How Many Games Are We Talking About?

Since not everyone is familiar with World of Warcraft, I am going to use a more familiar game - football - to make some important distinctions about games. As with most words, we use the word "game" to cover a lot of very different activities. When we talk about the "game" of football we often refer to a very wide variety of different activities that are all refereed to as part of the game. These activities might include tracking player statistics, whether or not to use instant replay, player salary negotiations, drinking beer and eating pizza, painting yourself in team colors and dancing in front of the camera, tailgate parties, and so on. Most people would say these and many other things are all part of the game of football. And from the perspective of a football fan, this is fine. However, from the perspective of a researcher it is a disaster.

If the concept of football as a game includes all of the above things and more, it would be very difficult if not outright impossible to make any general statements that would be true for all instances. It would be difficult, as well, to find any regular relationships between football and other concepts. In order to do that I need well defined concepts and the way I achieve that is to make distinctions between the various kinds of activities.

First we have the definitional game. This is the game as described by the rulebook.

Second, we have the experiential game. This is what it feels like to play the game or observe the game being played. This should probably be broken down further since what it feels like to play and what it feels like to watch are very different. Yet this break down may require some thought.

Third we have the social game. This is the social experience of being in a stadium or in a room full of friends watching a game being played. This will require further breakdown as well since the social experience of fans is very different from the social experience of team mates.

Fourth we have the economic game. This is the game as a business or economic enterprise.

Finally, we have the game as phenomenon. Why is football bigger than hockey? Why do people wear football shirts? How does football influence younger people?

This is far from the last word on game categories. In fact they need a lot of work. However, it does show, hopefully, that in order to study a thing, we must break it down into categories of like things and study those like things. Next time I will return to World of Warcraft and look at it in terms of these categories.