Jon Houston's Notebook

Philosophy of Games

What Is a Game?

One influential definition of a game is:

To play a game is to voluntarily take on unnecessary obstacles for the sake of making possible the activity of overcoming them.

This definition has three important parts.

Pre-Lusory Goal

The pre-lusory goal is the state of affairs we are trying to bring about during game play, described without any reference to the particular means of achieving it.

For example, in golf, the pre-lusory goal is to get the ball into the hole.

Constitutive Rules

The constitutive rules are the rules that prohibit more efficient means in favor of less efficient means.

For example, it would be much easier to pick up the golf ball and drop it into the hole. But the rules of golf do not allow that. They require you to use clubs.

Lusory Goal

The lusory goal is to achieve the pre-lusory goal within the means permitted by the game.

In golf, the lusory goal is not merely to get the ball into the hole. It is to get the ball into the hole by using the means allowed by golf.

Why Do We Play Games?

There are several different reasons why people play games.

Intrinsic Achievement

Intrinsic achievement means playing for the sake of winning.

The victory itself is the point.

Extrinsic Achievement

Extrinsic achievement means playing for the sake of something outside the game, such as:

  • Honor
  • Fame
  • Money
  • Status

Intrinsic Striving

Intrinsic striving means playing for the sake of the struggle.

On this view, the activity of trying is itself valuable.

Extrinsic Striving

Extrinsic striving means playing for the sake of benefits outside the game, such as:

  • Physical fitness
  • Mental health
  • Education
  • Social connection

Are Games Art?

One argument says yes: games can be art.

Games solicit effort, commitment, and striving. These can become sources of aesthetically meaningful experience.

In games, we do not merely look at something beautiful. We experience ourselves striving. That experience can itself have aesthetic properties, such as:

  • Harmony
  • Grace
  • Beauty
  • Tension
  • Elegance
  • Drama

On this view, games are artifacts intentionally constructed to produce aesthetic experiences in their audiences or players.

If that is right, then “art” may be the best word we have for such things.

Objections: Are Games Really Art?

Alva Noë

Alva Noë argues that the distinctive hallmark of games is their intelligibility.

Games make sense. They have rules, goals, and standards of success.

But art often resists intelligibility. Art does not always give us clear rules for how to understand it.

So if games are highly intelligible, and art often resists intelligibility, perhaps games are not art in the same way paintings, music, or poetry are.

Thomas Hurka

Thomas Hurka argues that it is a mistake to think that the process of producing something beautiful must itself be beautiful.

Often, the process of producing something beautiful is full of:

  • Wrong turns
  • Randomness
  • Frustration
  • Failure
  • Inelegance

Elegance may emerge from a process that is not itself elegant.

Hurka also argues that the process of selecting a game-move is often not something we consciously experience. In fact, the more skilled we become at an activity, the less deliberate and conscious our actions tend to be.

So if the aesthetic value of games is supposed to come from experiencing ourselves striving, this may be a problem. Skilled players may not experience their striving in the way the argument requires.

Are Games Useful?

One argument says yes: games can be useful because they teach us different ways of exercising agency.

Agency means intentional action, or action for a reason.

To play a game is to take on a new form of agency.

In a game, we temporarily accept goals, rules, and motivations designed by someone else.

Games can therefore expose us to alternate forms of agency and a wider range of agential experiences.

This can support and enhance our autonomy.

When we become familiar with different ways of acting, striving, choosing, and valuing, we gain a wider range of options for how to conduct ourselves in practical situations.

Games can help build our inventory of ways of being practical.

If that inventory is well managed, it can support our freedom and autonomy.

Games and Practical Clarity

Ordinary life requires us to balance many competing values.

We must balance:

  • Our own goals
  • Our own needs
  • Our own long-term and short-term desires
  • The interests of other people
  • Moral obligations
  • Social expectations
  • Unclear consequences

Games give us a temporary break from this complexity.

