What counts as a game?

This is a sample research entry — a working note published to demonstrate the format, not a finished piece of research.

When Eshkere says play games, it does not mean video games — although it happily borrows their visual language. A game, in this sense, is any pursuit a person can choose: it has stakes you opted into, rules you can learn, progress you can feel, and the freedom to stop.

The breadth of the category

By that definition, games include careers and chess, friendships and research programs, status competitions and gardening, art and argument. What unites them is optionality. Nobody needs to publish a paper or reach a summit the way everyone needs sleep.

Optional does not mean unimportant

Calling these pursuits games is not a demotion. Almost everything people cherish about being alive — meaning, identity, achievement, beauty, belonging — lives in the optional layer. The claim is only about ordering: the optional layer works when the non-optional one underneath it holds.

Open questions

• Are there pursuits that sit ambiguously between need and game — work that pays for food, relationships that are both connection and play?
• Does naming something a game change how seriously people let themselves take it?