dear internet. Here is my likely half baked definition for what a game is.
It is mostly when posting things like this to the internet that I really regret not reading a lot of books.

I wrote this on november 3rd 2012 and sent it to a few friends after engaging in way too many discussions for far too long about this topic.

I think it's a bad topic, and for some reason its blowing up on the internet right now so I thought I'd get it out.

My least favorite argument about games is that 'games must have an end-goal'. I dislike this argument because it leads to bad conversations. For example: Based on this argument, Minecraft wasn't a game for most of it's life until 1.0 added the dragon and the ending. But people who play Minecraft now play it in about the same way that people played Minecraft before it had an ending. So who cares?

Academics sometimes use cutthroat arguments to make broader strokes about game-space as a whole, and thats totally fine, but they're not referring to specific games in this context with the effort of being exclusive or inclusive. And if they're using these definitions as a pairing knife on a case-by-case basis, I think they're using their definitions incorrectly, or at least they're using them to generate fruitless and isolating discussion. Probably the type of discussion that makes people feel excluded.

Anyway, so here is my definition that I've crafted specifically to be useful for conversations, and unusable as a weapon of exclusion:

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A game is from the players point of view.

A player is playing a game when they think critically about the decisions they are making with regard to an interactive system they are engaging with.

We can also colloquially use the term 'game' to describe a system typically engaged with by players in a fashion like the one stated above.

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I think this is a good change from the typical attempts to define the word 'game' from the point of view of the object because it is a finer tool to perform a dissection. It eliminates arguments where people can say 'this is not a game because it doesn't have x' and forces them to change their argument to 'this isn't a game because I didn't have critical thought about my interactions, i knew mine were meaningless, it was not a game to me.' This is important because it allows for the counter argument of 'I was unaware that my actions were meaningless, so unlike you're experience of dull interaction, I was actually gaming'. Or, 'I knew my actions were meaningless, but the meaningless of my actions was the purpose of the game, and the game component took place for me on a meta level, in that my actions were referencing others in other games in which I did have a choice, and that I was choosing to be involved in this game at all'.

Here is a simple and dumb example: candyland.

If I were to play candyland I would most likely not be playing a game, I would just be flipping cards over. But if a young child still undergoing cognitive development plays candyland, they may in fact be playing a game, since they're unaware of their lack of impact on the system. I think this is why candyland is successful, to just call it not a game and be done with it is not a worthwhile or properly investigated discussion.

Jigsaw puzzles are another (probably bad) example. The first time you play a jigsaw puzzle you are playing a game, because you're not aware the best way to solve it. You're critically engaging with the system as you attempt to locate a good strategy for solving the puzzle. Eventually you come upon the strategy of doing the edges first. From here on out with every puzzle into the future, you're likely not worrying about your strategy and just matching colors with colors, no longer critically thinking about your engagement with the system. So the beginning of your first Jigsaw puzzle is a game, and the later it's less likely that you'll be playing a game when you engage with them.

My friend Noah argued that this definition lacks teeth and could refer to anything, but I think thats not the case at all. An example here is Jane McGonigal's Thank You Game. You could strongly argue that McGonigal did not make a game because when players are enacting an activity and then pushing a button they are not critically thinking about their interactions with that system. They're merely interacting. Those players aren't playing a game. The argument leaves room for someone to propose how those players are critically thinking about their interaction, and if that is the case, this is exactly the sort of interesting conversation that should be had about the work, and not a vague 'it's a game! it's not a game because theres no ending!' etc.

essentially the definition of a game is rooted in the player thinking and acting component and not the product component.

it's not important that the thinking and acting occur simultaneously. in the 100m dash for example, a player may run, and then after the run think critically about their running and training regimens in regard to their success within the race.

anyway, this was a brain dump. i'm probably wildly wrong.
we can talk about it, but probably not too much. And I'm not interested in excluding people's work, so please don't regress in your suggestions