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In 2018, the movie “Tag” follows a group of 5 men who play an extreme game of tag. This game is just like the traditional game of tag, where the person who is “it” tags someone else, making them “it”. However, in this version, the game never ends, and nothing is off the table. In fact, this game has been played in real life by a real group of 10 friends every February for over 25 years. Ignoring all limitations, these players have chased each other over geographical boundaries, tagged each other during funerals, and even broken into each other’s houses just for the tag. Ultimately, while it makes for a good laugh, many may question its status as a game. If a game has no rules, is it still a game?
However, further clarifications must be made since this example of tag is not entirely “rule-less”. After all, it still has rules: it is only played in February, and you have to physically touch someone to make them “it”. Therefore, let us consider a new version of tag, the Simplified Extreme Tag (SET). In SET, only two people play and the game ends when person A tags person B. Although, just like in the movie, nothing is off the table and players may use any means to achieve their goals. The SET is hence truly without rules.
Intuitively, SET seems similar enough to traditional tag and many will consider it a game. Yet, many would also think that a game need to have rules. To resolve this, this paper explores two definitions of games that defends the necessary role of rules in games. However, both attempted resolutions of the dilemma above are unsatisfactory. Instead, I reject the rule-condition for games and replace it with a modified one. With this new definition, it can be shown that rules are not necessary conditions for games, and why SET still qualifies as a game.
The first common-sense perspective is based on Mark Rosewater’s account of games. According to him, “a game is a thing with a goal, restrictions, agency, and a lack of real-world relevance”. Restrictions come in the form of rules, which makes the game challenging and prevents the players from directly achieving the goal. Rosewater raises the example of tennis to illustrate the difference between games and activities, which are game-like things that lack rules. For example, someone may repeatedly hit a tennis ball with a racket against a wall to practice their tennis skills. Yet, they are not playing tennis, since tennis has rules to follow, such as keeping the ball in the court and getting it over the net.
Some might argue that SET is merely an activity since there are no rules to follow. In contrast, traditional tag is a game since we would have rules stating geographical limitations, or “no tag-backs”. Yet, this contradicts our intuition that SET is a game. While Rosewater implies that a game without rules is a simple activity, the lack of rules does not make SET an easy activity that can be “simply accomplished”. In fact, players going to extreme lengths is evidence proving that SET has that challenge that Rosewater seems to want in games. It is also because of this challenge that we intuitively understand SET to be a game.
In Bernard Suits’ definition, games are activities that bring about a specific goal using only permitted means. Additionally, rules exist to “prohibit more efficient means in favour of less efficient ones”, and these rules are accepted by players because they make the game possible. An example is how chess players accept arbitrary rules of how pieces are allowed to move across the board, mainly because without them, chess ceases to be chess.
Similar to Rosewater, Suits also believes that rules prevent players from taking the simplest path towards achieving the goal. For example, in traditional tag, we might ban the use of bicycles, limiting more efficient means of obtaining a tag. However, proponents of this definition of games would argue that SET does contain some hidden rules that qualify it as a game. Suits posits that the starting time of any game is another positive example of a valid rule. SET, as with most games, likely has a starting time, and a tag occurring before that time is invalid. In other words, the starting time is a rule that denies more efficient ways of obtaining a tag, since it would certainly be faster and easier to make a surprise tag before that given time. It is such that one might claim that SET is still a valid game.
Yet, it might be possible to conceive of games without explicit starting times. After all, children playing traditional tag often immediately disperse after agreeing upon (other) rules and start playing the game without any formal indication of a starting time. Here the game actually starts since by playing the game, players acknowledge and agree that it has. This implicit starting time is a natural limitation applied by our existence in time, necessarily occurring after the establishment of the game but before the game is played. Most crucially, this is not the artificial rule created and agreed upon to limit the gameplay in the way that Suits described. If we could thus imagine two childish adults playing SET in this way, then SET would still not have any rules, rejecting Suits’ attempted resolution.
Despite maintaining that rules are necessary for games, neither accounts have satisfactorily explained why the SET is a game. Hence, this paper rejects the condition for rules, and proposes a modified condition that better accounts for games. However, as previously hinted, a distinction between artificial rules and natural restrictions must be made. Artificial rules are the limitations that govern most games that we know and are the types of rules that were described by both Rosewater and Suits. These rules make games challenging and possible. However, they are labelled artificial because they are made up by humans. For example, there is no reason why we physically cannot pick up the ball whilst playing soccer, other than the fact that we agreed that we cannot.
