Players
Games are played by actors in their capacity of players. Actors are individual human beings. A player can be defined as an actor (or a group of actors) who is accepted (voluntarily or involuntarily) by other players as such, and who actually plays the game. Players have game-relevant attributes and roles. Player attributes are the traits of players that are relevant for the game. These include the amount of game resources (e.g., objects, money, land, publications) and the amount or type of social, physical, psychological, corporal resources or attributes (e.g., gender, intelligence, strength, number of friends, stigmatic appearance). For example, in Monopoly, it is only important how much game money a person has at a certain point in the game, but it is not important whether a person is male or female; on the Titanic, on the other hand, both money and gender were important factors in survival. Player attributes can also be negative, i.e., rules may specify what attributes certain players are not allowed to have. A player role is a bundle of rights and obligations concerning the actions and behavior of the respective player. Thus, in cops-and-robbers, some players are cops and others are robbers. In football, one player per team is the goalkeeper, while all the others are field players.
Resources
The term resources is used to capture all the (both legitimate and illegitimate) means that players may use to achieve the (intermediate or final) goals of the game. Resources are also sometimes called different forms of “capital”. Resources do not denote a separate area of the game, but encompass all the game elements described in this article insofar as they help players achieve the goal of the game. Thus, player attributes, rules, representations, context, and even other game goals themselves, may all become, in one situation or another, a resource in a given game. A good tactic that can help a person find resources in a game is when she asks herself what she needs to be successful as a player—a list of resources will then come to mind. Resources come in a large variety of forms, and different typologies have been proposed (Bourdieu, 1983; Coleman, 1990; Esser, 2000b; Giddens, 1984). From a social-game perspective, resources comprise objects, cultural knowledge, social capital, mental and physical attributes, positional attributes, but also game and context attributes that a player may use to achieve the goal of the game. In general, forms of resources or “capital” differ strongly according to the game in question. Being tall (an individual corporal attribute) helps with basketball, but not with chess. A profound knowledge of Einstein’s field equations (an individual cultural attribute) may be an important resource when doing a physics exam, but will (probably) not help much when chatting someone up in a bar.
Actions
An action may be defined as a socially constructed model of a short duration (or “strip”) of behavior that is distinguished from other behavior (and thus “counted as” an action) on the part of one or several actors. The distinguishing or “counting as” may happen before, during, or after the strip of behavior. Examples of actions would be “score a goal”, “give a statement in a presidential debate”, “ignore somebody”, and “chop wood” (the famous Weberian example) (Weber, 1978 (1920)). These models of behavior can be used by actors to plan, conduct, and monitor their own behavior, as well as to interpret the behavior of other actors. We would be unable to conduct our lives if we could not interpret, plan, conduct, and monitor our stream of behavior in terms of these socially constructed models of action. A game action is a model of a strip of behavior by a player that is accepted by other players as being part of a social game. In game actions, players orient their behavior towards the other game elements, i.e., they try to achieve the game goals with game resources and objects, thereby keeping in mind the rules and representations of the game. Game actions are often called “moves”. If I “score a goal in football”, or “give a statement in a presidential debate”, then this is counted as a game action. If I voluntarily “ignore somebody”, acting as if that person were not present, and if others perceive this behavior as such, then this action becomes a game action.
Goals
Games have at least one, but often several, goal(s). The goals of a game can be defined as the typical states, events, or things that players aim for, which is the reason that they enter a playing relationship with other players. The goal is what the game “is about”, what is “at stake” (Bourdieu, 1984; 1968b). In tennis, for example, the game is about “winning the match”; in a US presidential race, it is about “becoming president”; in science, it is about “discovering new knowledge”; in a chat with a neighbor, it is about having a short and friendly exchange that is not too profound. There is a large array of types of goals, and I can only mention some of the most important distinctions. Goals can be final or intermediate. In tennis, a player has to win sets to win the match; in a US presidential race, a candidate has to win the primaries to win the presidency. Goals can be competitive, non-competitive, or a mixture of the two. Competitive goals demand that players try to be superior to the other players in achieving the goals; non-competitive goals can and should be achieved without its being intended or even possible to compare the players. Goals in games may apply to individuals or groups (individual vs. team sports); in some games, all the players have the same goals, while, in other games, different types of players have different goals. As can be seen clearly in presidential races, even people or groups that detest each other may share the same game goal. Goals should be distinguished from players’ motives to play the game. Social games have the power of channeling players’ goal-seeking behavior into a similar direction, but motives to play the game may vary widely. On a first level, there is variation in whether the primary player motivation is to reach the game goal. Most players will play the game to reach the game goal (e.g., tell the funniest joke, rise in the league). But sometimes players may have other motives to play the game (e.g., take part in the church youth group to meet attractive other participants). On a second level, even when players are motivated primarily by the game goal, their motive as to why they want to win may vary widely (e.g., become president to help the country, to fulfill personal psychological needs of grandeur, for personal financial reasons, etc.). The playing of a social game very often involves a mix of motives. As has often been noted, players may also internalize the game-goals and fuse them with their innermost motives. Scientists may believe that finding something new is the most important thing in their life; Musicians may think that they could not live without music.
