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Play and Game
As a first step, let us see how game relates to the equally complex play. We begin with an obvious question: Is there a difference between the words "play" and "game"? Do they refer to the same thing? In English, there is a clear distinction between the two words. But as David Parlett points out in the The Oxford History of Board Games, not all languages separate the two concepts. The phrase "to play a game," in both German and French, for example, uses different versions of the same word for both "play" and "game." In French "on joue á un jeu; in German, man spielt ein Spiel." [1]Although there are many ways to define play and games, we will take advantage of the difference that English affords to consider games and play as two separate ideas with related, but distinct meanings. It turns out that play and games have a surprisingly complex relationship. Play is both a larger and a smaller term than "game," depending on the way it is framed. In one sense, "play" is a larger term that includes "game" as a subset. In another, the reverse is true: "game" is the bigger term, and includes "play" within it. Consider each of these relationships separately:
Relationship one: Games are a subset of play.
If we think about all of the activities we could call play, from two dogs playfully chasing each other in a grassy field, to a child singing a nursery rhyme, to a community of online role-players, it seems that only some of these forms of play would actually constitute what we might think of as a game. Playing Dodge Ball, for example, is playing a game: players obey a formalized set of rules and compete to win. The activities of playing on a seesaw, or horsing around on a jungle gym, however, are forms of play which do not constitute a game. Most forms of play are looser and less organized than games. However, some forms of play are formalized, and these forms of play can often be considered games. In this sense, it is clear that "game" is a subset of "play." This is a typological approach, one that defines the relationship between play and games according to the forms they take in the world.
Relationship two: Play is a component of games. In a different sense, games can be thought of as containing play. This entire book is about games, and one component of games is play. The experience of play is but one of many ways of looking at and understanding games. Within the larger phenomenon of games, then, the play of the game represents one aspect of games. Although play is a crucial element of the larger concept of games,"play" is in fact a subset of "game." Rather than typological, this pairing of the terms represents a more conceptual approach that situates play and games within the field of game design.
This double formulation of play and games may sound contradictory, but it is not simply a terminological sleight-of-hand.The point is that there are important differences between the words "game" and "play." English may be an anomaly in the way that it differentiates between these two terms, but it is an extremely useful distinction. A good definition of game should distinguish it clearly from play in both of the senses described here. [1]David Parlett, The Oxford History of Board Games (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 1.