*A game is a closed world of action which has no relation to any other actions of those who play it; the players
have no motive for playing the game except the pleasure it gives them, and the outcome of the game has no consequences
beyond itself. Strictly speaking, a game in which the players are paid to play, or in which they play for money,
ceases to be a game, for money exists outside the closed world of the game. In practice, one may say that a game
played for money remains a game so long as the sums of money won or lost are felt by the players to be, not real,
but token payments, that is to say, what they win or lose has no sensible effect upon their lives after the game
is over. *The closed world of the game is one of mock passions. Many games are, formally, mock battles, but if any one of the players should feel or display real hostility, he immediately ceases to be a player. Even in boxing and wrestling matches, in which the claim to be called games at all is doubtful, the ritual of shaking hands at the beginning and end asserts that they are not fights between real enemies. *Within the closed world of the game the only human beings are the players; the other inhabitants are things, balls, bats, chessman, cards, etc. *Like the real world, the game world is a world of laws which the players must obey because obedience to them is a necessary condition for entering it. In the game world there is only one crime, cheating, and the penalty for this is exclusion; once a man is known to be a cheat, no other player will play with him. *In a game the pleasure of playing, of exercising skill, has precedence over the pleasure of winning. If this were not so, if victory were the real goal, a skillful player would prefer to heve an unskillful one as his opponent, but only those to whom a game is not a game but a livelihood, prefer this. In the game world the pleasure of victory is the pleasure of just winning. The game world, therefore, is an innocent world because the moral judgement, good-or-bad, does not apply to it; a good game means a game at the conclusion of which all the players, whether winners or losers, can truthfully say that they have enjoyed themselves. |