Game

A game typically involves:

• One or more players, preferably as optimized for the number of willing participants as possible
• An invitation to play, preferably as easily recognizable as possible
• Some initial state(s), preferably as fair (or perceived to be fair) as possible
• Rules to incentivize desired outcomes and punish undesirable behavior, preferably as consistent as possible
• Win-state(s) and loss-state(s), preferably as clearly defined as possible
• Prizes, preferably as equivalent (or at least proportionate) to the stakes of the game as possible

This definition of games purposefully covers more interactions than typically thought of the types of games done for pure enjoyment and/or entertainment, since almost all of the analyses done on those games are still applicable. A fight, for example, would be accordingly considered a game, even if it is as serious as a duel to the death; similarly, a war is also a “game”, though given the stakes of most wars more often than not involve both death and destruction on a massive scale the challenger (i.e. the one initiating the “invitation”) is more often than not expected to have a recognizably justifiable causus belli, otherwise the challenger opens themselves up to be invaded without cause at any given time, but especially while they’re still busy fighting the war they initiated in the first place.

Games are analyzable on multiple levels; for example, John Nash’s mathematical models illustrated how it was entirely possible for game states to be “stuck” in less than optimal outcomes even when all players are assumed to be completely rational (i.e. absent all emotional/psychological factors) and yet how even in the most otherwise coldly ruthless games you could have strategies that reward cooperation and punish treachery if the games are repeated for enough subsequent iterations (the Tit for Tat strategy in the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma being the most commonly cited example); for another, all truly social animals (i.e. not insects, bees, or other eusocial species) can be observed both in captivity and in the wild to engage in highly ritualized play not just to hone their abilities but to form and strengthen bonds with one another (the most well known JBP story along these lines is how he will talk about rats play-wrestling with one another, and how a bigger rat has to let smaller rats win at least 10% of the time in order for the latter to reciprocate future invitations to play). How much of any given situation could be analogized to a game (and which game) is left as an exercise for the reader.