After my last item about serious games (Too Broad a Term to be Meaningful), one topic of debate came up. How can we determine if the term Serious Games is too broad, if we don’t really understand what games are?
I have looked into this question before and it has to be said, at an academic and philosophical level – it is muddy as hell. Generally it is accepted that a game is structure play (where play is free from form and rules). Here are a few definitions (taken mostly from Wikipedia).
Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is often cited as discussing games in great detail in his book “Philosophical Investigations” in 1953. The simplest quote i can find about his view (that may well be paraphrased!) was
