A Revised Definition of Games: An Analysis of Grasshopper Errors, Omissions, and Ambiguities

ABSTRACT

In this essay, I review Suits’ classic description of games and cite three kinds of problems—mischaracterizations, omissions, and ambiguities. I build on previous criticisms by myself and others leveled at his definition. However, in contrast to much of this previous work, I will present what I hope is an improved description. The latter part of the essay is devoted to defending this alternate characterization. I conclude by arguing that my revisionist work paradoxically both supports and undermines the merits of Suits’ anti-Wittgensteinian efforts to identify the necessary and sufficient conditions for games.

KEYWORDS:

• Suits
• game definitions
• nature of games
• sport and play

Acknowledgement

Appreciation is owed to individuals who provided helpful comments during my IAPS presentation on this topic as well as to a pair of blinded reviewers who offered insightful recommendations.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I will be looking primarily at the large middle section of The Grasshopper, namely, Chapters 3 through 13 and will make only brief comments about his larger project concerning the ideal of existence and the role of games in Utopian living. Thus, I will not be commenting on the intelligibility of Utopia or the claim that in Utopia all activity consists of game-playing as so many others have done (See, e.g. Thompson, 2004; Back 2008; Hurka 2014; Yorke 2018). In addition, I will be employing Suits’ own strategy in defining games—namely, describing what it means to ‘play a game’. While one might regard it as odd that Suits chose not to define games per se, I follow his lead simply to facilitate comparisons between his and my own definitions.

2. It is possible to accept a metaphysical analysis as insightful and helpful without also endorsing its overly ambitious methods and regarding the product as entirely accurate or complete. I assume that many contemporary sport philosophers who endorse Suits’ work do so on these more pragmatic and fallibilistic grounds.

3. To my knowledge, this is the final and most complete formulation of games that Suits provided. (He offered a preliminary definition earlier in Chapter 3 [36] one that is consistent with, but less detailed than, the final definition that I cite in this essay.) In addition, to my knowledge, he never recanted any of these elements and, in fact, defended them against several attacks (see, e.g. Suits 2006). Also, from conversations with Professor Javy Frias, a colleague who has conducted research on the archives that contain Suits’ notes and unpublished post-Grasshopper writings, I am also led to believe that Suits never abandoned his basic definition.

4. This omission may well be intended because he devotes four full chapters to games of make believe. He also mentions board games such as chess, sporting activities such as golf, outdoor challenges such as mountain climbing, and battles like the fight between Ivan and Abdul. If Suits believed activities such as roulette satisfied his definitional criteria, it is likely they would have received some mention.

5. I am not suggesting that Caillois classification is entirely valid, but only that it highlights potential game species that Suits ignores. Given the fact that Suits devoted an entire chapter to what he regarded as a specious game analysis (Chapter 13: Amateurs, Professionals, and Games People Play), one would have expected him to formally dismiss the classifications provided by Caillois, arguably a far more capable philosophic thinker than Berne (1964), the author of Games People Play.

6. Hurka (2014) correctly notes in his introduction to The Grasshopper, that the two elements in the book are logically connected. That is, if Suits wants to claim that game playing is the ideal activity for Utopians, he needs to clearly indicate what game playing is. In this process, it is possible that Suits, in fact, described a species of games rather than games per se.

7. It could well be the case that games of high agency, effort, and merit are qualitatively superior to games that are deficient in these features. Again as Hurka (2014) noted, agency-accessible games provide difficulties that can be considered intrinsically good. However, this value judgment has no place in a purportedly objective, dispassionate, anti-Wittgensteinian metaphysical analysis. Moreover, any such effort would efface the important and commonly-encountered normative distinction between good and bad games.

8. Suits adds the counterfactual argument after completing his claims about the equivalency of more restrictive means and more difficult objectives. That is, the climber, in order to encounter the ascent of the mountain as a game, has to effect two rejections—first, the easier mountain, second, any elevators or helicopters should they become available.

9. Suits is well aware that games may need to be adjusted in either one of two directions. But curiously, he suggests that such adjustments apply only to the means established by constitutive rules. ‘It is not uncommon for players of a new and difficult game to … “ease up” on the rules… This means removing some obstacles… On the other hand, players may find some game too easy and may choose to tighten up on the rules …’ (40).

10. Reddiford (1985) identified another problem with the stipulation of ends or objectives in games. While the rules can clearly require that individuals must follow game rules and the limitations those rules describe, rules cannot (helpfully) require players to attempt to score goals or even to win the game. However, it is possible and necessary for constitutive rules to stipulate and describe the ends or goals of games. Once again, it is the manipulation of means and ends that create the desirable problem, even if gamewrights typically adjust game means when problems become too hard or too easy.

11. See Back (2008) for a more extended discussion of logical problems with Suits’ notion of play and its relationship to Utopia. The relational requirements for play as articulate by Suits (1977) cannot be met, it would seem, in Utopia.