…Some examples for different formal models for understanding games.

One of the most famous and most simple is probably Sid Meier’s: ‘a game is a series of interesting choices.’ Here’s another one: ‘anything in a game that a player has no control over is bad.’

Some more just off the top of my head: ‘Multiplayer games are contests of skill, and any significant luck in a multiplayer game is bad’. Or ‘games are a set of interlocking systems or games are large, ambiguous math problems or a game is a set of rules and a goal.’

I like that last one a lot, and I want to talk about it in another post at some point.

It’s surprising how little serious critical or journalistic writing is published about video games.

So it was a pleasant surprise when we stumbled across this article, which touches on how mathematic tools such as game theory can impact on how games are designed and developed.

Formal Games Writing | In Machinam