Agreed it’s helpful to view things like war and college admissions as games - but only by analogy, insofar as they share structure (goals, constraints, outcomes). But it’s helpful to retain a word for that structure that also embeds voluntariness and entertainment (ie, games). I suspect that most people who call war a game enjoy that it borrows the connotations of whimsy and “meaninglessness,” not just the structure and strategical elements. But I wouldn’t be opposed to a vocabulary of something like “gameas” and “gamebs” to distinguish them.
It's not obvious to me that tag and checkers are game games while college admissions is a game by analogy. "The dating game" as a way to view people's attempts to find a partner seems not to be an analogy but an actual, true statement of fact: dating is not *like* a game; it *is* a game.
Part of this distinction comes from the fact that I believe strongly in associative definitions. Something is a game if it has passes some minimum threshold of various traits while also failing to have some threshold of restrictive traits. (I have found this approach to definitions is A) more accurate, and B) more frustrating when attempting to define something. I believe it's no coincidence that this approach mirrors how neurons fire in the brain when processing words.)
TLDR: I'm game (pun!) for separating them out. I'd be more interested in calling all of these games, and adding modifiers for subtype à la "play games" and "real games" (but "real games" would be super challenging as the whole point is that they're real as in real life, not real as in real games, because when someone thinks of a "real game" they probably think of, eg, chess :P
Agreed it’s helpful to view things like war and college admissions as games - but only by analogy, insofar as they share structure (goals, constraints, outcomes). But it’s helpful to retain a word for that structure that also embeds voluntariness and entertainment (ie, games). I suspect that most people who call war a game enjoy that it borrows the connotations of whimsy and “meaninglessness,” not just the structure and strategical elements. But I wouldn’t be opposed to a vocabulary of something like “gameas” and “gamebs” to distinguish them.
It's not obvious to me that tag and checkers are game games while college admissions is a game by analogy. "The dating game" as a way to view people's attempts to find a partner seems not to be an analogy but an actual, true statement of fact: dating is not *like* a game; it *is* a game.
Part of this distinction comes from the fact that I believe strongly in associative definitions. Something is a game if it has passes some minimum threshold of various traits while also failing to have some threshold of restrictive traits. (I have found this approach to definitions is A) more accurate, and B) more frustrating when attempting to define something. I believe it's no coincidence that this approach mirrors how neurons fire in the brain when processing words.)
TLDR: I'm game (pun!) for separating them out. I'd be more interested in calling all of these games, and adding modifiers for subtype à la "play games" and "real games" (but "real games" would be super challenging as the whole point is that they're real as in real life, not real as in real games, because when someone thinks of a "real game" they probably think of, eg, chess :P