The Concept of Game - Game Design Theory - page 11

In most cases, the question implied in the “are games art� debate is
more sinister and boils down to this: are games a legitimate thing for us
to enjoy? Do we have the approval of some elite class for these things we
love? At the end of the day, it's not important whether you, I, or anyone
else thinks games are art. The value of games to human beings is undeni-
able. People can say that the film Rocky doesn't meet their definition of
art, but that doesn't affect its impact and value to those of us who enjoy
it.
Games: The Finer Interactive System
To be clear, I am not about to say that games are better than puzzles or
contests; each has their own kind of value to people. What I am say-
ing is that games are a much more fragile and unstable thing. Games, if
not carefully built and maintained, break down into contests, puzzles, or
even basic interactive systems.
The ambiguous-decision property of games is surprisingly elusive. In
creating a game, you have to create a system deep enough that a human
mind (which is a very powerful thing) cannot master it. Mastery is a bad
thing for a game—even if it takes ten years to attain it—so mastery needs
to be unattainable . On the other hand, you don't want the system to be
arbitrary or just pure noise. There has to be a reasonable path towards
mastery that players can take. If a game feels as though not only mastery
but even mere competence is impossible, then players will almost surely
abandon the journey of learning it.
Games must dance upon the threshold of the known and the un-
known. They must live at the border between what we can understand,
and what we cannot. This border is very narrow. On one side are puzzles
and contests. If the game is solved, it's effectively a completed puzzle,
and if an element of strength or dexterity is required, then it may qualify
as a contest. For instance, if someone “solved� boxing (not going to hap-
pen), winning may simply become a matter of who can deliver the solved
moves faster and harder. And if something becomes a raw measurement
of physical ability, then it is a contest, not a game, since no decisions are
left to be made.
On the other side of the border there are simply games that are too
difficult to process—games that people can't pursue mastery in, and that
they can't even comprehend. If players can't even grasp the mechanisms
of a game, then their decisions will be totally random and meaningless
and they cannot pursue mastery. Note that I didn't say that games like
these aren't games; however, I might call them bad games.