What Is a Game?
By BERNARD SUITS, University of Waterloo
By means of a critical examination
of a number of theses as to the nature of game-playing, the
following definition is advanced: 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 limitations is to make possible such
activity.
Prompted by the current interest of social and behavioral
scientists in games and encouraged by the modest belief that
it is not demonstrably impossible for philosophers to say something
of interest to scientists, I propose to formulate a definition
of game playing.
1. Game-Playing as the Selection of Inefficient Means.
Mindful of the ancient canon that the quest for knowledge obliges
us to proceed from what is knowable to us to what is knowable
in itself, I shall begin with the commonplace that playing games
is different from working. Games, therefore, might be expected
to be what work, in some salient respect, is not. Let me now
baldly characterize work as "technical activity," by which I
mean activity in which an agent (as rational worker) seeks to
employ the most efficient available means for reaching a desired
goal. Since games, too, evidently have goals, and since means
are evidently employed for their attainment, the possibility
suggests itself that games differ from technical activities
in that the means employed in games are not the most efficient.
Let us say, then, that games are goal-directed activities in
which inefficient means are intentionally (or rationally) chosen.
For example, in racing games one voluntarily goes all around
the track in an effort to arrive at the finish line instead
of "sensibly" cutting straight across the infield.
The following consideration, however, seems to cast doubt
on this proposal. The goal of a game, we may say, is winning
the game. Let us take an example. In poker I am a winner if
I have more money when I stop playing than I had when I started.
But suppose that one of the other players, in the course of
the game, repays me a debt of a hundred dollars, or suppose
I hit another player on the head and take all of his money from
him. Then, although I have not won a single hand all evening,
am I nevertheless a winner? Clearly not, since I didn't increase
my money as a consequence of playing poker. In order to be a
winner, a sign and product of which is, to be sure, the gaining
of money, certain conditions must be met which are not met by
the collection of a debt or by felonious assault. These conditions
are the rules of poker, which tell us what we can and what we
cannot do with the cards and the money. Winning at poker consists
in increasing one's money by using only those means permitted
by the rules, although mere obedience to the rules does not
by itself insure victory. Better and worse means are equally
permitted by the rules. Thus in Draw Poker retaining an ace
along with a pair and discarding the ace while retaining the
pair are both permissible plays, although one is usually a better
play then the other. The means for winning at poker, therefore,
are limited, but not completely determined by, the rules. Attempting
to win at poker may accordingly be described as attempting to
gain money by using the most efficient means available, where
only those means permitted by the rules are available. But if
that is so, then playing poker is a technical activity as originally
defined.
Still, this seems a strange conclusion. The belief that working
and playing games are quite different things is very, widespread,
yet we seem obliged to say that playing a game is just another
job to be done as competently as possible. Before giving up
the thesis that playing a game involves a sacrifice of efficiency,
therefore, let us consider one more example. Suppose I make
it my purpose to get a small round object into a hole in the
ground as efficiently as possible. Placing it in the hole
with
my hands would be a natural means to adopt. But surely I would
not take a stick with a piece of metal on one end of it, walk
three or four hundred yards away from the hole, and then attempt
to propel the ball into the hole with the stick. That would
not be technically intelligent. But such an undertaking is
an extremely popular game, and the foregoing way of describing
it
evidently shows how games differ from technical activities.
But of course it shows nothing of the kind. The end in golf
is not correctly described as getting a ball into a hole in
the ground, nor even, to be more precise, into several holes
in a set order. It is to achieve that end with the smallest
possible number of strokes. But strokes are certain types of
swings with a golf club. Thus, if my end were simply to get
a ball into a number of holes in the ground, I would not be
likely to use a golf club in order to achieve it, nor would
I stand at a considerable distance from each bole. But if my
end were to get a ball into some holes with a golf club while
standing at a considerable distance from each hole, why then
I would certainly use a golf club and I would certainly take
up such positions. Once committed to that end, moreover, I
would strive to accomplish it as efficiently as possible.
