Ancient Egyptian senet game board inscribed

for Amenhotep III with separate sliding drawer, from 1390 to 1353 BC, made of
glazed faience, dimensions: 5.5 × 7.7 × 21 cm, in the Brooklyn Museum (New York
City).
A game is a structured type of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and
sometimes used as an educational tool.[1] Many games are also considered to be
work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (such
as jigsaw puzzles or games involving an artistic layout such as Mahjong, solitaire, or
some video games).

Games are sometimes played purely for enjoyment, sometimes for achievement or
reward as well. They can be played alone, in teams, or online; by amateurs or by
professionals. The players may have an audience of non-players, such as when
people are entertained by watching a chess championship. On the other hand,
players in a game may constitute their own audience as they take their turn to play.
Often, part of the entertainment for children playing a game is deciding who is part of
their audience and who is a player. A toy and a game are not the same. Toys
generally allow for unrestricted play whereas games present rules for the player to
follow.

Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction. Games
generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and often both. Many games help
develop practical skills, serve as a form of exercise, or otherwise perform an
educational, simulational, or psychological role.

Attested as early as 2600 BC,[2][3] games are a universal part of human experience
and present in all cultures. The Royal Game of Ur, Senet, and Mancala are some of
the oldest known games.[4]

Definitions

Look up game in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein was probably the first academic philosopher to address the
definition of the word game. In his Philosophical Investigations,[5] Wittgenstein argued
that the elements of games, such as play, rules, and competition, all fail to
adequately define what games are. From this, Wittgenstein concluded that people
apply the term game to a range of disparate human activities that bear to one
another only what one might call family resemblances. As the following game
definitions show, this conclusion was not a final one and today many philosophers,
like Thomas Hurka, think that Wittgenstein was wrong and that Bernard Suits'
definition is a good answer to the problem.[6]

Roger Caillois
French sociologist Roger Caillois, in his book Les jeux et les hommes (Games and
Men)(1961),[7] defined a game as an activity that must have the following
characteristics:

 fun: the activity is chosen for its light-hearted character

 separate: it is circumscribed in time and place
 uncertain: the outcome of the activity is unforeseeable
 non-productive: participation does not accomplish anything useful
 governed by rules: the activity has rules that are different from everyday
life
 fictitious: it is accompanied by the awareness of a different reality
Chris Crawford
Game designer Chris Crawford defined the term in the context of computers.[8] Using
a series of dichotomies:

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.
Crawford's definition may thus be rendered as: an interactive, goal-oriented activity
made for money, with active agents to play against, in which players (including active
agents) can interfere with each other.

Other definitions, however, as well as history, show that entertainment and games
are not necessarily undertaken for monetary gain.

Other definitions

 "Voluntary effort to overcome unnecessary obstacles." Bernard Suits[9]

  "A game is a form of art in which participants, termed players, make
decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the
pursuit of a goal." (Greg Costikyan)[10] According to this definition, some
"games" that do not involve choices, such as Chutes and Ladders, Candy
Land, and War are not technically games any more than a slot machine is.
 "A game is a form of play with goals and structure." (Kevin J. Maroney) [11]
 "A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict,
defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome." (Katie
Salen and Eric Zimmerman)[12]
 "A game is an activity among two or more independent decision-
makers seeking to achieve their objectives in some limiting context."
(Clark C. Abt)[13]
 "At its most elementary level then we can define game as an exercise of
voluntary control systems in which there is an opposition between forces,
confined by a procedure and rules in order to produce a disequilibrial
outcome." (Elliot Avedon and Brian Sutton-Smith)[14]
 "To play a game is to engage in activity directed toward bringing about a
specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by specific rules,
where the means permitted by the rules are more limited in scope than
they would be in the absence of the rules, and where the sole reason for
accepting such limitation is to make possible such activity." (Bernard
Suits)[15]
 "When you strip away the genre differences and the technological
complexities, all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback
system, and voluntary participation." (Jane McGonigal)[16]
Gameplay elements and classification
Games can be characterized by "what the player does".[8] This is often referred to
as gameplay. Major key elements identified in this context are tools and rules that
define the overall context of game.

