What are games?

What are games?

Games are a structured means of interacting with other people. (In some cases, a game player might be interacting with a computer or a deck of cards instead.) Games overlap with activities like puzzles. For example, is solitaire a game? What about a crossword puzzle? Or a jigsaw puzzle?

As far as we're concerned, the specific definition of "games" is pretty explicit. This site focus on some specific games types, mostly board games, card games, and roleplaying games right now, but we have plans to expand our coverage to include all types of games, including dice games, party games, trivia games, etc.

Here are some traits that we think all types of games have in common:

• Players - All games have players, even solitaire games, which have on player.
• Structure - Think of structure as a set of rules for a game. No rules? No game. Even the simplest types of games, like tic-tac-toe, have rules.
• Goals - All games have some kind of goal. In Monopoly, a player's goal is to bankrupt the other players. In Scrabble, the goal is to score more points than your opponent.

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