# Game

A game is a recreational activity with a set of rules.

## Quotes

* Or he might say: "Whereas some honorable recluses and brahmins, while living on food offered by the faithful, indulge in the following games that are a basis for negligence:[1] aṭṭhapada (a game played on an eight-row chess-board); dasapada (a game played on a ten-row chess-board); ākāsa (a game of the same type played by imagining a board in the air); parihārapatha ("hopscotch," a diagram is drawn on the ground and one has to jump in the allowable spaces avoiding the lines); santika ("spellicans," assembling the pieces in a pile, removing and returning them without disturbing the pile); khalika (dice games); ghaṭika (hitting a short stick with a long stick); salākahattha (a game played by dipping the hand in paint or dye, striking the ground or a wall, and requiring the participants to show the figure of an elephant, a horse etc.); akkha (ball games); paṅgacīra (blowing through toy pipes made of leaves); vaṅkaka (ploughing with miniature ploughs); mokkhacika (turning somersaults); ciṅgulika (playing with paper windmills); pattāḷaka (playing with toy measures); rathaka (playing with toy chariots); dhanuka (playing with toy bows); akkharika (guessing at letters written in the air or on one's back); manesika (guessing others' thoughts); yathāvajja (games involving mimicry of deformities) — the recluse Gotama abstains from such games and recreations.'
** Gautama Buddha, Brahmajāla Sutta: The All-embracing Net of Views, translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi, (2010)
* It's only game. Why you have to be mad?
** Ilya Bryzgalov, The Score interview (2006)
* If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game
** Leonard Cohen, You Want It Darker (2016)
* Games lubricate the body and the mind.
** Benjamin Franklin, as quoted in Edge-Tools of Speech (1899) by Maturin Murray Ballou, p. 177.
* All my games were political games; I was, like Joan of Arc, perpetually being burned at the stake.
** Indira Gandhi, as quoted in The New York Times Biographical Service (1971), Vol. 2, p. 4027.
* Strange game. The only winning move is not to play.
** Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes, WarGames (1983)
* Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships.
** Michael Jordan, as quoted in The Victory Letters : Inspiration for the Human Race (2003), by Cheri Ruskus, Letter 32, p. 68.
* I've missed more than nine thousand shots in my career. Twenty-six times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
** Michael Jordan, as quoted in Whoever Makes the Most Mistakes Wins : The Paradox of Innovation (2003), by Richard Farson and Ralph Keyes, p. 32.
* Do not imagine that there is any bird more easily caught by decoy, nor any fish sooner fixed on the hook by wormy bait, than are all these poor fools neatly tricked into servitude by the slightest feather passed, so to speak, before their mouths. Truly it is a marvelous thing that they let themselves be caught so quickly at the slightest tickling of their fancy. Plays, farces, spectacles, gladiators, strange beasts, medals, pictures, and other such opiates, these were for ancient peoples the bait toward slavery, the price of their liberty, the instruments of tyranny. By these practices and enticements the ancient dictators so successfully lulled their subjects under the yoke, that the stupefied peoples, fascinated by the pastimes and vain pleasures flashed before their eyes, learned subservience as naïvely, but not so creditably, as little children learn to read by looking at bright picture books.
** Étienne de La Boétie, Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, Part 2
* The practices that led to the formation of the spontaneous order have much in common with rules observed in playing a game. To attempt to trace the origin of competition in play would lead us too far astray, but we can learn much from the masterly and revealing analysis of the role of play in the evolution of culture by the historian Johan Huizinga, whose work has been insufficiently appreciated by students of human order.
** Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit (1988), Appendix E: Play, The School of Rules
* Consider Wittgenstein's paradigmatic question about defining "game." The problem is that there is no property common to all games, so that the most usual kinds of definition fail. Not every game has a ball, nor two competing teams; even, sometimes, there is no notion of "winning." In my view, the explanation is that a word like "game" points to a somewhat diffuse "system" of prototype frames, among which some frame-shifts are easy, but others involve more strain.
** Marvin Minsky, in reference to Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, in "Jokes and their Relation to the Cognitive Unconscious" (1980)
* It should be noted that children at play are not playing about; their games should be seen as their most serious-minded activity.
** Michel de Montaigne, in Essais (1580), as edited by Maurice Rat (1958), Book I, Ch. 23.
* When I was about 10, I remember I campaigned for months to convince my parents that the 'Game Boy' was not in fact just for boys. Eventually I won the debate and got my first portable gaming device the following Christmas. So even though I’ve always been enthusiastic about games, I’ve also always been bothered and disappointed with the way women were represented much of the time.
** Anita Sarkeesian "Full IGN interview with Anita Sarkeesian", IGN, June 6, 2013.
* Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.
** George Will, in Men at Work : The Craft of Baseball (1990), p. 294.

## See also

* Sports
* Video game