What is a Game, Anyway?

Games don’t tell stories.  Players do. 

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Here is a very simple question: What is a game?

The answer isn’t just academic.  It’s key to understanding the art and business of videogames. 

Before we can talk about why it matters, try answering it yourself: what separates a video game from something that isn’t a game? You might think of story, graphics, or lore. To help, think about a sport like golf or tennis, or a board game. Spend a few minutes and try to come up with a definition.

The working definition I use is adapted from my friend and colleague Tynan Sylvester, who explores this in depth in his outstanding book, Designing Games. A lot of things get called games, so defining the term is tricky. Even Tynan’s definition has evolved since he wrote it thirteen years ago. Still, here’s a simplified version I use:

• Start with an objective.  You need to hit a ball into a hole 400 yards away. You want to put your opponent’s king in check.
• You pursue the objective by making decisions within a set of rules.  The rules of golf don’t let you carry the ball to the hole; you have to hit it with this stick. In chess, you might sacrifice your rook to trap my king.
• The outcome of those decisions within those rules creates events.  You hit the tennis ball past me, and now I have to sprint to return it. I land on Park Place, and you’ve got a hotel there. Now I owe you money.
• Those events create emotions: anticipation, fear, anger, excitement. I’m angry that you hit the ball past me on the tennis court.  I’m worried you’re about to put my king in check.
• Graphics, lore, story, enhance emotions and create meaning. I’m not just adding some numbers on a spreadsheet, I’m invading southern Italy and humiliating my opponent.
• The story emerges from the player’s decisions. My loss to your invading army wasn’t inevitable — it happened because I made the wrong moves. My SimCity turned into a slum because I mismanaged the economy. I didn’t just watch the story unfold. I caused it.

The core experience is one of agency. A player gets to shape their experience by their own actions.  This is what people mean when they say games are a lean-forward medium, rather than a lean-back medium like movies, books and music.

Experienced developers might debate the details above — but that’s not the point.  The point is that once you take the time to define a game, several crucial truths that rarely get talked about start to emerge: 

First: A game is not a movie. It’s not a predetermined story. Story can enrich a game’s world, but it isn’t the game itself.

Second: Making a game is nothing like writing a story.  To make a good game, you have to iterate — build something you think will be fun, test it, change it, throw it out, and try again. Maybe the hole should be 50 yards away instead of 400 yards.  Whoops, 50 is too short…maybe 300 is the right amount.  Maybe you should mix up the lengths, in order to break the rhythm.  Game makers tinker, test with friends, toss out failures, and try new ideas.

Third: There’s a critical connection between the financial and the creative. Your development time and money should go toward making the game more fun. If it’s not fun, it won’t matter how good your graphics or lore are — people won’t play it.

And yet, most major publishers spend the bulk of their budgets on what matters least for long-term enjoyment of their chosen art form (games): they focus on cinematic visuals.

That’s why recent breakout hits like Lethal Company and R.E.P.O. feel so fresh. They’re rough on the surface, but they thrive on emergent gameplay — unpredictable scenarios arising from simple mechanics and player interaction. Players don’t care whether the visuals are photorealistic. They care that the game is challenging, funny, and endlessly replayable. These games prove the point that when something is genuinely fun and original, players notice — and are happy to tell their friends.

To be clear, high-fidelity visuals CAN significantly enhance immersion. Take the upcoming ARC Raiders, for example. Its visual design isn’t just eye-candy veneer, it serves the gameplay. The visuals amplify the atmosphere and tension of its PvPvE world. 

None of this means big teams or ambitious franchises are doomed to fail. In fact, some of the most enduring franchises — especially those rooted in tabletop traditions — understand that agency and choice are what make great games. By applying the systems-driven design, they enable players to shape the experience — making the lore feel personal and meaningful to the player, rather than something passively watched.

But many of the biggest Western publishers have come to treat game development like film production at scale: hundreds of staff, years of pipeline work, and little room for gameplay experimentation. What the industry calls ‘development’ is increasingly just large-scale asset production. 

When game development turns into an industrial process, developers’ skills in iteration necessarily get replaced by organizational management. The manager who can run a 300-person team across multiple offices is rarely the one who iterates to make new mind-blowing gameplay mechanics. Their job requirement is to be expert organizers — supported by HR teams focused on process, finance teams focused on budgets, and project managers focused on hitting milestones. These are highly competent professionals. But none of them are focused on finding the fun.

This mistaken identity — where we think of games as a different art form than it is — has led to an industry structure that manages to alienate all its most important constituents.  Gamers are unhappy that their games look better than ever but play worse.  Developers — who have to be highly talented and skilled to even work in the industry — wonder why their days feel like factory work rather than a creative enterprise.  And investors are left wondering why a $200 billion industry can’t deliver consistent returns.

Reexamining the question “What is a game?” isn’t academic at all. It’s how we get back to making games people actually love. If our game development process were more about finding the fun than finding the cinema, we’d have more engaged players — and healthier studios. When players love what they’re playing, they stick around and tell their friends. That’s both good art and good business.