for a very different perspective, I like this quote, attributed to The Utopia of Rules, by David Graeber.<p>this [is] precisely why the games are fun. In almost any other aspect of human existence, all these things are ambiguous. Think of a family quarrel, or a workspace rivalry. Who is or is not a party to it, what’s fair, when it began and when it’s over, what it even means to say you won – it’s all extremely difficult to say. The hardest thing of all is to understand the rules.<p>In almost any situation we find ourselves in, there are rules – even in casual conversation, there are tacit rules of who can speak in what order, pacing, tone, deference, appropriate and inappropriate topics, when you can smile, what sort of humor is allowable, what you should be doing with your eyes, and a million other things besides. These rules are rarely explicit, and usually there are many conflicting ones that could, possibly, be brought to bear at any given moment. So we are always doing the difficult work of negotiating between them, and trying to predict how others will do the same.<p>Games allow us our only real experience of the situation where all this ambiguity is swept away. Everyone knows exactly what the rules are. And not only that, people actually do follow them. And by following them, it is even possible to win! This – along with the fact that unlike in real life, one has submitted oneself to the rules completely voluntarily – is the source of pleasure.<p>Games, then, are a kind of utopia of rules.