00. Reflections on the Game of Games–
roles of play, make-believe, & forms
0. What’s a game?
~~~nature/ functions of play, make-believe & form;
~~~nature/ function of cooperation & competition;
~~~nature/ function of game-theory & learning
1. Origins
~~~nature & nurture,
~~~little self & bonded self
2. the social aspect
~~~from beginnings to beyond–
~~~bonding to art
~~~Basho & renga (a special case)
3. the functional aspect
~~~the great leap forward
~~~strategic & economic applications
~~~exploration, practice & discovery
0. What’s a game?
At heart, a game can be any form of play, usually where the form is more or less defined–by rules, boundaries, traditions, customs, governing bodies, and/or players at the time. Since even the freest play takes on form, there’s no firm dividing line where play becomes game, though we tend to apply the latter term to forms that include a defined end. As in a baseball “double header,” play may continue (after a short break), so even as one game ends, another may begin.
Play is both instinctive & learned, practiced by many animals, especially as young actively learn skills in make-believe realms of “as if.” Play serves a variety of overlapping functions–e.g., learning, skill-building, therapy, amusement, reverie, escape, fun, fitness, testing, status, collaboration, etc. Skills & capacities are developed, like muscles & brain circuits, through practice, the more played, more learned. The more fun a game generates, the more it’s likely to be played. The more we exercise, the more we develop the underlying skills, along with insights & structures that support them.
Learning & doing become one in a process that serves master & novice alike, individual & group. Many forms of play have roots in skills & capacities that convey “real-world” advantages, whether physical, material or strategic. Playing in the make-believe mode offers a degree of safety not present in the real-world action, as creatures learn to hunt, fight, love, compete, work together, stay alert, trade, invest, manage, observe & express with lowered risk to body &/or financial condition.
Games teach a variety of widely transferable skill-sets–effort, attention, discipline, perseverance, teamwork, etc. On the other hand, they also develop skills & capacities more or less unique to themselves, as in tennis, bowling, chess, poker. Even where some learning may carry over, others may have little direct application in the world outside of the game.
We sometimes call the non-game realm “the real world,” but the game realm has its own reality, with consequences sometimes very real indeed, while “real-world” work often involves play, as in sports, music & other arts. Games at the professional level can become so ‘all-in‘ that the action at hand may raise levels of personal risk to more or less combat levels. Effort & risk may add to spectator interest, general excitement & player intensity, bringing out the competitive elements, sometimes with explicit elements of rule-bound “combat” permitted.
Competition within a given framework can charge the atmosphere & boost effort in comparison to playing “just for the fun of it.” Competition is not the only way to turbo-charge effort, however. Performing before others has a similarly intensifying effect on the effort to do one’s best–whether solo or as part of an ensemble, in music, dance or drama, teaching, speaking in public, etc.
Players can be ambivalent about competition in general & ‘winning’ in particular. On the one hand, the whole point of the activity can get un-focused around the effort to achieve that more or less arbitrary objective, as determined by the game clock or other means for ending. Usually, any “victory” is largely imaginary, and ephemeral, only a step towards something else (e.g., “league standing”). On the other hand, the real point is often simply playing together. The head-to-head competition of best buds can exemplify the deeper aim in the long-term relation; each may take pleasure in the other’s good plays as well as in their own, prodding each other’s effort & development with mutual good will.
Two grand masters going head to head may offer one kind of model; two fairly equal buds another; parent & child playing together something else again. Each may represent its own expression of good will. A parent’s primary aim may simply be the shared enjoyment, but may also include an educational intent–playing to the child’s skill level, or just ahead of it….
The core experience may be described functionally as developmental, or experientially as bonding, meaning that the shared activity reinforces the sense of mutuality, ultimately the source of family, school spirit, clan loyalty, & the sense of community, whether tribal or geographically based. (What crimson-blooded American doesn’t get a little boost hearing that Harvard has beaten Yale, or the Red Sox the Yankees? Or that the home town team acquitted themselves well in a noble effort, whatever the outcome?)
