Games are an incredible human phenomenon, strikingly different from other forms of creativity in the level of involvement of the “consumer” (this term isn’t quite apt, but it’s general enough). Some games are hard to define as art, but each and every one is the product of creativity. And although the theme of creativity in games deserves hundreds of treatises and even entire cultural-educational institutions, I would like to draw attention to another side — to that very “consumer.” Why do we play games
People played games even before they began creating them, paradoxical as that may sound. A certain sequence of actions need only be supplemented with a few aspects to turn it into a game. The generals of the kingdoms of the Celestial Empire played games. Couples in the marriage rituals of various tribes played games. The students of ancient Greek philosophers played games. And even gladiators and Olympic champions on the brink of death played games. Games lie at the foundation of humanity’s survival as a species, for they contain a key value — experience.
Experience is an ephemeral concept, but critically important to life, and is literally its foundation. It is encoded in the molecules of DNA and RNA, in genotype and phenotype, in the structure of the bodies of all living organisms, from trees to bacteria. The latter gain experience by dealing with antibiotics. Insects acquire colorings from the experience of devoured predecessors; plants compress their leaves into needles through the deadly experience of drying out. For a long time, living organisms had a single source of experience, and that was death. Intelligent species recognized the value of experience and began to acquire it within a generation rather than across generations. They learned to learn, rather than to wait for genetic changes. They learned to train, rather than to wait for a chance to look death in the eyes.
Experience
Now the world is far safer, but experience has not lost its value. We have invented a host of methods for acquiring it. So, to understand games, we must understand their purpose. A game exists in order to gain a certain experience from another activity. We do not acquire the game experience (that is, the one chosen for the game) in a primary way (that is, the way it was first acquired). We simulate the acquisition of the game experience in a different way, indirectly. Usually, this is driven by the need to keep the experience-seeker safe, or by the impossibility of reproducing the primary method.
Example: We do not need to serve in the Roman army as a velite if our goal is to gain the experience of throwing a pilum. This can easily be reproduced outside of battle (or 2,000 years after the Roman wars) by taking a mock spear and hurling it at a target or scarecrow.
Simulation
Here we identify the next aspect of a game — the simulative nature of the process. Usually, a certain phenomenon is a coincidence of natural circumstances. The scientific approach to studying the world proposes reproducing it under controlled conditions — that is, conducting an experiment to reproduce the phenomenon (and the primary method of gaining experience). Simulation in games is a necessity that imitates the properties of the circumstances of the game experience. And the experience-seeker consciously agrees to the simulation when starting a game. Eric Berne, in his book Games People Play, identified conscious consent to simulation as a mandatory condition for beginning a game (the gameplay process). For the unconscious position is precisely that coincidence of natural circumstances.
Example: Gambling addicts consciously pull the lever of a slot machine, wishing to obtain an audience with Fortune. To gain the experience of being dependent on the factor of chance for the next few seconds. And it does not matter whether they lose money or earn it. Gambling addicts do not play in order to earn.
Rules
The third mandatory aspect of a game is rules. The conventions that are imitated flow directly from the simulation of the game process. While some conventions can be made fairly fixed, like the boundary of the playing field, others require adherence on the part of the player. They can be broken, but then the game process is broken as well. It is precisely well-chosen rules that affect the quality of the game experience and are the subject of creativity in games, because this is the instrument that ensures the controllability of acquiring experience. The more complex the chosen experience, the more rules for moderating the gameplay it requires.
Example: Chess pieces on the board are not constrained by walls or movement grooves. Yet every chess player adheres to the possible move options of individual pieces for the sake of gaining the experience of strategic command of combat operations.
Reward
The final aspect of a game is reward. Reward is the consequence of the game process and adherence to its rules. Accordingly, the reward is the very experience for the sake of which the player began the process. However, when it comes to refined experience (the acquisition process of which is imitated through assumptions rather than the reproduction of primary conditions), the game requires a more deterministic moment of reward to indicate that the game process has been completed successfully. Success in such a case does not equal victory, but rather indicates the absence of violations of the process, the presence of its beginning and its completion. If we scale up the concept of “game,” we can note that certain rewards contain within them a call to begin a new game process, for the construction of games is often fractal (I examined this in more detail in the article on the cyclical triangle of games).
Example: The reward in football is a point counted for striking the ball into the goal. This indicates that the process of teamwork and adherence to the rules of the game passed without violations or deviations. It is a reward for the team that let the ball into its goal, and for the team that scored it.
Conclusions
The experience that games offer is most varied. We can embody ourselves as samurai, space cowboys, doomed investigators of urban legends, or even gods fighting for power — and remain human in the process. So games have now acquired one more aspect (which, of course, is not mandatory, but for which demand has grown) — escapism. Although it is itself a defense mechanism of the psyche, escapism combines ideally and organically with games. Thus games are capable of giving a person a spectrum of emotions and experiences that no book, painting, or composition is able to convey. So yes, we play games in order to saturate our lives with unique experience.
P.S.: Personally, I believe that the use of acquired game experience outside the game situation is not effective. Knowledge may prove useful indirectly. But game experience is first and foremost the result of an activity, not the foundation for a derivative activity (unless the derivative activity is itself a game).