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Message: <blockquote data-quote="clearstream" data-source="post: 8629726" data-attributes="member: 71699">Thank you! Your words prompted some good reflection. Just to be sure of context, I introduced tool as the ontological category for games with the thought of prompting further insights in the exchange with [USER=6790260]@EzekielRaiden[/USER]. It's somewhat orthogonal or overlying to this discussion as it is about game as game and not as play. What do I mean by that? The question incurs unavoidable confounds and vagueness, which I will go into briefly now.<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">An intuition that comes readily is to grasp game first as artifact - the actual game text, any components. In this light we can identify Senet as a game even though its rules did not survive the centuries, and it cannot be played (as Senet, it can be played as Senet* etc).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">One confound is that where players interpret the rules, what the actual game text entails might differ by player cohort. We see many examples of such differences here on Enworld. The differences can be so substantial as to be as if the game text included different words for different cohorts. That makes it problematic to suppose that the artifact has any objective singular identity.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">One aspect of vagueness is that different cases of game - different TTRPGs say - can have different lists of contents... without failing to be a recognisable case of game. So again, how to collect up a group of artifacts and say all are games?</li> </ol>How do I think this connects with your thought about practices? As you point out, a practice includes a normative orientation by some group toward their object. (Incidentally, I felt you articulated near perfectly the pressure to say that a law can exist even where disobeyed, but that in the case of game what that law turns out to be - how it is grasped and if it is upheld - instead changes the game itself.)So when I say game is tool, I say that the object that the practice is oriented to is game: rules, indexes, icons, symbols inclusive. I call this object the tool which the practitioners grasp in their normalised or practiced ways and uphold in their performance. It is the object of their performance, just as perhaps laws are the objects of the practice of lawyers. Lawyers can develop new laws, and players can develop new games, the latter providing themselves with further tools for play. (I am not saying laws are tools... something I haven't reflected on and have no current commitments about.)Ambiguity between game as artifact and game as process has been noted by scholars like Bjork and Juul (2012), and Aarseth and Grabarczyk (2018). I think that ambiguity is resolved by asserting that games as artifacts are tools. As they are grasped by players – tool users – they fabricate mechanisms comprising some number of parts, that produce play phenomena.To say that a thing is a tool is to say that there is a tool-user who knows the use of that tool and will use that tool, and to imply a purpose that is not solely the wielding, but the product of the wielding. It is to suppose an ability to obey and to interpret a proper use, without ruling out improper use. Two tool-users may disagree on how to wield a tool – one may be unaware of a use known by the other and they may differ in purpose – while being satisfied to agree upon the familial identity of that tool.The function of a tool is contingent on how a tool-user uses that tool. As players wield game artifacts – tools – to fabricate mechanisms, they may determine properties of those mechanisms. The extent of such determination is variable, for example where some functions are handed over to computers. A central property of a tool is its use: with it we perform functions that are impossible or more difficult without it. This endorses a view that game rules are constitutive – they make possible the fabrication of play. A novel game as artifact introduces new possibilities to those who use it.Knowledge about game tool use is formed via sampled, prospective and projected play, and narratives of play. It might appear at times that the tools amount to the play, but that is false. It is the tools as grasped by players, fabricating mechanisms, that amounts to the play. Tool users may grasp tools in dissimilar ways and wield them with dissimilar intents, including as to ends and methods.That's a summary of my meaning by saying a game is a tool, and as you can hopefully see, I was introducing a higher-level and ontological category just in case it prompted any insights for [USER=6790260]@EzekielRaiden[/USER] and I (or others FTM.) That's probably enough for this post. I'll follow up your other thoughts as/when it seems necessary (or I am always open to prompting, if we'd like to dig into some particular questions.) I should add that my hair-brained notion was very much a thought experiment: I think I summarised my intention pretty well in a reply to [USER=82106]@AbdulAlhazred[/USER], with perhaps some further evolution in a reply to [USER=16586]@Campbell[/USER].</blockquote>

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