“A game is a machine for telling stories that end with players winning and/or losing.”
That is the definition that sets the stage for Season Two of the Game Changers in which we will look at the atomic structure of Tabletop Games, what makes them “fun”, and where they might go from here. Start the journey at https://www.buzzsprout.com/725538/episodes/10104807.
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David is the Managing Editor of the DWP. He learned chess at the age of five and has been playing tabletop games ever since. His collection currently consists of about 600 games, which take up way too much space. His game "Odd Lots" won the inaugural TABS Game Design Contest in 2008. He is currently Managing Editor of The Daily Worker Placement.
All in all he's pretty smug about his knowledge of games and game
design.
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Re your definition of a game: I have been wondering about this myself because I tried to make an entry on BoardGameGeek for the game Sign and was turned down because there is no win or loss condition. I understand why Board game geek might make that distinction for their site particularly because it is not really about role-playing games. However, I would think “game” in general does not require a win or loss condition. Isn’t tag still a game even though nobody really wins or loses? Or is it a question of multiple wins and losses over the course of playtime? In Sign, do we win because we have spent this time together creating a new sign language?
In other words, is it “win” and “lose” that need some defining?
Well, it’s been a few decades since I played Tag, but as I recall (he said, stretching out his suspenders with his thumbs), whoever catches “It” is effectively the winner of that ’round’ because they gain the right to become the next “It”. Maybe they play it differently in Ohio, I don’t know. But in my mind, Tag definitely meets the requirements of a game.
So what do you make of things like RPGs which are games but which have no win/loss scenario? Or are they not games but orgs used play? OR is “organized play with or without a win/loss scenario” a good definition for game?