Can anyone say what a game actually is?

Nobody has managed to define a game to everyone's satisfaction. Scholars have long debated the essence of games, and no single definition has achieved universal acceptance. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein used the word as his famous example. He argued that elements such as play, rules and competition all fail to define games, and he concluded that we apply the word to a range of different activities that share only family resemblances, as the members of one family look alike without all sharing one feature. He did not say no line could ever be drawn: asked whether you can give the boundary of a game, he answered no, but you can draw one, for none has so far been drawn.

The philosopher Bernard Suits challenged the common reading of this as proof that games cannot be systematically defined. In The Grasshopper (1978) he gave a formal definition and went further, arguing that playing games is the highest human good. His short version is that playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles. The longer version says that the rules prohibit more efficient means in favour of less efficient ones, and that the rules are accepted just because they make the activity possible. The state of mind needed for this is what he called the lusory attitude.

Others offered competing lists. The sociologist Roger Caillois said a game must be uncertain, because its outcome is unforeseeable, and non-productive, because it accomplishes nothing useful. The designer Greg Costikyan said a game requires players to make decisions, so that games without choices, such as Chutes and Ladders, are not technically games, any more than a slot machine is.

Each definition draws a different border. Candy Land shows the split: its rules forbid simply walking your piece to the finish, an unnecessary obstacle in Suits's sense, yet it offers no choices, so for Costikyan it is not technically a game.