In a game, we are allowed to act as if only one thing matters.

For a little while, our values simplify.

We can lose ourselves in the pursuit of a clear goal.

This is one of the attractions of games: they provide practical clarity.

Are Games Harmful?

One argument says yes: games can be harmful because the simplified value structure of games can leak into the rest of life.

In games, we are often permitted to temporarily inhabit a motivational state where only one thing is valuable.

This means we may not need to treat other people’s interests as valuable within the game.

We may be permitted to:

  • Manipulate
  • Use
  • Defeat
  • Destroy
  • Treat others as obstacles
  • Treat others as resources

Inside the game, this may be acceptable.

But if these attitudes leak outside the game, they become morally dangerous.

Outside the gaming context, treating every person and resource as a mere instrument would be morally terrible.

The Fantasy of Value Clarity

Games may also harm us by making us too attracted to value clarity.

The value clarity of games might create an expectation for value clarity outside the game.

This can lead us to prefer real-world systems that present values with game-like simplicity.

But much of life is not like a game.

The right values to have may not be the clearest values.

Games can present us with a fantasy of value clarity.

If we are too seduced by that fantasy, we may oversimplify our own values.

Value Capture

Value capture occurs when simplified versions of our values replace richer and subtler versions of those values.

Value capture happens in four steps:

  1. Our values are, at first, rich and subtle.

  2. We encounter simplified, often quantified, versions of those values.

  3. Those simplified versions take the place of our richer values in our reasoning and motivation.

  4. Our lives get worse.

Examples might include:

  • Replacing learning with grades
  • Replacing friendship with follower counts
  • Replacing health with step counts
  • Replacing wisdom with productivity
  • Replacing moral seriousness with public approval
  • Replacing play with achievement metrics

The worry is not that measurement is always bad.

The worry is that simplified measurements can take over and replace the thing we originally cared about.

Objections and Complications

Alva Noë on Agency

Alva Noë objects that games are not really settings where people get to try on and experiment with agency.

Instead, games are activities in which agents are made to prove themselves.

On this view, games are less about exploring possible forms of agency and more about testing whether you can succeed under pressure.

Quill R. Kukla on Context

Quill R. Kukla argues that gameplay cannot be cleanly separated from the rest of life.

The norms of gameplay are bound up with norms that are not internal to the rules of the game.

Games are shaped by overlapping contexts, including:

  • Intersubjective context
  • Material context
  • Cultural context

Because games are embedded in these contexts, we cannot fully abstract them from ordinary life.

This means that values and norms from outside the game will infiltrate gameplay.

If that is right, then games may not allow the kind of total submersion or abstraction that the agency argument requires.

Discussion Questions

  1. Is the definition of a game as “voluntarily taking on unnecessary obstacles” a good definition? Does it include all games? Does it include anything that is not a game?

  2. What is the difference between the pre-lusory goal and the lusory goal? Can you think of examples from sports, board games, video games, or playground games?

  3. Why do you play games? Do you play mostly for achievement, for striving, for external rewards, or for some other reason?

  4. Are games art? Is the experience of striving in a game aesthetically meaningful in the way that music, painting, dance, or literature can be aesthetically meaningful?

  5. Is there a difference between the beauty of a finished game and the beauty of the process of playing it? Can an ugly or frustrating process produce a beautiful result?

  6. Do games teach us new forms of agency? Can playing games actually make us freer or more autonomous?

  7. Is the practical clarity of games good for us? Is it healthy to spend time in a space where only one goal matters?

  8. Can the simplified values of games leak into ordinary life? Have you seen examples where people start treating school, work, friendship, politics, or morality like a game?

  9. What are some examples of value capture in your own life or in society? Are grades, money, likes, rankings, trophies, or statistics ever useful? When do they become dangerous?

  10. Can games ever be separated from social, cultural, and material context? Or are games always shaped by the world outside the game?