Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games

There is a continuing need to clarify the concepts used within game studies, and defining ‘game’ is one of continuing interest. This article by game designer and critic Greg Costikyan is interesting in the way it discusses the process of constructing the definition it puts forward. The original version was published in 1994 in Interactive Fantasy #2, the revised version in CGDC conference proceedings in 2002.

Costikyan, Greg (2002) ‘I Have No Words & I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games’. In: Frans Mäyrä (ed), CGDC Conference Proceedings. Studies in Information Sciences. Tampere: Tampere University Press, pp. 9–33. Online: http://www.digra.org/dl/db/05164.51146.pdf

This entry was posted on April 4, 2008 at 8:15 am and is filed under Online papers with tags concept, definition, design, game. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games”

imcarelli Says:
September 2, 2010 at 11:42 pm

Thanks so much both of you Costikyan for having written the paper and Mayra for publishing it here. I am researching how to design good educational digital games. So first I have to have a definition of what a game is to understand then how to design it. Costikyan defined it nicely by saying “we need to understand what a game is, and to break “gameplay”
down into identifi able chunks. We need, in short, a critical vocabulary for
games”.

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