Hi guys,

I would just like to know what your interpretation of games are; what makes a game a game? I would like to refrain from providing my own interpretation since it might influence what you will write . Try not to just post something you got from the dictionary, wikipedia or google lol. Looking forward to your definitions, God bless

Not a complete definition, but I believe a game must:
- Be fun. Otherwise it's work or something else other than a game.
- Involve the player making decisions (with decisions defined loosely enough to include dexterity-based actions like shooting and jumping.)
- Have a victory or loss condition (either will do; if there is a loss condition, victory can mean continuing to avoid losing.)

In my opinion there are two types of games. Entertainment. And Art Games.
All Games are art but, 'art games' are more...artistic and creative. I love art games because the stories are life changing (over exaggeration) and the games can be completed in less than 10 minutes. And I also love the art in most art games.
Entertaining games usually don't have a good story because the theme is too common or the player can't relate to it. i.e. Call of Duty. Theme: Kill People.
But not all entertaining games are bad games or need a story because I love most puzzle games.

"A game is a series of interesting choices."

Assuming we are not just talking about videogames, any definition of "game" is going to have to encompass a broad spectrum of things from jacks and tiddly-winks to latest triple-A console games. So the definiton will necessarily be so general that it is almost contentless.

Generally, games are sets of physical artifacts and/or abstract cultural artifacts (such as lists of rules) that human beings find enjoyable to interact with in socially-defined ways. I actually don't think this is a circular definition in that I think human beings have probably evolved a drive/instinct that makes interacting with physical artifacts in complicated ways enjoyable as a reward system for tool use, so what we find enoyable to interact with is a real empirical question that could be answered through well-designed experiments. I mean, ask yourself, for example, why is something like Tetris fun?

My definition doesn't distinguish between games and toys, however.

A game is a fun way to test one's skill at something.

I wouldn't say that a game needs to have a victory/loss condition, because there are many persistant games out there where there is no death and no limit to success.
It does not need to involve decision making (card game: war) (in this case it tests one's skill at luck, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but I'm using skill loosely here)

A game could just be two people competing to make good art. Totally subjective, no winner, no loser.

Also doesn't need to involve other people (card game: solitaire)

A game is a fun way to test one's skill at something.

But then, a game isn't necessarily fun. My brother had tried to get me to join a couple of games, but I did not find them fun. They are games, nonetheless.

So a game is just a way to test an aspect of someone?

This would include school tests. I guess we could say school tests are games that are just not fun. But that's a super-broad definition of game... anything would be a game then.

It depends on the context, but I usually tend to use the game theoretic definition: A game consists of a world where actors can interact with according to some rules in order to active some kind of payoff or outcome.

I also think Chris Crawfords makse some useful distinctions between art vs entertainment, games vs toys, conflicts vs puzzles, and conflict vs competitions.

More interesting definitions can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game

Interactivity. SImply that.

How can a players interact and what experience does the designer want the player to have.

A game is like a movie, but with you can decide what the movie is going to be