The game, the player, the world: looking for a heart of gameness

Abstract

This paper attempts a definition of games. I describe the classic game model, a list of six features that are nec- essary and sufficient for something to be a game. The def- inition shows games to be transmedial: There is no sin- gle game medium, but rather a number of game media, each with their own strengths. The computer is simply the lat- est game medium to emerge. While computer games1 are therefore part of the broader area of games, they have in many cases evolved beyond the classic game model.