Monday, July 2, 2012

Sid Meier's Definition for Game

"A game is a series of interesting choices" -Sid Meier

My short breakdown of this definition is that it actually describes the role that the game presents to the player. It leaves out some very important parts to what a game is, such as the context and motivation for making those choices-- what actually makes them interesting. While elegant and concise, his definition may be an oversimplification.

An argument that others have made about this definition is the use of the word choice isolating games to a fairly specific type of game. There may be something to be argued in the semantics of choice, but generally, games are full of all kinds of choices, and the word itself is the broad term that encompasses problems, decisions, calculations, incomparable choices, etc. I actually think this very clever word use, but I do not think it includes all of what a game is or can be.


I am trying to crank out a few posts quickly because I have a HUGE backlog of ideas I want to cover. Hopefully the ideas are still making sense.

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