Surely no
one would want to maintain that if I conducted myself with
lesser efficiency in pursuit of this end I would not be playing
a game,
but that I would be playing a game just to the extent that
I permitted my efforts to become sloppy. Nor is it the case
that
my use of a golf club is a less efficient way to achieve my
end than would be the use of my hand. To refrain from using
a golf club as a means of sinking a ball with a golf club is
not more efficient because it is not possible. Inefficient
selection
of means, accordingly, does not seem to be a satisfactory account
of game playing.
2. The Inseparability of Rules and Ends In Games. The
objection advanced against the last thesis rests upon, and
thus
brings to light, consideration of the place of rules in games:
they seem to stand in a peculiar relation to ends. The end
in
poker is not simply to gain money, nor in golf simply to get
a ball into a hole, but to do these things in prescribed (or,
perhaps
more accurately, not to do them in prescribed) ways; that is,
to do them only in accordance with rules. Rules in games thus
seem to be in some sense inseparable from ends. To break a
rule is to render impossible the attainment of an end. Thus,
although
you may receive the trophy by lying about your golf score,
you have certainly not won the game. But in what we have called
technical activity it is possible to gain an end by breaking
a rule, for example, gaining a trophy by lying about your
golf
score. Whereas it is possible in a technical action to break
a rule without destroying the original end of the action,
in
games the reverse appears to be the case. If the rules are
broken the original end becomes impossible of attainment,
since one
cannot (really) win the game unless he plays it, and one cannot
(really) play the game unless he obeys the rules of the game.
This may be illustrated by the following case; Professor
Snooze has fallen asleep in the shade provided by some shrubbery
in
a secluded part of the campus. From a nearby walk I observe
this. I also notice that the shrub under which he is reclining
is a man-eating plant, and I judge from its behavior that it
is about to eat the man Snooze. As I run across to him I see
a sign which reads KEEP OFF THE GRASS. Without a qualm I ignore
this prohibition and save Snooze’s life. Why did I make
this (no doubt unconscious) decision? Because the value of
saving
Snooze's life (or of saving a life) outweighed the value of
obeying the prohibition against walking on the grass. Now
the
choices in a game appear to be radically unlike this choice.
In a game I cannot disjoin the end, winning, from the rules
in terms of which winning possesses its meaning. I of course
can decide to cheat in order to gain the pot, but then I
have
changed my end from winning a game to gaining money. Thus,
in deciding to save Snooze's life, my purpose was not "to
save Snooze while at the same time obeying the campus rules
for pedestrians."
My purpose was to save Snooze's life, and there were alternative
ways in which this might have been accomplished. I could,
for
example, have remained on the sidewalk and shouted to Snooze
in an effort to awaken him. But precious minutes might have
been lost, and in any case Snooze, although he tries to hide
it, is nearly stone deaf. There are evidently two distinct
ends
at issue in the Snooze episode: saving Snooze and obeying a
rule, out of respect either for the law or for the lawn. And
I can achieve either of these ends without at the same time
achieving the other. But, in a game, the end and the rules
do
not admit of such disjunction. It is impossible for me to win
the game and at the same time to break one of its rules. I
do
not have open to me the alternatives of winning the game honestly
and winning the game by cheating, since in the latter case
I
would not be playing the game at all and thus could not, a
fortiori, win it.
Now if the Snooze episode is treated as an action which has
one, and only one, end- (Saving Snooze) ampersand (Keeping
off
the grass)-it can be argued that the action has become, just
by virtue of that fact, a game. Since there would be no independent
alternatives, there would be no choice to be made; to achieve
one part of the end without achieving the other part would
be
to fail utterly. On such an interpretation of the episode suppose
I am congratulated by a grateful faculty for my timely intervention.
A perfectly appropriate response would be: "I don't deserve
your praise. True, I saved Snooze, but since I walked on the
grass it doesn't count," just as though I were to admit to
kicking the ball into the cup on the fifth green. Or again,
on this
interpretation, I would originally have conceived the problem
in a quite different way: "Let me see if I can save Snooze
without walking on the grass." One can then imagine my running
as fast as I can (but taking no illegal shortcuts) to the
Athletic Building,
where I request (and meticulously sign out for) a pole vaulter's
pole with which I hope legally to prod Snooze into wakefulness,
whereupon I hurry back to Snooze to find him disappearing into
the plant. "Well," I remark, not without complacency. "I
didn’t
win, but at least I played the game."
