Greg Costikyan's theory as to the definiton of a 'game'

Greg Costikyan Wrote a famous article in 1994 about defining a game as a whole and since then the article has been been revisited and has been changed dramatically since, although the main concepts and ideas still remain. After reading this article I have been asked to explain my thoughts as to how much I support the quote from Costikyan that:

'A game is an interactivestructure of endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle towards goals'
                                                                             Greg Costikyan (2004:24)

So Buckle up, I will TRY to keep this brief, I have 5 pages of notes, I cant promise anything.

Well first of all I totally agree with Costikyan , the fact that the 'struggle' incorperated into the structure of the game in fact give the game its excitement and playability and also one major factor that game designers specifically want is re-playability. One term or metaphor Costikyan used in this article is 'plastic games,' games which can mold certain characteristics of play in order to become a struggle in many degrees. A puzzle is a game which mostly is just a challenge, this challenge being completed can either rely heavily on your mathematics skills, knowledge skills or even borderline to the games definition, your motor skills. Puzzles are considered to be static as they have a logic structure with a set outcome which depends on you completing the puzzle with the set rules, however a game is an adaptive structure which can change depending on the player interactions. This is now the showings of a struggle and that a costikyan explains that games have puzzles incorporated into them, they are often just harder to see when you're subconsciously affixed to the game. Here's a game example which has a typical puzzle element inside it:
A wave of zombies are slowly coming after you (I know, so cliche) and you have a certain amount time to wipe them out before they eat you for breakfast. Now seeing as they would be coming from all directions gives you the puzzle element. If I move my position to here and then time my grenade a few seconds after i could wipe out several of them in one go. This is the puzzle element of the game, you the player have to consciously pick the right moment out of however many seconds you have to then earn a collateral kill ending the round quicker. These small calculations occur through many, many games and I would arguably support this instance that most 'regular' games have many puzzle elements to them.

Interactive and structure tie all of the main elements of a game down into the finally package. The way a board game is structured can be fixed due to the nature of a board being square or how many spaces it has, BUT being a player of the board game, they can collectively or if you're a cheat and do this solo, not take all rules into account or any at all. This is usually the case that the players of a board game can structure their own struggles to create a more pleasurable experience, lets for example take Monopoly by Parker Brothers. I know many people who in fact take the chance and community chest cards that cause you to pay the bank for every single property with a structure on them to the bank. It creates mass struggle between players and personally to me I find it a game maker/breaker card. The harsh reality that all that empire you have worked for has to be destroyed and paid for, but hey that's life and it shows that the structure and the interaction with the game instructions can create a a variable degree of struggle.

This interaction of structure can be be very limited in digital games and the fact that game structure is pretty much fixed in a digital game. The most simple structure in a game is the factor of the choice of difficulty level in games. They can be chosen and set and can limit the amount of struggle that can be experienced for the player or players. Interaction between the player sometimes having a choice between the amount of struggle they experience can have it positive effect on notorious games. A game called DOOM for example it known for its extremities when it comes to level difficulties, it quite frankly 'sorts the men from the boys' and serious gamers see this as a huge boost to the urge to want to play and replay a game, however the satisfying feeling when you finish the game on the hardest difficulty with a super fast time can drive the player to want to replay and challenge friends. This struggle is created by the drive of us being human being to be successful and compete with each other. Which brings me onto goals and the fact that goals create struggle, and without goals, a game gets boring, pretty quickly.

Goals I feel are needed in every game in order to captivate a player and to extend into the nature of a human being. The fact human beings are competitive and enjoy a challenge is a factor that game designers have picked up a lot recently. With the introduction of multiplayer games and the way goals can be achieved together as well makes this day and age finally catch up to the board game multiplayer experience. This being said this instance of challenge and struggle is a factor that keeps people playing, a game that Costikyan mentions quite often is the game Simcity, although it does not come with any goals whatsoever or any challenges and the fact that it has become successful is due to the fact that humans can become creative or destructive and its ability to 'survive' the games library of the world is down to the creativity and imagination of human beings.

This leads me on to explaining that these challenges and goals give the game purpose, and most importantly the player to desire to play the games. These challenges, struggles and goals are endogenous as they are designed by humans for humans. People can do as much research as they like as to what us as casual or serious gamers enjoy doing, and that's being challenged, some may like being defeated time and time again just to be rewarded with the credits screen, whereas some player just want to be become immersed during their tea break in order to forget about their day and problems. This is why I feel that Costikyans definition of a game precisely hits the nail on the head.

Tom Sharman

'A game is an interactivestructure of endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle towards goals'
                                                                                   Greg Costikyan (2004:24) 

If anyone wants to view these treasures of articles, both variations are below.

Link to original the 1994 article

Link to revisited version of the article (2002)