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THIS IS NOT A GAME—A.I.: Artificial Intelligence movie trailer
Raise the Red Flag
A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.
With that single sentence, many, many pages ago, we offered a definiton of games. Since then, we have proceeded on the assumption that this formulation does, in fact, accurately describe what games are and how they operate. However, our final schema, Games as Cultural Environment, may force us to re-evaluate our definition. The definition is rooted in the formal properties of games. In general, during our long march across the varied territory of game design schemas, it has served us well. But in the course of exploring games within a cultural context, one element of the definition doesn't seem to do justice to the complexities of the phenomenon. It is not the idea that games are systems, nor that they have rules and outcomes, nor that through games players engage in a conflict. The element of the definition that seems increasingly suspect is the idea that games are artificial, that they are removed from ordinary life. How are games artificial? Even though we frame games as open culture systems, they remain systems with defined elements and attributes. The way that games operate as systems implies some kind of separation from the rest of culture. The meanings that games produce, while intertwined with larger cultural meanings, still acquire their distinct identity as game meanings because they emerge out of the system of relations made possible by the game itself. This system of relations is not something that naturally occurs out in the world. If games weren't artificial in some way, they wouldn't be designed. Instead, they would be some kind of "natural" phenomena bopping about the cultural ether. But the wider our cultural frame grows in defining games as culture, the more their artificiality begins to unravel. As culture, games are open systems. They are not isolated from their environment, but are intrinsically part of it, participating in the ebb and flow of ideas and values that make up a larger cultural set-ting. Framed contextually, the magic circle is not an impermeable curtain but is instead a border that can be crossed. Cultural elements from outside the circle enter in and have an impact on the game; simultaneously, cultural meanings ripple outward from the game to interact with numerous cultural contexts. Given all of this play at and across the border, given the fact that games are not separate from but are part of culture, what would happen if we questioned the artificiality of games? What if a schema specifically sought to frame games as systems completely synchronous with their surroundings?
