What Are Games and Why Do We Play Them?

Last night at Bridge & Tunnel, we asked what seemed like a simple question: what are games? Ninety minutes later, we'd traveled through Wittgenstein's language games, Herman Hesse's abstract mathematical-musical masterpiece, the difference between puzzles and games, whether cats understand play, and why we definitely shouldn't wear our pants on our heads.

The conversation wandered through several interconnected themes—about reality, imagination, survival, social power, and what makes something a game versus a puzzle. Here's what emerged.

Games Might Create New Realities

Seth suggested that games might create a new kind of reality—not just a distraction from the real world, but something that generates its own genuine space of meaning. He pointed to Wittgenstein, who famously used games as an analogy to understand language itself. If something as fundamental as language works like a game, maybe games aren't the trivial things we usually think they are. Maybe they're revealing something essential about how humans make meaning.

He also brought up The Finite and Infinite Game by James Carse, which argues there's only one infinite game: the order of reality itself. Everything else—sports, politics, business—these are finite games played within that larger infinite one. When we use games as analogies for reality and language it shows that games can touch something deep.

The most extreme example came from Seth's favorite book, Magister Ludi (The Glass Bead Game) by Hermann Hesse. In that novel, the game has become so abstracted it exists in its own intellectual space. It's mathematical but not quite math. It composes music but isn't exactly composition. The game becomes a way of synthesizing all knowledge into a single elegant system. It's the ultimate example of a game creating its own reality.

Seth tried to pull threads together: games seem to exist at the intersection of rules, imagination, and play. Those three elements create a space where something genuinely new can happen. Where the aesthetic experience in this space allows us to explore a new or different pseudo-reality (an aesthetic substitute, as Don suggested) and engaging in this substitute makes it possible to actually become other or explore different ways of being that open new possibilities in us and our world.

Why We Play: Pleasure, Survival, or Something Else?

Dave pushed us toward foundations: forget what games are for a moment—why do we play at all? What is play itself? His first instinct: play is where the end goal is pleasure. We do it because it feels good.

That opened the floodgates.

Don suggested that games might be codified training for competition—a way to practice the skills we need for survival without the actual stakes. He noted that play is common among animals that learn, which hints that there's something adaptive about it. But there also seemed to be more to it than pure utility. There's an imaginative element that felt important.

Bob disagreed. Strongly. As Bob does and we love him for it. He insisted that play isn't about imagination or joy—it's pure survival technique. The whole idea that we "build worlds with imagination" through play? Rubbish. It's all in service of staying alive. Imagination exists because it helps us survive, and play is the mechanism that trains it.

Dale brought in an uncomfortable angle: what happens when you remove fun from a game? Say you're a skilled poker player who falls on hard times and starts gambling to pay rent. You're still playing the same game with the same rules, but now it's all strategy and stress. No pleasure. No joy. But it's definitely still a game. So maybe fun isn't essential to what makes something a game? Maybe it’s not even essential to play?

Don suggested: maybe games are aesthetic substitutes for life. They let us inhabit different ways of being, and practice different modes of existence without real-world consequences. He wasn't sure how cats fit into this framework, but there was something about games allowing us to experiment with different aesthetics of living.

Dale kept pushing on the question of what play even is. Maybe games and movies and other entertainments are group activities we use to "occupy brain time" together.

Imagination as the Through-Line

Dave kept circling back: whatever else games are, imagination seems absolutely central.

I found myself feeling and thinking, like Dave, that imagination is really important. And I thought it might be the through-line for everything we were talking about. Rules require imagination—you have to envision the constructed reality they create. Aesthetic substitution requires imagination. Even survival requires imagination—there is no possibility of any circumstance without imagination as a primary force. I thought it might be as deep as being the grounding or possibility of consciousness. Maybe games are engaging artifacts of imagination. Imagination made concrete and playable. We got a little distracted with ideas of time and cause and effect, since I was saying imagination is primary and the words implied an ordering or temporal circumstance.

Dale suggested imagination might be thinking about something that doesn't exist but could under different circumstances. And games might be the use of imagination to predict outcomes. We use imagination to envision possible futures, then make moves based on those visions.

Seth liked this proposal, but was wary of the word predict. He thought it too limiting. Predicting is one thing we do when we strategize or play games, but it's not the only thing we do.

Rules, Belonging, and Social Hierarchies

Jane asked something fascinating: where do rules come from, and why are we so willing to accept them? We want to play so much that we'll submit to arbitrary restrictions just to participate. She suggested belonging might be the answer—we accept rules because they let us be part of something. But there's also humiliation involved. Games constantly remind you of your place in the social order.

Janine wholeheartedly agreed. She told us how much games sucked when she was young—especially team-picking games where you'd end up last and know everyone could see exactly where you ranked. Games are social, sure, and this means they often are cruel mechanisms for establishing or reinforcing hierarchies.

Janine also reminded us that games have an insidious side. Politics is a game. Power is a game. Games can involve manipulation, psychological warfare, the deliberate creation of winners and losers. That took us on a quick visit to anarchy land, but we pulled back from that pretty quickly.

This wouldn't be an honest reporting of the usefulness of rules, if I didn't include Don's observation that there's a reason we don't wear our pants on our heads.

And Seth's response: "Because you got in trouble for that last week."

Games vs. Puzzles (and Where Does Solitaire Fit?)

Bob brought up game theory and the distinction between games and puzzles, something he spends a lot of time thinking about and teaching. He suggested puzzles have solutions—someone knows the solution, and there are usually multiple paths and millions of destinations that all solve the puzzle, even though one solution is typically the focus. Games, on the other hand, are fundamentally about interaction. That's the core difference.

That led to a big examination of solitaire. Is it a puzzle or a game? No other players. Definite solutions. But there's chance involved, and strategy matters. Bob leaned toward puzzle. Don insisted it was still a game—interaction doesn't have to be with another person; you can interact with a system.

Open Questions

Dale wondered about the evolution of games—some have been around for thousands of years. Do games change through history? Are there patterns? Do cultures develop different kinds of games in predictable ways? These were fascinating questions we wished we knew something about, but nobody at the table was this deeply versed in game history. I definitely wanted to pick up my phone and start researching, but that felt like too deep of a dive to take and still get to participate in the conversation. The Mesoamerican game now played as Ulama came to mind for me and I was thinking about how it related to Seth's references to medieval games that had deep social integration and honor requirements. It seemed like there might be some patterns to be gleaned from them.

Jane admitted she actually doesn't like games at all. She finds them tedious—even if there are only 10 rules to remember. The idea of spending three hours playing Hearts at a dinner party fills her with dread. Which brings up a question we didn't pursue: if games are as fundamental as we were suggesting, what does it mean to actively dislike them?

What We Think We Know

So what are games? We didn't settle on one definition. But we figure they involve rules, imagination and play. They might create spaces where new kinds of reality emerge. They train us for competition and connect us socially and let us practice being different versions of ourselves. They can be joyful or stressful or both. Sometimes, they're tied up with survival and power and belonging and humiliation. They're fundamentally human, and maybe fundamentally related to our consciousness—artifacts of our ability to imagine worlds that don't exist and then inhabit them together.

Come play with us next Wednesday. We'll be wondering about what comfort is and why we seek it—and probably not wearing our pants on our heads.