How to Define Games and Why We Need to

Abstract

This article provides guidelines on how to make useful game definitions and discusses when that is a worthwhile undertaking. It examines a recent article attempting to define videogames (Bergonse in Comput Games J 6(4):239–255, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40869-017-0045-4), and uses it as an example to discuss game definitions in general. It concludes with reasons why making a final definition of games is not possible and why we need to continue to define games.