Game

All through human history, people have played games. They've done so mostly to entertain themselves and others. Games are a form of self-expression, and also a means of training young people, and of reminding adults of the preferred values of the society in which they live.

Games can involve one person acting alone, but more often involve competition among two or more persons with differing goals. Philosopher David Kelley[?], in his popular introductory reasoning text The Art of Reasoning[?], defines the concept "game" as "a form of recreation constituted by a set of rules that specify an object to be attained and the permissible means of attaining it."

This covers most cases well, but does not quite fit with things like war games and sports that are often done not for entertainment but to build skills for later use. In Philosophical Investigations, philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein argued that the concept "game" could not be defined. Stephen Linhart[?] said, "People say you have to choose between games and real life. I think this claim that there's a dichotomy is very dangerous."

Many technical fields are often applied to the study of games, including probability, statistics, economics, and game theory.

Types of Games

• Board games
• Card games
• Casino games
• Computer and Video games
• Counting-out games
• Drinking games
• Game shows
• Games of physical skill
• Group-dynamic games
• Guessing games
• Letter games
• Mathematical games
• Party games
• Pencil and paper games
• Play by mail games
• Puzzles
• Role-playing games
• Spoken games[?]
• Sports
• Table-top games
• Tile-based games
• Unclassified games
• Word games
• Computer games
• Dojin games

See also: List of game topics, Toy

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Game is also the term for animals which are hunted for food and sometimes as sport. Animals that fall into this category include deer, elk and pheasants. African animals hunted for their pelts or ivory are known as big game[?].