game theory. Basic strategies are “playing straight” and “muddying the water”
• Game of bets. How much do you bet on your best option? How smart do you think you are? You think you’re smarter than others? Adventures. Betting. Bias of valuing risk.. Neuroticism/boldness in Big 5. Basic strategies are “better safe than sorry” and “take the bull by the horns”
• Game of intimidation. Or a game of breaking rules. How big a risk are you gonna take to win? Or escalate or give up? Or “can I take a bigger risk than my enemy”. In game theory it’s Hawk-turtledove, an Attrition game, Dollar auction, Centipede game, Kuhn poker. Basic strategies obviously are “hawk” and “turtledove”.
• Game of love. How much of your own will you sacrifice for your people? In game theory it’s Prisoners dilemma, Tragedy of commons, Stag hunt, Public goods, Platonia dilemma, Battle of sexes,  El Farol bar, Cournot competition, Gift-exchange. Its agreeableness in Big 5. Basic strategies are “self comes first” and “nobody left behind”. Bias of valuing your group. (Here is an excellent analysis of this game – by the way this analysis is a game on its own)

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Where did I find those very games? To be short, I try to split every game I see in culture, in gamedev or in my life with some set of basic inseparable games. Thus, I approximated:

• A list of known games in game theory. 
• A book with real life tasks of common human in mathematical form (because we do not solve those tasks, they are not solvable. But people find good solutions by trying different options. Therefore they play)
• Detailed version of personality description in psychometry – Big 5. All those traits clearly are strategies in some games.
• Bartle’s 4 types of players – widespread player classification in game development. Because all of them love to play their own kind of game, so we can say they play their own basic game.
• “Homo ludens” by Huizinga. This is a super deep book, relatively ancient, but so far it remains the best and most solid philosophical view on the world from a gaming point of view.
• Politics theory from Bruce Bueno de Mesquita.
• And all other books, articles, personal experience in the game development industry and in my own life.

By the way, I invite you to propose to me a game that is not like a variation of one of these or their combinations.

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If I was to approximate this list of games, I can find even more general concepts. They are so general, so they are not games any more. They are just present in all basic games. Let me call them “game roots”:

• “Game with sacrifice”. How much should you sacrifice for something else? In fact in every game doing every turn you sacrifice something for something else, not being completely sure if we’re doing the right thing..
• “Game with random”. Gaming. Here uncertainty is uncognizable in principle. And yes, no game can remain a game if it’s predictable. It turns out to be a task therefore.
• “Game with outsmarting”. Or “telepathy games”. Yes, not every game has other players. But if they’re present, it’s useful to predict what they’re up to. They can be coordination (If I should do the same as others) and  discoordination. (If I need to do something other than everybody else. Think “rock-stone-scissors” or “guess ⅔ of average”).
• Game with unknown in general.  Or the science game. Unknown can  turn out to be random, will of other players, or just a result of rules interacting (so its “natural”). Real science certainly studies laws of nature (natural game rules). But science also studies random (statistics) and other players’ will (game theory).

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At last, the basic games hypothesis – that humans were created by games – is a big and fruitful theme. So in future I will explore it in my “artificial psychology” or “Human Model”.