It must be pointed out, however, that this example is seriously
misleading. Saving a life and keeping off the grass are, as
values, hardly on the same footing. It seems likely that the
Snooze episode appears to support the contention at issue (that
games differ from technical actions because of the inseparability
of rules and ends in the former) only because of the relative
triviality of one of the alternatives. This pe-culiarity of
the example can be corrected by supposing that when I decide
to obey the rule to keep off the grass, my reason for doing
so is that I am a kind of demented Kantian, and thus regard
myself to be bound by the most weighty philosophical considerations
to honor all laws with equal respect. So regarded, my maddeningly
proper efforts to save a life would not appear ludicrous but
would constitute moral drama of the highest order. But since
the reader may not be a demented Kantian, a less fanciful though
logically identical example may be cited.
Let us suppose the life of Snooze to be threatened not by
a man-eating plant but by Professor Threat, who is found approaching
the snoozing Snooze with the obvious intention of murdering
him. Again I want to save Snooze's life, but I cannot do
so
(let us say) without killing Threat. However, there is a rule
to which I am very strongly committed which forbids me to
take
another human life. Thus, although (as it happens) I could
easily kill Threat from where I stand (with a loaded and cocked
pistol I happen to have in my hand), I decide to try to save
Snooze by other means, just because of my wish to obey the
rule
which forbids killing. I therefore run toward Threat with the
intention of wrestling the weapon from his hand. I am too
late
and he murders Snooze. This seems to be a clear case of an
action having a conjunctive end of the kind under consideration,
but
one which we are not at all inclined to call a game. My end,
that is to say, was not simply to save the life of Snooze
just
as in golf it is not simply to get the ball into the hole,
but to save his life without breaking a certain rule. I want
to
put the ball into the hole fairly and I want to save Snooze
morally. Moral rules are perhaps generally regarded as figuring
in human conduct in just this fashion. Morality says that if
something can be done only immorally it ought not to be done
at all. What profiteth it a man, etc. The inseparability of
rules and ends does not, therefore, seem to be a completely
distinctive characteristic of games.
3. Game Rules as not Ultimately Binding. It should
be noticed that the foregoing criticism requires only a partial
rejection of the proposal at issue. Even though the attack
shows that not all things which correspond to the formula
are games.
It may still be the case that all games correspond to the formula.
This suggests that we ought not to reject the proposal, but
that we ought first to try to limit its scope by adding to
it an adequate differentiating principle. Such a differentiation
might be provided by noticing a striking difference between
the two Snooze episodes. The efforts to save Snooze from the
man-eating plant without walking on the grass appeared to
be a game because saving grass strikes us as a trifling consideration
when compared with saving a life. But in the second episode,
where KEEP OFF THE GRASS is replaced by THOU SHALT NOT KILL,
the situation is quite different. The difference may be put
in the following way. The rule to keep off the grass is not
an ultimate command, but the rule to refrain from killing is.
This suggests that, in addition to being the kind of activity
in which rules are inseparable from ends, games are also the
kind of activity in which commitment to these rules is never
ultimate. For the person playing the game there is always the
possibility of there being a non-game rule to which the game
rule may be subordinated. The second Snooze episode is not
a game, therefore, because the rule to which the rescuer adheres,
even to the extent of sacrificing Snooze for its sake, is,
for him, an ultimate rule. Rules are lines that we draw, but
in
games the lines are always drawn short of a final end or a
paramount command. Let us say, then, that a game is an activity
in which
observance of rules is part of the end of the activity, and,
where such rules are non-ultimate; that is, where other rules
can always supersede the game rules: that is, where the player
can always stop playing the game.
However, consider the following counter-example. Suppose
an auto racer. During a race a child crawls out on the track
directly
in the path of his car. The only way that he can avoid running
over the child is to turn off the track and by breaking a
rule
disqualify himself. He chooses to run over the child, because
for him there are no rules of higher priority than the rules
of the game. I submit that we ought not for this reason, to
deny that he is playing a game. It no doubt strikes us as
inappropriate
to say that a person who would do such a thing is (only) playing.
