Cut from my Dissertation

Preface
I find that I can fairly easily write a thousand words on any subject that interests me, though sometimes (and I have no way to tell this before writing) I’ll only be able to write a few hundred words while other times I’ll write two thousand. But writing more than three or four thousand words is really hard.

My Masters dissertation needed to be 12 to 18 thousand words long.

When presented with needing to write a longer essay I chop the task into several interconnected pieces. While I effectively did the same thing with my dissertation, three or four interconnected pieces just wasn’t going to cut it. However, almost everything I write gives me ideas for other things I would like to write (creativity is not a limited resource). So, having written several interconnected sections, I was able to find new things to write that were connected to one or two of the pieces already written.

At first, I chose each next thing to write as I sat down to write it, based only on what most interested me in that moment. As I got closer to my target I realised that some of my sections were becoming very divergent, so I started trying to ensure that I wrote towards connecting the various ideas and creating a flow through the whole. Still, in the end I was left with one major tangent... but by that time I was already just over 18 thousand words. So I cut the tangent and polished what was left.

But I still like the tangent. So I’m presenting it here.

The context of this tangent is that I have defined games as ‘play within a finite system’ and a finite system as being able to be wholly described as a list of possible states (though this list may be impractically long). I also made the claim that goals are inherent to play; play is active, as opposed to reactive or passive, and all actions are directed towards an intention. In other words, by being active, play encompasses intentions – and goals are just a particular ‘look’ at intentions.

The Cut
Before moving on to other values to compare my new definition with, I would like to touch on one possible objection to what I’ve outlined above. When we speak of goals within the context of a game, we generally refer to ‘the’ goal, not ‘one of many’ goals. Considering a game as ‘play within a finite system’ there is no insistence within the game that players have a particular goal – they are welcome to bring any goal they want to play with in order to join this notion of a game. Surely all players within a game must have the same goal in order for the game to be a game and not many different games? Further, if a player is within a finite system and accomplishes one goal only to adopt another, then they must be playing a different game than the one they initially sat down to play? Where do these differences exist within my definition?

In this case, rather than find the singular goal within my definition, I will step back and contend that it is only certain types of games that must have singular goals. For instance, in our discussion of Myers’ definition we have already seen that different players have different goals when playing a role playing game. While this can cause break down in the successful play of the game, in the cases where all players are able to pursue their individual goals within the game the game works well; more importantly, it certainly is a game. In addition, something not mentioned in our discussion before is that the goals of a role player are mutable – in different situations the same player may be pursuing different goals. But even though the player is changing goals, they are still playing the same game.

Which begs the question, if not all games are necessarily single goaled, what is the type of game that must have the same goal for all players and how does my definition contend with those games? Almost all contests fall into the category of having the same goals between players. The reason they need to have the same goals is because the challenge of a contest is to beat the other players – in order for the play to have the possibility of failure, the other players must be trying to attain the same results you are. While there are some contest like games that have different goals between players, these are the exception... and even then, the differing goals will be predictably similar between instances of the same game. In all these games the goals are codified by rules and failure to try to attain the goal means that the other players will not be appropriately challenged. Upon finding out that their opponent has not been following this rule they will feel cheated. How is it that the goal of these games has moved from ‘play’ to ‘rules’ and how does ‘finite system’ embody the rule of trying to achieve a goal?

First of all, it is important to observe that not following this rule is not necessarily the same as not following other rules. If I am not trying to win, you will only feel cheated if you feel that you are no longer having an appropriate challenge from your play. If ten people are racing, but one of them is pursuing a different goal that does not interfere, then the other nine will still be challenged by each other. All (including the differently goaled player) are still in the race. Likewise, if we are only playing a two player game, and my different goal does interfere with your attempt to win, but the interference neither makes your attempt too hard nor too easy, then it is likely that you will not feel cheated and that the game will go on. Whether or not it is still the same game is a point of contention, but I’m fairly certain that the resolution of this question must be subjective.

Secondly, while the goal may exist within the rules, its pursuit must still exist solely in the play. A rule may tell a player that in order to play a game they must attempt to change the state of the game to a particular condition, but the rules cannot be responsible for enforcing the intent of the player. Not only are the rules inert but intent is ultimately unknowable by any but the intender. It is only the player who can be unrealistic in their optimism or who acknowledges failure that can choose their intended outcomes. In other words, while goals may be found within rules, they are only ever pursued within play.

In terms of locating the rule coding for a goal within a finite system, I would like to suggest that any game that includes a rule of a particular goal contains a global state within which that goal is active. For instance, in a race, there is a state which describes a player as trying to win the race. However, the alternative state of not trying to win the race does not exist within the finite system – the finite system may refer to the state but it does not contain the state. At first, this may seem objectionable. Surely any state the finite system observes must be contained within the finite system?

To help with understanding how this can be, let me propose a simple game and then list the states that are contained within the game. The rules of the game are that you roll a dice until you roll any number other than a six. No goal within these rules. (Though note that in order to play you will need to have a goal – you can’t help but have a goal if you are going to be within the emotion of play. You can try to trick the system by trying to not having a goal while playing this game, but you will quickly observe that your optimism that you can do that is highly unrealistic.)

Now let me list the states of this simple game:

1) You are rolling the die
2) The die is showing a six

And that is it. There are no states within the game that include any of the other values that could be shown on the die. Each of the other values that could be shown are states that the die could be in, and the game certainly references the state of the die, but the only state of the die that is contained within the game is the one where it shows a six. From this it is not a stretch to see that one of the states that could be tracked within a game is the intent of the player, even if the only valid state for the players’ intent was trying to win the game.