Tools

A selection of pieces from different games. From

top: Chess pawns, marbles, Monopoly tokens, dominoes, Monopoly
hotels, jacks and checkers pieces.
Games are often classified by the components required to play them
(e.g. miniatures, a ball, cards, a board and pieces, or a computer). In places where
the use of leather is well-established, the ball has been a popular game piece
throughout recorded history, resulting in a worldwide popularity of ball games such
as rugby, basketball, soccer (football), cricket, tennis, and volleyball. Other tools are
more idiosyncratic to a certain region. Many countries in Europe, for instance, have
unique standard decks of playing cards. Other games such as chess may be traced
primarily through the development and evolution of its game pieces.

Many game tools are tokens, meant to represent other things. A token may be a
pawn on a board, play money, or an intangible item such as a point scored.

Games such as hide-and-seek or tag do not use any obvious tool; rather, their
interactivity is defined by the environment. Games with the same or similar rules may
have different gameplay if the environment is altered. For example, hide-and-seek in
a school building differs from the same game in a park; an auto race can be radically
different depending on the track or street course, even with the same cars.

Rules and aims

Games are often characterized by their tools and rules. While rules are subject to
variations and changes, enough change in the rules usually results in a "new" game.
For instance, baseball can be played with "real" baseballs or with wiffleballs.
However, if the players decide to play with only three bases, they are arguably
playing a different game. There are exceptions to this in that some games
deliberately involve the changing of their own rules, but even then there are often
immutable meta-rules.

Rules generally determine the time-keeping system, the rights and responsibilities of
the players, scoring techniques, preset boundaries, and each player's goals.

The rules of a game may be distinguished from its aims.[17][18] For most competitive
games, the ultimate aim is winning: in this sense, checkmate is the aim of chess.
[19]
Common win conditions are being first to amass a certain quota of points or
tokens (as in Settlers of Catan), having the greatest number of tokens at the end of
the game (as in Monopoly), or some relationship of one's game tokens to those of
one's opponent (as in chess's checkmate). There may also be intermediate aims,
which are tasks that move a player toward winning. For instance, an intermediate
aim in football is to score goals, because scoring goals will increase one's likelihood
of winning the game, but is not alone sufficient to win the game.

An aim identifies a sufficient condition for successful action, whereas the rule
identifies a necessary condition for permissible action.[18] For example, the aim of
chess is to checkmate, but although it is expected that players will try to checkmate
each other, it is not a rule of chess that a player must checkmate the other player
whenever possible. Similarly, it is not a rule of football that a player must score a
goal on a penalty; while it is expected the player will try, it is not required. While
meeting the aims often requires a certain degree of skill and (in some cases) luck,
following the rules of a game merely requires knowledge of the rules and some
careful attempt to follow them; it rarely (if ever) requires luck or demanding skills.
Skill, strategy, and chance
A game's tools and rules will result in its requiring skill, strategy, luck, or a
combination thereof, and are classified accordingly.

Games of skill include games of physical skill, such as wrestling, tug of

war, hopscotch, target shooting, and stake, and games of mental skill such
as checkers and chess. Games of strategy include checkers, chess, Go, arimaa,
and tic-tac-toe, and often require special equipment to play them. Games of
chance include gambling games (blackjack, Mahjong, roulette, etc.), as well
as snakes and ladders and rock, paper, scissors; most require equipment such as
cards or dice. However, most games contain two or all three of these elements. For
example, American football and baseball involve both physical skill and strategy
while tiddlywinks, poker, and Monopoly combine strategy and chance. Many card
and board games combine all three; most trick-taking games involve mental skill,
strategy, and an element of chance, as do many strategic board games such
as Risk, Settlers of Catan, and Carcassonne.

Single-player games
"Single-player game" redirects here. For single-player video games, see Single-
player video game.
Most games require multiple players. However, single-player games are unique in
respect to the type of challenges a player faces. Unlike a game with multiple players
competing with or against each other to reach the game's goal, a one-player game is
a battle solely against an element of the environment (an artificial opponent), against
one's own skills, against time, or against chance. Playing with a yo-yo or
playing tennis against a wall is not generally recognized as playing a game due to
the lack of any formidable opposition. Many games described as "single-player" may
be termed actually puzzles or recreations.

Multiplayer games
"Multiplayer game" redirects here. For multiplayer video games, see Multiplayer
video game.

The Card Players by Lucas van Leyden (1520)

depicting a multiplayer card game
A multiplayer game is a game of several players who may be independent
opponents or teams. Games with many independent players are difficult to analyze
formally using game theory as the players may form and switch coalitions.[20] The
term "game" in this context may mean either a true game played for entertainment or
a competitive activity describable in principle by mathematical game theory.