But the point is that the driver is not playing in an unqualified
sense, he is playing a game. And he is evidently playing it
more wholeheartedly than the ordinary driver is prepared to
play it. From his point of view a racer who turned aside instead
of running over the child would have been playing at racing;
that is, he would not have been a dedicated player. But it
would be paradoxical indeed if supreme dedication to an activity
somehow
vitiated the activity. We do not say that a man isn’t
really digging a ditch because his whole heart is not in it.
However, the rejoinder may be made that, to the contrary,
that is just the mark of a game: it, unlike digging ditches,
is just the kind of thing which cannot command ultimate loyalty.
That, it may be contended, is just the force of the proposal
about games under consideration. And in support of this contention
it might be pointed out that it is generally acknowledged
that
games are in some sense essentially non-serious. We must therefore
ask in what sense games are, and in what sense they are not,
serious. What is believed when it is believed that games are
not serious? Not, certainly, that the players of games always
take a very light-hearted view of what they are doing. A bridge
player who played his cards randomly might justly be accused
of failing to take the game seriously; indeed, of failing to
play the game at all just because of his failure to take it
seriously. It is much more likely that the belief that games
are not serious means what the proposal under consideration
implies: that there is always something in the life of a player
of a game more important than playing the game, or that a
game
is the kind of thing that a player could always have reason
to stop playing. It is this belief which I would like to question.
Let us consider a golfer, George, so devoted to golf that
its pursuit has led him to neglect, to the point of destitution,
his wife and six children. Furthermore, although George is
aware of the consequences of his mania, he does not regard
his
family’s plight as a good reason for changing his conduct.
An advocate of the view that games are not serious might submit
George’s case as evidence for that view. Since George
evidently regards nothing in his life to be more important
than golf,
golf has, for George, ceased to be a game. And this argument
would seem to be supported by the complaint of George's wife
that golf is for George no longer a game, but a way of life.
But we need not permit George's wife’s observation to
go unchallenged. The cor-rectness of saying that golf for
George
is no longer merely a form of recreation may be granted. But
to argue that George's golf playing is for that reason not
a
game is to assume the very point at issue, which is whether
a game can be of supreme impor-tance to anyone. Golf, to be
sure, is taking over the whole of George's life. But it is,
after all, the game which is taking over his life, and not
something
else. Indeed, if it were not a game which had led George to
neglect his duties, his wife might not be nearly as outraged
as she is; if, for example, it had been good works, or the
attempt to formulate a definition game playing, she would
no doubt still
deplore rich extra-domestic preoccupation, but to be kept in
rags because of a game must strike her as an altogether different
order of deprivation.
Supreme dedication to a game, as in the cases of the auto
racer and George, may be repugnant to nearly everyone's moral
sense. That may be granted; indeed, insisted upon, since our
loathing is excited by the very fact that it is a game which
has usurped the place of ends we regards as so much more worthy
of pursuit. Thus, although such behavior may tell us a good
deal about such players of games, I sub-mit that it tells us
nothing about the games they play. I believe that these observa-tions
are sufficient to discredit the thesis that game rules cannot
be ultimately binding on game players.
4. Means, Rather than Rules, as Non-Ultimate. I want
to agree, however, with the general contention that in games
there is something which is significantly non-ultimate, that
there is a crucial limitation. But I would like to suggest
that
it is not the rules which suffer such limitations. Non-ultimacy
evidently attaches to games at a quite different point. It
is
not that the rules which govern a game must be short of ultimate
commands, but that the means which the rules permit must be
short of ultimate utilities. If a high-jumper, for example,
failed to complete his jump because he saw that the bar was
located at the edge of a precipice, this would no doubt show
that jumping over the bar was not the over-riding interest
of
his life. But it would not be his refusal to jump to his death
which would reveal his conduct to be a game; it would be his
refusal to use something like a ladder or a catapult in the
attempt. The same is true of the dedicated auto racer. A readiness
to lose the race rather than kill a child is not what makes
the race a game; it is the refusal to, inter alia, cut across
the infield in order to get ahead of the other contestants.
