What is a Game?

Personally, I would define a Game as a form of leisure activity that gives a certain degree of freedom to its players to be actively, physically, even emotionally involved in constructing a form of representation of a reality which may or may not be modeled upon the real world, creating a form of meaning by negotiating between the rules and constraints that are put upon them by the Game, and the player’s self-satisfying goals and objectives.

What makes a game Good?

Firstly, a game must be an activity of leisure. Nobody wants to play games and get stressed out of it, although there are games that makes people want to throw the controller out of the window (anyone currently playing Ninja Gaiden : Black ?), but most of the time, it must be fun.

A certain degree of freedom is also essential, Freedom in the sense that with the rules and constraints given, the player are able to create a form of competition either between human players or between the players and the system. In other words, the game should provoke a challenge for the players to overcome, and the leisure from playing games may come from the satisfaction in being able to accomplish such challenges. I am not saying that a game must have a grand purpose or goal (or a grand narrative for that matter...). I am saying that games that are fun are usually made out of small challenges, probably progresses into bigger challenges (a progression from easy to difficult stages). Who doesn’t miss the good old days of mindless whack –em-up such as Bubble Bobble or Snow Brothers??

Another point to add is that a game is set in a so called ‘virtual reality’ (not to go into further debate on this term), and the players are given the freedom to reinterpret, construct their own meaning of the universe to suit their own needs. I believe as a leisure form of activity, a game does not necessarily be as realistic as the real world, but representations of the real world are just cues for the player to recreate their own universe, playing with their own imagination.

To me personally, a game is an extension of our greatest gift as human being, which is we are given the power to imagine (ok, I know it sounds very Samsung-ish, or cliché). A game can be viewed as a form of means to amplify our ability to imagine, by ironically, providing a self-constrained interactive form of reality.