Game theory
Main article: Game theory
John Nash proved that games with several players have a stable solution provided
that coalitions between players are disallowed. Nash won the Nobel prize for
economics for this important result which extended von Neumann's theory of zero-
sum games. Nash's stable solution is known as the Nash equilibrium.[21]

If cooperation between players is allowed, then the game becomes more complex;
many concepts have been developed to analyze such games. While these have had
some partial success in the fields of economics, politics and conflict, no good general
theory has yet been developed.[21]

In quantum game theory, it has been found that the introduction of quantum
information into multiplayer games allows a new type of equilibrium strategy not
found in traditional games. The entanglement of player's choices can have the effect
of a contract by preventing players from profiting from what is known as betrayal.[22]

Types
See also: List of game genres

Tug of war is an easily organized, impromptu game

that requires little equipment.
Games can take a variety of forms, from competitive sports to board games and
video games.

Sports
Main article: Sport

Association football is a popular sport worldwide.

Many sports require special equipment and dedicated playing fields, leading to the
involvement of a community much larger than the group of players. A city or town
may set aside such resources for the organization of sports leagues.
Popular sports may have spectators who are entertained just by watching games. A
community will often align itself with a local sports team that supposedly represents it
(even if the team or most of its players only recently moved in); they often align
themselves against their opponents or have traditional rivalries. The concept
of fandom began with sports fans.

Lawn games
Lawn games are outdoor games that can be played on a lawn; an area of mowed
grass (or alternately, on graded soil) generally smaller than a sports field (pitch).
Variations of many games that are traditionally played on a sports field
are marketed as "lawn games" for home use in a front or back yard. Common lawn
games include horseshoes, sholf, croquet, bocce, and lawn bowls.

Tabletop games
Main article: Tabletop game
A tabletop game is a game where the elements of play are confined to a small area
and require little physical exertion, usually simply placing, picking up and moving
game pieces. Most of these games are played at a table around which the players
are seated and on which the game's elements are located. However, many games
falling into this category, particularly party games, are more free-form in their play
and can involve physical activity such as mime. Still, these games do not require a
large area in which to play them, large amounts of strength or stamina, or
specialized equipment other than what comes in a box.

Dexterity and coordination games

This class of games includes any game in which the skill element involved relates to
manual dexterity or hand-eye coordination, but excludes the class of video games
(see below). Games such as jacks, paper football, and Jenga require only very
portable or improvised equipment and can be played on any flat level surface, while
other examples, such as pinball, billiards, air hockey, foosball, and table
hockey require specialized tables or other self-contained modules on which the
game is played. The advent of home video game systems largely replaced some of
these, such as table hockey, however air hockey, billiards, pinball and foosball
remain popular fixtures in private and public game rooms. These games and others,
as they require reflexes and coordination, are generally performed more poorly by
intoxicated persons but are unlikely to result in injury because of this; as such the
games are popular as drinking games. In addition, dedicated drinking games such
as quarters and beer pong also involve physical coordination and are popular for
similar reasons.

Board games
Main article: Board game
 Parcheesi is an American adaptation of a Pachisi,
originating in India.
Board games use as a central tool a board on which the players' status, resources,
and progress are tracked using physical tokens. Many also involve dice or cards.
Most games that simulate war are board games (though a large number of video
games have been created to simulate strategic combat), and the board may be a
map on which the players' tokens move. Virtually all board games involve "turn-
based" play; one player contemplates and then makes a move, then the next player
does the same, and a player can only act on their turn. This is opposed to "real-time"
play as is found in some card games, most sports and most video games.

Some games, such as chess and Go, are entirely deterministic, relying only on the
strategy element for their interest. Such games are usually described as having
"perfect information"; the only unknown is the exact thought processes of one's
opponent, not the outcome of any unknown event inherent in the game (such as a
card draw or die roll). Children's games, on the other hand, tend to be very luck-
based, with games such as Candy Land and Chutes and Ladders having virtually no
decisions to be made. By some definitions, such as that by Greg Costikyan, they are
not games since there are no decisions to make which affect the outcome.[10] Many
other games involving a high degree of luck do not allow direct attacks between
opponents; the random event simply determines a gain or loss in the standing of the
current player within the game, which is independent of any other player; the "game"
then is actually a "race" by definitions such as Crawford's.

