Chris Crawford on Game Design

Chapter 1. Definitions, Definitions

The world of game design has been swamped in a madcap array of terminology. We've got videogames, computer games, and just plain old games. We've got sims, shooters, and RPGs. Even the basic terminology is difficult to make sense of. My dictionary uses 6.5 column inches to define game and 12 column inches to define play. Meanwhile, it takes only 3 column inches to define such a common verb as eat and only 1 column inch to define food. Our concepts of games and play are spread out all over the intellectual world; they're almost as blandly overgeneralized as the all-purpose, one-size-fits-all verbs get and go (14 column inches each). With this anarchic mob of terms jabbering at us, it's easy for confusion to ...