What Is A Game?

What exactly is a game?  At first the answer seems obvious, but looking over the variety of digital entertainments available today, with their vast graphical ranges and mixed responsiveness and occasional need for some level of dexterity, the question quickly becomes more muddled.  As I've explored and played a lot more interactive fiction and visual novels this year, I've come to ponder this question.  What is a game?  What is just a story?  My response is my answer alone; others may well draw their defining lines differently.

So, for me a game is that in which the player has influence to create different end states.  These influences might be based on player skill or just player choices.  I say "influences" because a player doesn't have to control every aspect of the game, and there can even be randomness that changes each time.  But the player has to have some power over what is happening in the game.  Something that randomly changes every time with no relation to what the player is doing might well be interesting, but it's not a game.  And something that's the same every time, like a kinetic novel, is a story, but not a game.

In many games, of course, player skill influences at the game.  Plenty of arcade or action games need precise timing for jumping or combat, and death is a bad end state.  But player choices, like which city to save, or even purely character things like dialogue or romances, can also offer alternate end states.  And even the exact same ending might be rendered different if the story paths there are divergent and compelling enough to give it a distinct feel.