key words under the GAME

Games have existed among many ancient peoples and are known in all contemporary human cultures. It has been suggested that the playing of games is one of the key defining characteristics of man, though all young mammals and at least some birds play.

The sensitivities and impulses that result in game playing stem from the instinctive drive to explore and map the environment, which appears in simple invertebrates and reaches its fullest development in man, and from the sense of relationship to other beings which is the function of the second of man's three brain systems, the limbic system, development of which distinguishes birds and mammals from lower animals. The limbic system is the seat of emotional responses more complex than affective reflexes.

Games elicit a strong imaginative response, and thus have come to occupy a prominent place among the metaphors which have been employed for human life.

In this essay, the basic components of a game are identified and some possible ways of looking at games as representations of life are explored.

In addition to those properties possessed only by certain classes of games, such as chance, secrecy (as in most card card games), alliances, and so on, there are a few basic elements which are common to all games.

The first of these elements is players with conflicting objectives. For a game condition to exist, there must be conflict and the possibility of winning or losing, or at least of something of value being at stake. In some cases, the other player(s) may be simulated by a mechanical randomizing device (as in solitaire) or by a program running on a computer.

Secondly, a game must possess rules, delineating the powers and limitations of players, though the rules may not be completely known to the players.

A game must be visualizable--it must be possible to picture what is going on--and it must possess a certain simplicity or elegance. There must be a feeling that a world is being created which is interesting to explore. This world may represent some portion of the real world, as in chess (representing a battle), or Monopoly (representing real estate development). Some large- scale simulation games (such as my game Capital, which models production, distribution, and government regulation in an industrial market economy) may involve thirty players or more and take a day or longer to play. Other games are purely abstract. Thus, Fifty-two Pickup is not a game, but a practical joke, as it is not interesting once the trick is known.

Human: is a member of a species of bipedal primate in the family

Mammals : are a class of vertebrate animals whose name is derived from their distinctive feature

Secrecy: is the practice of sharing information among a group of people, which can be as small as one person, while hiding it from all others

Elengance: is the attribute of being unusually effective and simple