Bernard Suits – What Is a Game?

“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 another job to be done as competently as possible.”

“Rules in games thus seem to be in a some sense inseparable from ends. To break a rule is to render impossible the attainment of an end. … If the rules are broken the original end becomes impossible to 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.”

“Rules are lines that we draw, but in games the lines are always drawn short of a final end or a paramount command.”

“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 things that a player could always have reason to stop playing.”

“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 the would be in the absence of the rules, and where the sole reason for accepting such limitation is to make possible such activity.”