Games

All games may be first classified into ones in which the players change positions by various rules of movement, or ones in which the players move an object for different purposes and in accord with various rules. War games belonged originally to the first class, as do a large number of children's garden and street games, e.g. 'tug of war'. Board games and other sedentary pleasures including computer games and card-playing require manipulation of objects. A third class is one in which both players and one or more objects move or are moved. Almost all team sports, notably those requiring a ball, fall into this category. Another primary division is between games that are contests and those that are not. The latter include single player games of skill. This division, however, can be a sub-classification of the first three. A fourth primary class can be an intellectual game requiring no objects (such as chess or go pieces). This can include riddles or other question and answers, or higher order games of imagination and concentration which may or may not include reasoning or memory. Games are conceived and enacted usually in an episodic fashion. They correspond to battles. A rare, fifth class of games of long duration may exist, corresponding somewhat to wars, whose goals, to express them abstractly, may be simply called, excellence. They may be played by individuals or groups, but one of their features is that they may be played by entire communities and possibly nations. One variety of these games is called, get. It is played in different forms such as get-strong, get-rich, or get-smart. In their usual form they are contests often at the primitive level where the loser does not merely lose the contest but loses his strength, wealth, knowledge, etc. Another variety of the fifth class is called, peace, an achievement game in which a number of individuals or societies may cooperatevely set themselves tasks to accomplish, usually against time factors, and with substantial rewards (e.g. the Nobel Peace prize contest). The foregoing analyses of games indicate that they correspond to every level of human development and developmental requirement from gaining physical strength and simple cunning, to the need for knowledge, and for moral, cultural and spiritual growth.