# What games are

Every game is a type of [story](stories.md) with a few components:

1. A setup where everyone has a limited amount of at least some [resources](power-types.md) and must honor some [rules](rules.md).
2. Everyone has a definite purpose, or "win conditions" that provide a reward or prevent a risk, though they may not always be the same. Those [purposes](purpose.md) are usually against other players' purposes, directly or indirectly.
3. Each person has to make decisions that [anticipate what could happen](imagination.md) and consider others' decisions [in light of theirs](image.md).
4. At the end of the game, each person either wins or loses immediately, without much waiting to find out.

Games start from childhood. Typically, they're simplified games that recreate [real life](reality.md). Most people [outgrow](maturity.md) this, but some will convert it into careers in [performance arts](creations.md).

Games always have [certain](understanding-certainty.md) outcomes and, usually, [math](math.md). The math is necessary because it maintains an extremely high sense of order.

Beyond sports, board games, and video games, *most* life is a game, with a few distinctions:

- Purposes keep moving around as people act.
- The only reliable [math](math.md) to keep score is through arbitrary things like money or time.
- Because of many additional complexities, it's harder to discern others' motivations and thoughts than in a game.
- The "end" of the game isn't clear, since it may be [during old age](maturity.md), attaining "[the good life](goodlife.md)" through [happiness](mind-feelings-happiness.md) or [success](success-1_why.md), or [whatever comes after death](religion.md).

To recreate [reality](reality.md) while not precisely reproducing the most unpleasant parts of it, games adapt reality along a few dimensions:

- Luck: Reality has many elements that are completely random, but games tend to distill the luck down to specific [predictable](imagination.md) actions like a die roll or card draw. Casino games like roulette and craps do this the least.
- Challenge: Reality requires hundreds of hours of tedious practice, but games make simpler and easier challenges. Skill games like sports and strategy games do this the least.
- Immersion: Reality requires prolonged exposure and research, but games limit the involvement to understanding the rules and lore of the game's [backstory](stories.md). Role-playing games and simulators do this the least.

Because of [human nature](humanity.md), every single game will have cheaters, including in life. People find [creative](mind-creativity.md) ways to break the [rules](rules.md) to win, usually by arbitrarily changing them to fit their desire.

While the cheaters may enjoy it, everyone else will stop having any more [fun](fun.md) with the game because it's an abuse of [power](power.md) and doesn't feel very [fair](morality-justice.md). However, at that point it's not wrong at all to cheat back, and some games (e.g., [cybersecurity](safety-security.md)) become meta-games from everyone trying to win the "game-over-a-game".

Note, however, that some people who are far more [creative](mind-creativity.md) will find ways to stay *inside* the [rules](rules.md) while taking advantage of facts that require experience or perceptiveness to exploit. They can [distort appearances](image-distortion.md), imply they'll [act](decisions.md) or [think](logic.md) a certain way, or force their opponent to misuse their [power](power.md).

With [technology](technology.md), we can [recreate](creations.md) the experience of most things, which means we can give a *very* similar experience and [feeling](mind-feelings.md) of [reality](reality.md):

- The experience of running errands or doing [tasks](habits.md).
- Trying to accomplish multiple smaller goals at once.
- [Achieving and overcoming](success-1_why.md) challenges, especially [unlikely](math.md) ones.
- The proxy character [learning](understanding.md) from prior experiences (often simulated with "experience points" in [electronic games](computers-software-gamedev.md)).

Like [humor](humor.md), games help us to cope. It's a small system designed to [symbolize](symbols.md) the greater reality we're in. It creates a type of [closure](stories.md) in the unfamiliar [reality](reality.md) that surrounds us. However, while humor is a deconstruction of [disorder](unknown.md), games are an extreme form of order.