What is precisely a game? What sets apart games from puzzles , toys or a 100m sprint race?

In a 100m sprint race all runners want to win but none of them is allowed to touch the competitors nor to invade their lane. Attacks are not allowed, rules prevent interaction between the participants. Its a competition.

In basketball instead, a player can try to steal the ball from the opposite team, block his pass line and will execute actions to interfere with the other team to win the match. Attacks are permitted, rules allow interaction between the players. A game.

In competitions, where you are not allowed to interfere with the rival, strategic thinking is not needed as it is in games. While Usain Bold trains with the only objective to improve his personal mark in order to win a non interactive race, or a shooter to improve his gold medal accuracy, Sasha Grischuk (chess player) or Lionel Messi need to prepare and think about his opponents possible strategies and moves before and during the match in order to win at their interactive games.

In the book “Rules of Play - Game Design Fundamentals” Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman (MIT) defined games in the following way:

“A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.”

This definition is a mix made out of the best bits of the previous game definitions that the book collects and analyzes. However, Yale economics professor Benjamin Polak, in his opening lines in a lecture about game theory explains the concept “strategic situations”, which I really love.

“Game theory is a way of analyzing strategic situations. Strategic situations are any setting where the things that you care about, the outcomes you care about, depend not only in your own actions but on the action of someone else.”

“Conflicts” + “System” can be replaced by “Strategic situations”. With this small cut and paste we do have a game definition.

Games are strategic situations, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.