Most other board games combine strategy and luck factors; the game
of backgammon requires players to decide the best strategic move based on the roll
of two dice. Trivia games have a great deal of randomness based on the questions a
person gets. German-style board games are notable for often having rather less of a
luck factor than many board games.

Board game groups include race games, roll-and-move games, abstract strategy
games, word games, and wargames, as well as trivia and other elements. Some
board games fall into multiple groups or incorporate elements of other
genres: Cranium is one popular example, where players must succeed in each of
four skills: artistry, live performance, trivia, and language.

Card games
Main article: Card game
Further information: Collectible card game
 Playing Cards, by Theodoor Rombouts, 17th century
Card games use a deck of cards as their central tool. These cards may be a
standard Anglo-American (52-card) deck of playing cards (such as
for bridge, poker, Rummy, etc.), a regional deck using 32, 36 or 40 cards and
different suit signs (such as for the popular German game skat), a tarot deck of 78
cards (used in Europe to play a variety of trick-taking games collectively known as
Tarot, Tarock or Tarocchi games), or a deck specific to the individual game (such
as Set or 1000 Blank White Cards). Uno and Rook are examples of games that were
originally played with a standard deck and have since been commercialized with
customized decks. Some collectible card games such as Magic: The Gathering are
played with a small selection of cards that have been collected or purchased
individually from large available sets.

Some board games include a deck of cards as a gameplay element, normally for
randomization or to keep track of game progress. Conversely, some card games
such as Cribbage use a board with movers, normally to keep score. The
differentiation between the two genres in such cases depends on which element of
the game is foremost in its play; a board game using cards for random actions can
usually use some other method of randomization, while Cribbage can just as easily
be scored on paper. These elements as used are simply the traditional and easiest
methods to achieve their purpose.

Dice games
Main article: Dice game

Students using dice to improve numeracy skills. They

roll three dice, then use basic math operations to combine those into a new number
which they cover on the board. The goal is to cover four squares in the row.
Dice games use a number of dice as their central element. Board games often use
dice for a randomization element, and thus each roll of the dice has a profound
impact on the outcome of the game, however dice games are differentiated in that
the dice do not determine the success or failure of some other element of the game;
they instead are the central indicator of the person's standing in the game. Popular
dice games include Yahtzee, Farkle, Bunco, Liar's dice/Perudo, and Poker dice. As
dice are, by their very nature, designed to produce apparently random numbers,
these games usually involve a high degree of luck, which can be directed to some
extent by the player through more strategic elements of play and through tenets
of probability theory. Such games are thus popular as gambling games; the game
of Craps is perhaps the most famous example, though Liar's dice and Poker dice
were originally conceived of as gambling games.

Domino and tile games

Main articles: Tile-based game and Dominoes
Domino games are similar in many respects to card games, but the generic device is
instead a set of tiles called dominoes, which traditionally each have two ends, each
with a given number of dots, or "pips", and each combination of two possible end
values as it appears on a tile is unique in the set. The games played with dominoes
largely center around playing a domino from the player's "hand" onto the matching
end of another domino, and the overall object could be to always be able to make a
play, to make all open endpoints sum to a given number or multiple, or simply to play
all dominoes from one's hand onto the board. Sets vary in the number of possible
dots on one end, and thus of the number of combinations and pieces; the most
common set historically is double-six, though in more recent times "extended" sets
such as double-nine have been introduced to increase the number of dominoes
available, which allows larger hands and more players in a game. Muggins, Mexican
Train, and Chicken Foot are very popular domino games. Texas 42 is a domino
game more similar in its play to a "trick-taking" card game.

Variations of traditional dominoes abound: Triominoes are similar in theory but are
triangular and thus have three values per tile. Similarly, a game known as Quad-
Ominos uses four-sided tiles.

Some other games use tiles in place of cards; Rummikub is a variant of

the Rummy card game family that uses tiles numbered in ascending rank among
four colors, very similar in makeup to a 2-deck "pack" of Anglo-American playing
cards. Mahjong is another game very similar to Rummy that uses a set of tiles with
card-like values and art.