Rules
Social games have rules. These can be defined as instructions that are applied intersubjectively and under certain circumstances to (a) perceive/count a certain phenomenon in certain ways (constitutive rule), or (b) act in certain ways (regulative rule) (Searle, 1995). Thus, a rule may stipulate that the person who was fastest be seen as “the winner” (rule telling us to perceive/count as), or it may tell us that once one player begins counting to 40, the others have to run away and hide (rule telling us to act). The rules in a game derive their existence and validity from being shared. A rule is valid if players share the belief that it is valid. In turn, this belief is created by the observation that most of the other players in their actions obey the rules, and that transgressions are either sanctioned or otherwise “repaired”. As Garfinkel (1967, 2006 (1963)) has shown, social games use various layers of both discursive and tacit rules. If there are written rules, we often find that there are other (written or unwritten) rules of how to apply the first-order rules. Yet, there are even other, often unwritten, rules of how “everybody knows” that these rules and their application really have to be applied (or not) under different circumstances. This phenomenon can be found both in games-for-fun and in social games in general. Rules may be more or less legitimate. Legitimacy may be defined as the correctness of rules in both a cognitive and a normative sense (Esser, 2000c). Rules are legitimate for players if the latter think that they are actually the rules (facticity), and that there are convincing values that show these rules to be “good” (e.g., with regard to fairness, God’s will, etc.).
Rules may also be typologized according to their form. Following Merton (1968b), we can distinguish prescriptions (what is to be done), preferences (what should preferably be done), permissions (what is allowed to be done), and proscriptions (what is forbidden). As such, rules may regulate every aspect of the game, such as the nature of the goal of the game, the kinds of actors that are allowed to be players, and what attributes of actors are game-relevant.
Many social games have known ways of breaking the rules, ways of acting that the players of the game find particularly iniquitous: in sports, doping; in science, plagiarizing and fabricating results; in stand-up comedy, stealing material from other comedians; in criminal gangs, snitching. The breaking of rules can lead to different reactions and effects. The rule can be upheld by negative sanctions, which are actions or events that punish the rule-breaker. More minor infringements will normally be dealt with first within the framework of the game itself. Thus, in football, the referee may punish the guilty player by awarding the other team a free kick. Likewise, cheating in an exam at school may lead to the mark “0”. More major infringements may also have effects outside the game, as when cheating in a casino is dealt with by the police. Negative sanctions may be applied by other players, by leaders of the group, or by individuals or groups with game roles that involve policing/judging (e.g., referees, police officers, judges). However, there are other ways of reacting to transgression and maintaining the rule. The rule-breaker may try to “repair” the situation by apologizing or by explaining her action through shifting the responsibility elsewhere. If rules are broken and the norm-breakers are not sanctioned, or the norm-breaking is not “repaired” in some other form by apology or explanation (Goffman, 1971), then the rules might simply disappear, such as when littering in public spaces becomes acceptable, or a teacher loses all authority in her classroom.
Representations
Games are based not only on rules, but also on representations, which can be defined as signs that signify something else, according to convention and in a public way. Representations are symbols or associations of symbols (Searle, 1995). The representations of a game are what we could also call its “culture”, and this is how cultural sociology is incorporated into social game theory (Smith and Riley, 2008). We can distinguish three types of representation in a game. The first concerns signs for different game elements (rules, objects, players). Objects and events have names (e.g., the “king” in chess); rules come in the form of language (e.g., “Players take it in turns to move a piece”). The second concerns representations that are attached to game elements so that the players can communicate reflexively about the game. Such representations can legitimize, mythologize, systematize, comment on, or critique the game. In chess, there is a large literature on chess tactics; the ritual of Christian communion is linked to various Biblical stories and concepts (the Last Supper, the bread of life). The third type concerns the language used when playing the game. In most games, players have to use language to communicate before, during, and after the game to “pull the game off”. Players must greet each other, determine when and where to begin, decide on “whose turn is it next”, etc. Games are made out of representations, but they are also immersed in the wider context of language, as well as of other social games and their representations (Searle, 1995). It is important here to understand that social games are by nature representational or symbolic (or “meaningful”) (Giddens, 1993; Searle, 1995). What all the different strands of “interpretive” sociology (ethnomethodology, symbolic interactionism, Schutzian phenomenology) have said about interaction is true also of social games. To take away the meaning of the different game elements is to take away the game.
Economists versed in economic game theory have sometimes objected that representations are not important. Once the structure of the game (the pay-off matrix) is fixed, it does not matter what the different options are called. This may be true in certain cases. For example, it is possible to play a game of chess with a board depicting a court with a king and queen, or with figures from Star Wars or Harry Potter, or in the form of birds, or made out of cookies or corks (all these exist). If the figures retain their function, then the form and imagery and “culture” that are present make little difference. Nevertheless, in most social games, representations are of the utmost importance, since these are what give the social game its true meaning. It is their imagery that makes us feel that the game is worth it. If that were not the case, then marketing, branding, and spinning political messages would make no sense. As Weber (1922) wrote: “Not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men’s conduct. Yet very frequently the ‘world images’ that have been created by ‘ideas’ have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest”.