There is, therefore, a sense in which games may be said to
be
non-serious. One could intelligibly say of the high jumper
who rejects ladders and catapults that he is not serious about
getting
to the other side of the barrier. But one would also want to
point out that he could be deadly serious about getting to
the
other side of the barrier without such aids; that is, about
high-jumping. But whether games as such are less serious than
other things would seem to be a question which cannot be answered
solely by an investigation of games.
Consider a third variant of Snooze's death. In the face of
Threat's threat to murder Snooze, I come to the following
decision.
I choose to limit myself to non-lethal means in order to save
Snooze even though lethal means are available to me and I
do
not regard myself to be bound by any rule which forbids killing.
(The author has argued for the possibility that life itself
is a game In "Is Life a Game We Are Playing?" Ethics. Vol.
77, No. 3, April 1967). In auto racing, for example, the infield
would
not be filled with land mines. And I make this decision even
though it may turn out that the proscribed means are necessary
to save Snooze. I thus make my end not simply saving Snooze's
life, but saving Snooze's life without killing Threat, even
though there appears to be no reason for restricting myself
in this way.
One might then ask how such behavior can be accounted for.
And one answer might be that it is unaccountable, that it
is
simply arbitrary. However, the decision to draw an arbitrary
line with respect to permissible means need not itself be
an
arbitrary decision. The decision to be arbitrary may have a
purpose, and the purpose may be to play a game. And it seems
to be the case that the lines drawn in games are not actually
arbitrary at all. For not only that the lines are drawn, but
also where they are drawn, has important consequences not only
for the type, but also for the quality, of the game to be
played.
It might be said that drawing such lines skillfully (and therefore
not arbitrarily) is the very essence of the gamewright’s
craft. The gamewright must avoid two extremes. If he draws
his
lines too loosely the game will be dull because winning will
be too easy. As looseness is increased to the point of utter
laxity the game disappears altogether, since there are then
no rules proscribing available means. Thus a homing propellant
device could be devised which would insure a golfer a hole
in one every time he played. On the other hand, rules are
lines
that can be drawn too tight, so that the game becomes too difficult.
And if a line is drawn very tight indeed the game is squeezed
out of existence. Suppose a game in which the goal is to cross
a finish line. One of the rules requires the contestant to
stay
on the track, while another rule requires that the finish line
be located at a position such that it is impossible to cross
it without leaving the track. The present proposal, therefore,
is that games are activities in which rules are inseparable
from ends (in the sense agreed to earlier), but with the added
qualification that the means permitted by the rules are smaller
in scope than they would be in the absence of the rules.
5. Rules are Accepted for the Sake of the Activity They
Make Possible. Still, even if it is true that the function
of rules in games is to restrict the permissible means
to an
end, it does not seem that this is in itself sufficient to
exclude things which are not games. When I failed in my
attempt to save
Snooze's life because of my unwillingness to commit the immoral
act of taking a life, the rule against killing functioned
to
restrict the means I would employ in my efforts to reach a
desired end. What then distinguishes the case of the high
jumper and
of the auto racer from my efforts to save Snooze morally, or
the efforts of a politician to get elected without lying?
The
answer lies in the reason for obeying rules in the two types
of case. In games I obey the rules just because such obedience
is a necessary condition for my engaging in the activity such
obedience makes possible. But in other activities —e.g.,
in moral
actions— there is always another reason, what might be
called an external reason, for conforming to the rule in question;
for a moral teleologist, because its violation would vitiate
some other end, for a deontologist because the rule is
somehow
binding in itself. In morals conformity to rules makes the
action right, but in games it makes the action.
Further to illustrate this point, two other ways in which
rules function may be contrasted with the way in which rules
function in games. Rules can be directives to attain a given
end (If you want to improve your drive, keep your eye on the
ball), or they can be restrictions on the means to be chosen
to a given end (Do not lie to the public in order to get them
to vote for you). In the latter way morals, for example, often
appear as limiting conditions in a technical activity, although
a supervening technical activity can also effect the same limitation
(If you want to get to the airport in time, drive fast, but
if you want to drive safely, don't drive too fast). Consider
a ruled sheet of paper. I conform to these rules, when writing,
in order to write straight. Now suppose that the rules are not
lines on a sheet of paper, but paper walls which form a labyrinth,
and while I wish to be out of the labyrinth, I don't wish to
damage the walls. The walls are limiting conditions on my coming,
to be out. Returning to games, consider a third case. Again
I am in labyrinth, but now my purpose is not to be outside (as
it might be if Ariadne were waiting for me), but to get out
of the labyrinth, so to speak, labyrinthically. What is the
status of the walls? Clearly they’ re not means for my
coming to be outside the labyrinth because it is not my purpose
to (simply) be outside. And if a friend suddenly appeared overhead
in a helicopter I would decline the offer of a Lift although
I would accept it in the second case. My purpose is to get out
of the Labyrinth only by accepting the conditions it imposes.
