Game-players and game-playing: a response to kreider

Abstract

This article is an examination of the recent contribution in this journal by Kreider. In that publication he argued against formalist and non-formalist positions concerning our understanding of game-player and game-playing, focusing his discussion around game rules and their relationship to the two key concepts. This led him to produce alternative conceptions of game-player and game-playing, and it is these conceptions tied closely to the idea of commitment, and Kreider’s arguments surrounding them, which are the subject of my article. Following an introduction, I summarize and evaluate Kreider's dissatisfaction with earlier accounts. Then I present and examine key aspects of his proposals for a different understanding of game-players and game-playing. While I remain uncertain about some of his claims, overall my conclusions are characterized more by disagreement with him than by a sense that he has overcome problems previously expressed theories contain.

Keywords:

• game-player
• game-playing
• commitment
• rules
• Suits

Acknowledgements

I gratefully acknowledge suggestions from John Russell and anonymously made constructive review comments which have helped to improve this final version of my article.

Notes

1. See, for example, D’Agostino 1995; Bäck 2008; Delattre 1976; Fraleigh 2003; Kretchmar 2001; Lehman 1979; Morgan 1995; Pearson 1995; and Suits 1995, 1978.

2. See below [7], Laws of the Game, 2011–2012, law 7 – duration of the match, @ http://ar.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/generic/81/42/36/lawsofthegame_2011_12e.pdf]

3. Kreider appears aware of this issue when he writes, ‘‘I may agree to play in a weekly basketball game, but if do not [sic] show up, opting instead to play golf with other friends, my golfing activity surely does not count as part of the basketball game’ [6; 63]. He does not escape the weakness in his own account, however.

4. I have in mind traditional, physical performance activities which are uncontestably sporting games. I appreciate that card games can include performatives, such as in contract bridge.

5. These other ways are those mentioned by Kreider and which I quote from his page 63 near the start of my previous paragraph. Clearly, some ways of demonstrating commitment, such as playing regularly and enthusiastically, are precisely to be playing. But I do not refer to these ways here: only to those Kreider mentions.

6. And how could I be sure whether anyone had? Given that game-playing performatives do not require verbal assurances how can I know who has committed, meaning ‘roughly that the individual in question has contracted with the others in the game to act according to the rules’ [Kreider 2011, 61]?

7. For an example of complexity, at least with respect to trying to remember to what one committed, see immediately below, both here and in text.

8. See [below, 12] Rules of Stoolball, rule 12.1, available at http://www.stoolball.org.uk/rules/rules-of-stoolball/ and accessed May 18, 2012.

9. And this is how I understand it here, but two notes are needed. First, Kreider’s use of ‘proper’ might simply be a reference to the sort of commitment he attaches to game-players at the start of the quotation given in my text. He might just as well have said ‘that’ commitment. But if this is what he means then the claims re-state his position and do not provide defenses against the criticisms I have made. Second, if by contrast the use of ‘proper’ is to mark a distinction in strength or focus compared with unqualified commitment then this needs examination to consider whether it can overcome the gap I discern between committing and action resulting. That is what I explore above.