The Complete Handbook of Games

Chapter 1: Understanding Games

Walk into any facility that houses games for a living—a modern barcade, a family entertainment center, a university student union, or even a corporate break room—and you will see a collection of equipment that represents a significant financial investment. Each cabinet, table, or console is a piece of machinery designed to do one thing: facilitate play. But to treat a game merely as a box with a screen and some buttons is to miss the entire point of its existence. The act of play is not a byproduct of the hardware; the hardware is the stage, and the game itself is the engine that drives the interaction.

Our goal in this first chapter is to build a foundational understanding of what a game actually is—not in the abstract philosophical sense, but in the practical, operational sense that matters to you as a buyer, owner, or operator. To do this, we must separate the underlying mechanics of a game from its physical or digital presentation. Understanding this separation is the first step toward making intelligent decisions about what to buy, how to maintain it, and why some games have a ten-year lifespan while others feel dated within months.

The word "game" covers an enormous range of phenomena. A game of chess played on a magnetic travel set in an airport lounge is a different physical artifact from a physical chess set in a hotel lobby, which is again different from a digital chess application on a tablet.