What is a Game?

One of the many important aspects of game design is analyzing the definition of what a game is. Over the past 30 years people created various definitions that are all true in their own way. The most intriguing definition was created by Tracy Fullerton, author of the book Game Design Workshop, "'a closed, formal system that engages players in a structured conflict and resolves its uncertainty in an unequal outcome' is not a good definition of game but also a list of elements that designers can modify" (Gibson 10). What makes this definition interesting is the focus on game designers rather than focusing on the players. This gives game designers a better understanding of how to create or modify games by listing the elements of a game. It is important to learn the different definitions to the word game because it gives game designers the tools to refine their game to fit specific needs. Creating a definition for the word game that is all-encompassing is very difficult due to different people having different meaning to the word game (Gibson 16). Multiple specific definitions to the word game exist because of the difficulties of creating a broad definition. These definitions also are used to help game designers understand what people will expect from their games.

Evaluating my game using Fullerton's definition of a game

I used Fullerton's definition of a game to help improve the game a game I made by applying the different elements of the definition to the game. Is there a specific definition you use to define games?

Gibson, Jeremy. Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development: From
     Concept to Playable Game-with Unity® and C#. Upper Saddle River:
     Addison-Wesley, 2015. Print.