On the other hand, natural restrictions limits our possibilities not because we agreed to, but because we physically cannot act otherwise. For example, there might be a rule in a 100-metre race that states “one shall not teleport at any point during the race” which validly restricts the race, but this seems redundant since we cannot teleport anyways. This is a natural restriction because we are bounded by naturally occurring laws of time and space, rather than any invented rule. By extension, natural restrictions also include laws of physics and all our physical limitations.
This distinction allows us to recognise the narrow scope of the rules-condition. When constructing their definition of games, both Rosewater and Suits included the concept of rules to create some sort of limitation or challenge, by restricting “more efficient means”. Implicitly, it had been assumed that rules restrict more efficient means that are physically possible. Yet, this is unwarranted because we still derive a significant amount of challenge from natural limitations. For example, without any artificial rules on how we may possibly tag someone, many still find great difficulty in achieving the tag.
Given that both artificial rules and natural restrictions both provide a sense of difficulty in achieving the goal, I posit that natural restrictions should also be considered valid limitations that makes an activity a game. Instead of the necessary condition for artificial rules, I propose that games requires either artificial rules, natural restrictions, or both. By this modified definition, the SET is still a game, since it is constrained by natural restrictions, and fulfils other relevant conditions set by Rosewater and Suits.
However, opponents may claim that the loosening of requirements allows many other activities to also become games, even though we may not consider them to be. For instance, using the modified Rosewater definition, jogging is a game. Not only does it have a goal of jogging a long distance, but it also gives the jogger agency in how and where to run, and it lacks a real world relevance. Most importantly, the jogger is restricted by the laws of physics and human limitations, such as sprinting the long distance. However, most would not consider jogging a game.
Even if we adamantly insist that these activities are games, we could potentially dilute what it means for something to be a game. As Syndrome said in the 2004 movie Incredibles, “when everyone’s super, no one is.” If we were to label nearly all activities games, we will eventually lose sight of what games are. How may we differentiate jogging from games like chess?
The solution to this critique is to revisit our intuition that games necessarily involves challenge brought about by rules and restrictions. For example, we believe that chess is a game because we accept the artificial rules purely for the purpose of playing chess. Applying similar logic, we want natural restrictions because that makes SET challenging and possible. On the other hand, we hold a different attitude towards laws of physics in relation to jogging. We do not actively rely on gravity or our lack of teleportation for jogging to exist as an activity - jogging simply is.
Hence, the modified Suits’ definition should be used instead, with emphasis on his “lusory attitude” condition, where the rules (and restrictions) are accepted because they make the game possible. In other words, players accept the rules and restrictions because they want to act within the limitation they impose, and not because they have to. For example, joggers accept laws of physics because they have to, and not because it imposes limitations that allow jogging to occur. On the other hand, although SET players also have to accept natural restrictions, they accept it because natural restrictions impose certain kinds of limitations that allows the SET to be played. Suits’ additional condition thus allows us to align the definition of games to our intuitions, drawing that relationship between rules/restrictions and the nature of the game itself.
To conclude, an appeal to our intuitions of what makes a game reveals that existing definitions of games unsatisfactorily describe games. In particular, the use of artificial rules is not a necessary condition. Instead, Suits’ definition is modified to allow either artificial rules or natural restrictions to impose limits in games. As such, this paper argues that games are activities that bring about a specific goal using only permitted means, governed by either artificial rules or natural restrictions (or both), and where such rules/restrictions are accepted just because they make possible such activities.
AMC Theatres. (29 May, 2018). The True Story Behind ‘Tag’. Retrieved from AMC Theatres: https://www.amctheatres.com/amc-scene/the-true-story-behind-tag History vs Hollywood. (n.d.). TAG (2018). Retrieved from History vs Hollywood: https://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/tag/ Rosewater, M. (4 June, 2018). WHAT IS A GAME? Retrieved from Magic: https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/making-magic/what-game-2018-06-04 Spink, R. (19 June, 2015). And when everyone’s super… Retrieved from YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmSO2cz2ozQ Suits, B. (1978). Construction of a definition. In B. Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia (pp. 20-41). London: University of Toronto Press. Suits, B. (1978). Ivan and Abdul. In B. Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia (pp. 58-71). London: University of Toronto Press. Suits, B. (1978). Mountain climbing. In B. Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia (pp. 82-87). London: University of Toronto Press.