Lastly, some games use graphical tiles to form a board layout, on which other
elements of the game are played. Settlers of Catan and Carcassonne are examples.
In each, the "board" is made up of a series of tiles; in Settlers of Catan the starting
layout is random but static, while in Carcassonne the game is played by "building"
the board tile-by-tile. Hive, an abstract strategy game using tiles as moving pieces,
has mechanical and strategic elements similar to chess, although it has no board;
the pieces themselves both form the layout and can move within it.

Pencil and paper games

Main article: Paper-and-pencil game
Pencil and paper games require little or no specialized equipment other than writing
materials, though some such games have been commercialized as board games
(Scrabble, for instance, is based on the idea of a crossword puzzle, and tic-tac-
toe sets with a boxed grid and pieces are available commercially). These games
vary widely, from games centering on a design being drawn such as Pictionary and
"connect-the-dots" games like sprouts, to letter and word games such
as Boggle and Scattergories, to solitaire and logic puzzle games such
as Sudoku and crossword puzzles.

Guessing games
Main article: Guessing game
A guessing game has as its core a piece of information that one player knows, and
the object is to coerce others into guessing that piece of information without actually
divulging it in text or spoken word. Charades is probably the most well-known game
of this type, and has spawned numerous commercial variants that involve differing
rules on the type of communication to be given, such as Catch
Phrase, Taboo, Pictionary, and similar. The genre also includes many game
shows such as Win, Lose or Draw, Password and $25,000 Pyramid.

Video games
Main article: Video game
See also: Electronic game
Video games are computer- or microprocessor-controlled games. Computers can
create virtual spaces for a wide variety of game types. Some video games simulate
conventional game objects like cards or dice, while others can simulate environs
either grounded in reality or fantastical in design, each with its own set of rules or
goals.

A computer or video game uses one or more input devices, typically

a button/joystick combination (on arcade games);
a keyboard, mouse or trackball (computer games); or a controller or a motion
sensitive tool (console games). More esoteric devices such as paddle
controllers have also been used for input.

There are many genres of video game; the first commercial video game, Pong, was
a simple simulation of table tennis. As processing power increased, new genres such
as adventure and action games were developed that involved a player guiding a
character from a third person perspective through a series of obstacles. This "real-
time" element cannot be easily reproduced by a board game, which is generally
limited to "turn-based" strategy; this advantage allows video games to simulate
situations such as combat more realistically. Additionally, the playing of a video
game does not require the same physical skill, strength or danger as a real-world
representation of the game, and can provide either very realistic, exaggerated or
impossible physics, allowing for elements of a fantastical nature, games involving
physical violence, or simulations of sports. Lastly, a computer can, with varying
degrees of success, simulate one or more human opponents in traditional table
games such as chess, leading to simulations of such games that can be played by a
single player.

In more open-ended video games, such as sandbox games, a virtual environment is

provided in which the player may be free to do whatever they like within the confines
of a particular game's universe. Sometimes, there is a lack of goals or opposition,
which has stirred some debate on whether these should be considered "games" or
"toys". (Crawford specifically mentions Will Wright's SimCity as an example of a toy.)
[8]

Online games
Main article: Online game
Online games have been part of culture from the very earliest days
of networked and time-shared computers. Early commercial systems such
as Plato were at least as widely famous for their games as for their strictly
educational value. In 1958, Tennis for Two dominated Visitor's Day and drew
attention to the oscilloscope at the Brookhaven National Laboratory; during the
1980s, Xerox PARC was known mainly for Maze War, which was offered as a
hands-on demo to visitors.

Modern online games are played using an Internet connection; some have
dedicated client programs, while others require only a web browser. Some simpler
browser games appeal to more casual game-playing demographic groups (notably
older audiences) that otherwise play very few video games.[23]

Role-playing games
Main article: Role-playing game
Role-playing games, often abbreviated as RPGs, are a type of game in which the
participants (usually) assume the roles of characters acting in a fictional setting. The
original role playing games – or at least those explicitly marketed as such – are
played with a handful of participants, usually face-to-face, and keep track of the
developing fiction with pen and paper. Together, the players may collaborate on a
story involving those characters; create, develop, and "explore" the setting; or
vicariously experience an adventure outside the bounds of everyday life. Pen-and-
paper role-playing games include, for example, Dungeons & Dragons and GURPS.

The term role-playing game has also been appropriated by the video game industry
to describe a genre of video games. These may be single-player games where one
player experiences a programmed environment and story, or they may allow players
to interact through the internet. The experience is usually quite different from
traditional role-playing games. Single-player games include