Objects
An object can be defined as a non-human material entity (including plants and animals). People do not count as objects,Footnote 4 and nor do ideas or ideational phenomena (freedom, love, God). Games do not always need objects: for example, the “material basis” of paper-scissors-rock or a spontaneous rap battle is provided by the bodies of the players and the sounds that they make, and the game objects in digital gaming are not material entities but digital representations that are encountered in the digital world. Nevertheless, all game elements can be linked to or represented by objects. The goals (or the reaching of the goal) can be represented as objects. In some games, the goal of the game is to obtain an object, as in a raffle or lottery. In other games, special objects symbolize the win: medals, trophies, and pedestals. Rules and representations are immaterial by nature, but they are often symbolized by objects, written down in books, or engraved in stones. Or the objects may themselves be the signs representing the rules and representations, such as in traffic signs, statues of Gods, or crowns. Resources very often come in the form of objects. In games-for-fun, we find gaming pieces, cards, balls, sticks, sportswear, etc. In social games, everything that Marx (1992 (1867)) called the means of production qualifies: factory halls, technical equipment, machines, tools, but also all kinds of objects that represent symbolic power, such as clothing, means of transportation, luxury items, etc. Game space is often symbolized by objects, such as game boards, fields, buildings, fences, border stones, and curtains. Finally, objects can also characterize actors, who may wear uniforms, robes, rings, crowns, colored belts, or have slit ears. Interestingly, objects may also stand for players, as avatars: for example, every player in Monopoly is represented by a small figure (a car, a ship, a dog, etc.), while a person in black magic may use a doll to represent her enemy.
Space and time
Concrete games are always situated in time, space, and a societal context. Interestingly, though, they also create their specific game time, game space, and game context. Game time is the time during which the game is played. The beginning, internal temporal structure, and end of a game are often marked by specific actions, for example by uttering words (Ready, steady, go!) or making sounds (a gun shot, a gong ringing, a whistle). They may be regulated by fixed rules as when a seminar at university takes place from 9 o’clock until 10.30. Games very often have an internal temporal structure, such as tennis, where a number of games make up a set and a number of sets make up a match, or a BA degree, where weeks are nested in semesters, semesters nested in years, and years nested in the overall curriculum. Another example is the liturgy of a Catholic mass, which gives the different elements of the ritual a sequence that can be repeated. Game space is the space where the game is played, and is often marked by objects (lines, ropes, steps). The game space is sometimes inside a special building or room (a temple, a parliament, a hospital), and is very often spatially differentiated internally, as when a football pitch is divided into two halves, with each goal having a six-yard box and a penalty area.
Outcomes
Games have outcomes, which are the states, events, or dynamics of a game or its context that result from game interaction. They can coincide with the game goals or not, be intended or not, and be measured by the game or not (Boudon, 1982). Other meta-theories call outcomes “explananda” or “effects”. Outcomes can take different forms. One type of outcome is the creation or change of a game element. Examples are the occurrence of checkmate in chess, or Hitler’s decision to invade Poland on 1 September 1939. A second type comes in the form of a statistic of a game or context variable, often a point measurement, sum, mean, or variance. For example, the number of goals scored by each team in a football match, or the percentage of overall wealth owned by a society’s wealthiest 2%. Third, outcomes may also present themselves as the covariance of two game or context variables, often a cross-tabulation, correlation coefficient, regression coefficient, or odd’s ratio. For example, the mean difference in the number of goals scored by Manchester United and Manchester City, or the difference in mean income earned by men and women. Finally, outcomes may present themselves as a statistic of the form the game process over time (e.g., a function). For example, the way that property and money become concentrated in a game of Monopoly, or the way that a medical innovation is disseminated over time.
Game outcomes that are created for a higher-level game or the players are called game functions. Thus, a commission may be set up with the function of finding a new president for an organization, a university has the function of educating the elites for the wider society, and a football match may be played for the enjoyment of the public. Some of these functions may be latent, and not consciously known by the players, as when Christmas traditions have the latent function of maintaining the social bonds of families, or when the Kula game helps strengthen social control in Trobriand societies. Of course, the existence of games should not be explained by their function or the needs of the players, as classical functionalism thought possible (Malinowski, 1960 (1944); Parsons, 1977). Current effects (the function) are not the same as historical causes. Nonetheless, some games are consciously set up to fulfill a certain function, the planned function then being one of the causes behind the setting-up of the game. Furthermore, some games are very stable, because their function creates an interest among powerful players or stakeholders, who will counter any attempts to stop the game or change its game elements.
Context
Game context consists of all the phenomena outside the game—to the extent that these phenomena were, are, or might in the future be important for the playing of the game. Game context is not everything that exists outside the game, and clearly defining its limits is difficult. Thus, the invention of the spiked leather running shoe in the 1890s certainly belongs to the context of football, whereas the invention of the flexible vaulting pole in the 1950s does not.