Nor is this like the first case. There I was not interested
in seeing whether I could write a sentence without breaking
a rule (crossing a line), but in using the rules so that I could
write straight.
We may therefore say that games consist in acting in accordance
with rules which limit the permissible means to a sought end,
and where the rules are obeyed just so that such activity can
take place.
6. Winning Is Not the End with Respect to which Rules
Limit Means. There is, however, a final difficulty.
On the one hand, to describe rules as operating more or
less permissively
with respect to means seems to conform to the ways in which
we invent or revise games. But on the other band it does
not
seem to make sense at all to say that in games there are means
for attaining one’s end over and above the means permitted
by the rules. Consider chess. The end sought by chess players
is, it would seem, to win. But winning means putting a chess
piece on a square in accordance with the rules of chess.
But
since to break a rule is to fail to attain that end, what other
means are available? It was for just this reason that the
first
proposal was rejected: using a golf club in order to play golf
is not a less efficient, and thus alternative, means for
seeking
the end in question; it is a (logically) indispensable means.
The objection can be met, I believe, by pointing out that
there is an end in chess analytically distinct from winning
as an end. Let us begin again, therefore, from a somewhat different
point of view and say that the end in chess is, in a very
restricted
sense, to place one of your pieces on the board in a position
such that the opponent’s king is in terms of the rules
of chess, immobilized. Now, without going outside the game
of
chess we may say that the means for bringing about this state
of affairs consist in moving the chess pieces. The rules
of
chess, of course, state how the pieces may be moved; they distinguish
between legal and illegal moves. Since the knight for example,
is permitted to move in only a highly restricted manner, it
is clear that the permitted means for moving the knight are
of less scope than the possible means for moving him. It should
not be objected at this point that other means for moving
the
knight —e.g., along the diagonals— are not really
possible on the grounds that such use of the knight would break
a rule
and
thus not be a means to winning. For the present point is not
that such use of the knight would be a means to winning,
but
that it would be a possible (though not permissible) way in
which to move the knight so that he would, for example, come
to occupy a square such that, according to the rules of chess,
the king would be immobilized. A person who made such a move
would not, of course, be playing chess. Perhaps be would be
cheating at chess. By the same token I would not be playing
a game if I abandoned my arbitrary decision not to kill Threat
while at the same time attempting to save Snooze. Chess,
as
well as my third effort to save Snooze’s life, are games
because of an "arbitrary" restriction of means permitted
in pursuit of an end.
The chief point is that the end here in question is not the
end of winning the game. There must be an end distinct from
winning because it is the restriction of means to this other
end which makes winning possible, and also defines, in any
given
game, what it means to win. In defining a game we shall therefore
have to take into account these two ends and, as we shall
see
in a moment, a third end as well. First there is what might
be called the end which consist, in a certain state of affairs:
a juxtaposition of pieces on a board, saving a friend’s
life, crossing a finish line. Then, when a restriction of
means
for attaining this end is made with the introduction of rules,
we have a second end, winning. Finally, with the stipulation
of what it means to win, a third end emerges: the activity
of trying to win, that is playing the game. It is noteworthy
that
in some cases it is possible to pursue one of these ends without
pursuing the others and that in some cases it is not. Thus,
it is possible to pursue the end of getting as many tricks
at bridge as you can without pursuing the end of winning,
since
you may seek this goal, and also achieve it, by cheating. But
it is impossible to seek to win without seeking to take a
certain
(relative) number of tricks, nor is it possible to seek to
play without seeking both of the other ends.
7. The Definition. My conclusion is that 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.
