The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to games and gaming:

Game A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (su ...

s – structured or semi-structured activities, usually undertaken for enjoyment. They are usually fun activities that can be educational or purely just for fun. The term "game" is also used to describe simulation of various activities e.g., for the purposes of training, analysis or prediction, etc., see " Game (simulation)". Games are a universal part of the human experience, for all cultures, genders and ages. Key components of games are goals,

rule Rule or ruling may refer to: Education * Royal University of Law and Economics (RULE), a university in Cambodia Human activity * The exercise of political or personal control by someone with authority or power * Business rule, a rule pert ...

challenge Challenge may refer to: * Voter challenging or caging, a method of challenging the registration status of voters * Euphemism for disability * Peremptory challenge, a dismissal of potential jurors from jury duty Places Geography *Challenge, C ...

, and

interactivity Across the many fields concerned with interactivity, including information science, computer science, human-computer interaction, communication, and industrial design, there is little agreement over the meaning of the term "interactivity", but ...

. Games generally involve mental or physical stimulation, and sometimes both. Many games help develop practical

skills A skill is the learned ability to act with determined results with good execution often within a given amount of time, energy, or both. Skills can often be divided into domain-general and domain-specific skills. For example, in the domain of wo ...

, serve as a form of

exercise Exercise is a body activity that enhances or maintains physical fitness and overall health and wellness. It is performed for various reasons, to aid growth and improve strength, develop muscles and the cardiovascular system, hone athletic s ...

, or otherwise perform an

education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. ...

al,

simulation A simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulations require the use of models; the model represents the key characteristics or behaviors of the selected system or process, whereas the ...

al or

psychological Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betw ...

role.

Purpose

Individuals participate in game-play for various reasons, depending upon the aspect the particular game covers. These include: *

Education Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. ...

Learning analytics Learning analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs. The growth of online learning since ...

Entertainment Entertainment is a form of activity that holds the attention and interest of an audience or gives pleasure and delight. It can be an idea or a task, but is more likely to be one of the activities or events that have developed over thousan ...

Play Play most commonly refers to: * Play (activity), an activity done for enjoyment * Play (theatre), a work of drama Play may refer also to: Computers and technology * Google Play, a digital content service * Play Framework, a Java framework * P ...

Social relation A social relation or also described as a social interaction or social experience is the fundamental unit of analysis within the social sciences, and describes any voluntary or involuntary interpersonal relationship between two or more individuals ...

Pleasure Pleasure refers to experience that feels good, that involves the enjoyment of something. It contrasts with pain or suffering, which are forms of feeling bad. It is closely related to value, desire and action: humans and other conscious anima ...

Hobby A hobby is considered to be a regular activity that is done for enjoyment, typically during one's leisure time. Hobbies include collecting themed items and objects, engaging in creative and artistic pursuits, playing sports, or pursuing ...

Strategy Strategy (from Greek στρατηγία ''stratēgia'', "art of troop leader; office of general, command, generalship") is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty. In the sense of the " a ...

Tactics Tactic(s) or Tactical may refer to: * Tactic (method), a conceptual action implemented as one or more specific tasks ** Military tactics Military tactics encompasses the art of organizing and employing fighting forces on or near the battlefiel ...

Types of games

Game components

Dice Dice (singular die or dice) are small, throwable objects with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. They are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, role-playing ...

Playing card A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a ...

Game board Board games are tabletop games that typically use . These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked board (playing surface) and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well. Many board games feature a com ...

(or simply ''board'') – the (usually

quadrilateral In geometry a quadrilateral is a four-sided polygon, having four edges (sides) and four corners (vertices). The word is derived from the Latin words ''quadri'', a variant of four, and ''latus'', meaning "side". It is also called a tetragon, ...

) surface on which one plays a board game; the

namesake A namesake is a person, geographic location, or other entity bearing the name of another. History The word is first attested around 1635, and probably comes from the phrase "for one's name's sake", which originates in English Bible translations ...

of the board game, gameboards would seem to be a

necessary and sufficient condition In logic and mathematics, necessity and sufficiency are terms used to describe a conditional or implicational relationship between two statements. For example, in the conditional statement: "If then ", is necessary for , because the truth of ...

of the

genre Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other ...

, though card games that do not use a standard deck of cards (as well as games which use neither cards nor a game board) are often colloquially included. Most games use a standardized and unchanging board (

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to dist ...

, Go, and

backgammon Backgammon is a two-player board game played with counters and dice on tables boards. It is the most widespread Western member of the large family of tables games, whose ancestors date back nearly 5,000 years to the regions of Mesopotamia an ...

all have such a board), but many games use a ''modular'' board whose component tiles or cards can assume varying layouts from one session to another, or even as the game is played.

Components of role-playing games

Player character A player character (also known as a playable character or PC) is a fictional character in a video game or tabletop role-playing game whose actions are controlled by a player rather than the rules of the game. The characters that are not control ...

Game play

Player Player may refer to: Role or adjective * Player (game), a participant in a game or sport ** Gamer, a player in video and tabletop games ** Athlete, a player in sports ** Player character, a character in a video game or role playing game who is ...

– a participant in a game **

Player-coach A player-coach (also playing coach, captain-coach, or player-manager) is a member of a sports team who simultaneously holds both playing and coaching duties. A player-coach may be a head coach or an assistant coach. They may make changes to the sq ...

