Easy games are still games for Suits

ABSTRACT

Bernard Suits is commonly thought to have defined games as challenges. This paper argues that Suits could not have done so without ruining his larger philosophical project. It then argues that he did not do so. Suits defined game playing in quantitative terms (i.e. being more or less efficient) not qualitative ones (e.g. difficulty, struggle). The paper concludes by exploring the consequences of this shift in perspective.

KEYWORDS:

• Bernard Suits
• games
• challenge
• difficulty
• efficiency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This is not Juul’s only problem with applying Suitsian theory to video games, but it is the one that is relevant here.

2. Upton, apparently, was unaware of chapters 9 through 12 of The Grasshopper (Suits 2014), which Suits devoted to dealing with make-believe specifically, and role-playing games more generally.

3. Nguyen (2020) won the American Philosophical Association’s Book Prize for 2021 (see American Philosophical Association n.d.).

4. ‘Beyond formal and historical considerations, there are countless personal or idiosyncratic reasons that particular players might find a game difficult’ (Jagoda 2018, 207). See Strojny, et al. (2023, 7) on ‘subjective difficulty’. See also Dziedzic and Włodarczyk (2018, 710–11) and Paraschos and Koulouriotis (2023, 1). Cf. also Suits (2014, 40) and Boutros (2008).

5. In this paragraph, I imitate a line of argument by Suits himself from chapter 13 of The Grasshopper (Suits 2014, 155).

6. The original version of Suits’s definition says that the rules of a game limit the means available to players. The final version of his definition says that those rules limit players to means that are less efficient than would otherwise be available.

7. In fact, Suits worked ‘Is Life a Game We Are Playing?’ into Return of the Grasshopper as chapter 5.

8. See, e.g. Suits (1981; 1989, 2004, 2006).

9. There is not enough room to quote these passages in full, but here are the relevant terms and their locations (all from Suits 2014) – Within chapter 3: a) p. 32: ‘dull’ and ‘easy’; b) p. 33: ‘harder’ vs. ‘more efficient’; c) p. 39: ‘effective’ d) p. 39: ‘useful’; e) p. 40: ‘simplest’, ‘easiest’, ‘most direct’, and ‘most efficient’ vs. ‘more complex’, ‘more difficult’, and ‘more indirect’. Outside chapter 3 there are also relevant passages: f) p. 64: ‘effective’; g) p. 90: ‘more difficult’; h) p. 91: ‘easier’ vs. ‘more difficult’; i) p. 91: ‘more efficient’ vs. ‘less efficient’ and ‘difficult’; j) p. 191: ‘challenge’, ‘difficult’.

10. He used to be on the island with Jones, but they were playing a game called ‘Homicide’ and Smith ‘won’ (Suits 2023, 58–59).