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Of course, people started thinking about what was a game before Chris Crawford started working at Atari (see What is a game?).

French sociologist Roger Caillois, in his 1957 book Les jeux et les hommes (Games and Men), defined a game as an activity that is:

* fun: the activity is chosen for its light-hearted character
* separate: it is circumscribed in time and place
* uncertain: the outcome of the activity is unforeseeable
* non-productive: ...

Continuing my journey through the Art of War actually brings me back to nearly the beginning. Sun Tzu believes that the outcome of a conflict can be determined beforehand with enough foresight. His method of measuring that outcome comes in five parts. The first one is called the "Way".

"The Way means inducing the people to have the same aim as the leadership, so that they will share death and share life, without fear of danger."
The way is about having ...

The Olympic Games closed last night. In order to fill the void in my life, I decided to investigate what other games I could follow. Well, I had to start somewhere, so I decided I needed to figure out what a game was. I started researching the topic, and suddenly, I was reading Game Design by Chris Crawford on Google Books. Crawford has an elaborate definition of what makes and game. He presents his definition by flowing through a series of dichotomous elements until what remains is a game. ...

Recently, I've started reading a book called The Art of War, which is considered to be one of the classic books on conflict. In it, an ancient Chinese military general named Sun Tzu gives his advice for conflict. Then, in the version I have, there are short commentaries by other ancient Chinese warriors and scholars. These scholars give their interpretations of the passages and flesh them out.

Many of the ideas in the book can be translated from ancient warfare to modern warfare. ...

I love the Olympics. It's odd how much I care about them. I'm not a big sports fan in general, nor are there any sports in the Olympics that I follow in the four years between games. When it all comes together, however, I can't stop watching. I'm the same way with the Tour de France, but that's another story. So what is it about the Olympics that I find so compelling?

I never realized that there was strategy involved in Figure Skating until I watched Evan Lycasek's long program. ...