Game development

Game development Video game development (or gamedev) is the process of developing a video game. The effort is undertaken by a developer, ranging from a single person to an international team dispersed across the globe. Development of traditional commercial PC ...

* Dynamic game difficulty balancing *

Dynamic music In video games, adaptive music (also called dynamic or interactive music) is background music whose volume, rhythm or tune changes in response to specific events in the game. History Adaptive music was first used in the video game ''Frogger'' by ...

Emergent gameplay Emergent gameplay refers to complex situations in video games, board games, or table top role-playing games that emerge from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics. Designers have attempted to encourage emergent play by providing too ...

* Evolver (3D Avatar Web Portal) * Game balance *

Game design Game design is the art of applying design and aesthetics to create a game for entertainment or for educational, exercise, or experimental purposes. Increasingly, elements and principles of game design are also applied to other interactions, in ...

Game mechanics In tabletop games and video games, game mechanics are the rules or ludemes that govern and guide the player's actions, as well as the game's response to them. A rule is an instruction on how to play, a ludeme is an element of play like the L-sha ...

Gameplay Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game, and in particular with video games. Gameplay is the pattern defined through the game rules, connection between player and the game, challenges and overcoming them, plot and pla ...

* Gold sink *

House rule House rules are unofficial modifications to official game rules adopted by individual groups of players. House rules may include the removal or alteration of existing rules, or the addition of new rules. Such modifications are common in board ...

Impulse-based turn system An impulse-based turn system is a game mechanic where a game turn is broken up into a series of discrete, repeating segments, or impulses. It can be considered a fairly complex mechanic, but has been used in three games that have enjoyed long-ter ...

* Kingmaker scenario * Lame duck *

Lusory attitude The lusory attitude is the psychological attitude required of a player entering into the play of a game. To adopt a lusory attitude is to accept the arbitrary rules of a game in order to facilitate the resulting experience of play. The term was c ...

* Simultaneous action selection * Super NES Emulator SE

Game theory

Game theory * Branch of

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathemat ...

* Cooperative game *

Evolutionary game theory Evolutionary game theory (EGT) is the application of game theory to evolving populations in biology. It defines a framework of contests, strategies, and analytics into which Darwinian competition can be modelled. It originated in 1973 with John Ma ...

Extensive form game An extensive-form game is a specification of a game in game theory, allowing (as the name suggests) for the explicit representation of a number of key aspects, like the sequencing of players' possible moves, their choices at every decision point, t ...

** Information set * List of games in game theory *

Normal-form game In game theory, normal form is a description of a ''game''. Unlike extensive form, normal-form representations are not graphical ''per se'', but rather represent the game by way of a matrix. While this approach can be of greater use in identifyin ...

Payoff matrix In game theory, normal form is a description of a ''game''. Unlike extensive form, normal-form representations are not graphical ''per se'', but rather represent the game by way of a matrix. While this approach can be of greater use in identifyin ...

Lists of games

List of board games This is a list of board games. See the article on game classification for other alternatives, or see Board games for a list of board game articles. Single-player board games Some board games have solo variants, such as ''Arkham Horror'' and ''Ag ...

List of cross and circle games Cross and circle is a board game design used for race games played throughout the world. The design of most cross and circle games involves a circle divided into four equal portions by a cross inscribed inside it; the classic example of this d ...

List of card games A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific. Countless card games exist, including families of related games (such as poker). A small number of card ga ...

List of dice games Dice games are games that use or incorporate one or more dice as their sole or central component, usually as a random device. The following are games which largely, if not entirely, depend on dice: Collectible dice games Patterned after the suc ...

* List of domino games * List of party games *

List of role-playing games This is a list of notable tabletop role-playing games. It does not include computer role-playing games, MMORPGs, play-by-mail/email games, or any other video games with RPG elements. Most of these games are tabletop role-playing games; other type ...

* List of sports *

Lists of video games This is a list of all video game lists on Wikipedia, sorted by varying classifications. By platform Acorn * List of Acorn Electron games Apple * List of Apple II games * List of Apple IIGS games * List of iOS games * List of Macintosh game ...

List of best-selling video games This is a list of video games that have sold the highest number of software units worldwide. The best-selling video game to date is ''Minecraft'', a sandbox game released by Mojang in May 2009 for a wide range of PC, mobile and console plat ...

List of traditional children's games This is a list of games that used to be played by children, some of which are still being played today. Traditional children's games do not include commercial products such as board games but do include games which require props such as hopscotch ...

Also see

* Computer * Game club * Game semantics * Lawn game *

Ludology Game studies, also known as ludology (from ''ludus'', "game", and ''-logia'', "study", "research"), is the study of games, the act of playing them, and the players and cultures surrounding them. It is a field of cultural studies that deals with ...

Puzzle A puzzle is a game, problem, or toy that tests a person's ingenuity or knowledge. In a puzzle, the solver is expected to put pieces together ( or take them apart) in a logical way, in order to arrive at the correct or fun solution of the puzzle ...

Sport Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, ...

* Toy * List of puzzle topics *

List of impossible puzzles This is a list of puzzles that cannot be solved. An impossible puzzle is a puzzle that cannot be resolved, either due to lack of sufficient information, or any number of logical impossibilities. * 15 puzzle – Slide fifteen numbered tiles into ...

* List of puzzle-based computer and video games

External links

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Games A game is a structured form of play, usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (su ...

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