Good will is less about winning than about caring, sharing & belonging. It needn’t be against anyone–but is usually at least partly for. “All for one & one for all.” Ultimately, the ones in that equation needn’t be fixed entities. Who you’re rooting for may depend on many variables–we may not even know until we’ve watched awhile, & can change teams or horses even then, rooting for the excitement most of all, along with the fantastic plays & surprising moves, plus a sense of larger identity. Ah! We’re alive, our juices flowing, our attention focused. We’re patriots!
Winning may provide the icing, along with a cherry on top, but it often counts less than how the game was played, including one’s sense of emotional connection with those playing–whether co-participants or from our perspective as fans. Raising the stakes changes the balance. Put enough money on the line and you might choose a winning 9-hole golf score of, say, 110 to a losing one of 36, at or near par, as the prime aim shifts from the game to the payoff.
Even where competition is most fierce, however, the very fact of giving it an agreed-upon game-form makes it an example of cooperation. Players may shake hands before &/or after play; even boxers trying to knock the other’s brains out touch gloves, & nod agreement to the referee’s reminders. In this case, once the bout begins, however, the game element may almost disappear, crossing over the line between play-fight & actual aggression.
Whether for boxers sparring, wrestlers following a script, or young tigers just following their instinct to play-bite & tumble, the interaction needn’t cross over to actual combat–but may at some point also. In the case of tigers, there are quite definite differences between the two ways of relating, e.g., whether claws are retracted or extended. The interaction with claws retracted may build ability to cooperate in hunting; the interaction with claws extended says there’s only room in this place for one of us.
Despite spectator popularity for hockey & American football (& to a lesser degree, boxing, mixed-martial-arts & cage-fighting), sport-games based on overt expression of aggression are as much exception as rule. In theory, aggressive games may provide outlet & even moderating influence for those most inclined to aggressive action. Nevertheless, it’s largely a different experience from that involving representations of overtly violent aggression in virtual game-play, where the absence of negative feedback associated with real-world aggression may sometimes have dis-associative effects, reinforcing the tendency to violent acts detached from a sense of reality.
When being backed up by a vehicle, a trailer can turn in many different (& often surprising) directions. A similar variability may exist in the effects of virtual experience outside the game, in reality, depending on initial conditions–which in this case presumably means the psychological state, condition & make-up of the player. Then again, as with the trailer being backed up, the player changes with time, experience & particular conditions.
Unlike the virtual versions with audio-visual stimulation, the physical games themselves may channel, sublimate & transform the aggressive tendency into a form less harmful than non-game alternatives. Virtual versions come in all varieties & flavors, with not much in common between a highly immersive, sensory-rich virtual battle experience & the card game “War,” with little actual display of aggression, the same for chess & other board games; no matter what kind of real-world conflict they may theoretically represent in the abstract, the faculties activated are of different.
The snap of the go stones becomes an aesthetic expression more than outlet for hostility. No blood is shed in checkers or backgammon, go fish, gin rummy or hearts either–and, despite myths of the old west, shoot-outs are even rare in poker! Raise the stakes high enough, and the game element may virtually disappear, however, threatening even the cooperation on rules.
Cheating for advantage raises many interesting theoretical questions, particularly in being distinguished from legitimate territories–e.g., intensity of effort, willingness to take maximum advantage of the rules, to use the whole playing field, so to speak, including feints, bluffs, fakes, mis-direction & other forms of allowable deception. Where a game relies heavily on referees, getting away with some “fouls” by faking out the referee may become an expected part of the action. Players rarely call missed fouls on themselves, in other words, particularly where it’s the team as a whole that takes the consequences.
In the theoretical realm, some questions may be raised about “cheating for a worthy end,” a version of that old dilemma of means & ends. Worthiness tends to be in the eye of the beholder, of course, while the end or cause to which a team has been dedicated is usually winning. Ironically, attachment to such an end can get in the way of both means & success, as suggested by John Wooden, one of the most successful coaches in history (was it 7 NCAA national championships in a row & 10 times in 12 years?), who reportedly never spoke of or urged “winning,” however much his strategic focus had to have been on achieving that result.
Nevertheless, it was never his primary end, and it is inconceivable he’d ever have tolerated cheating, or any sacrifice of core values in pursuit of it. He taught hustle, effort, focus, basic skills improved by focused practice, awareness & consideration of others, team-work, & character, everyday & under stress, in the intensity of fully focused effort. Basketball was “just a game,” he said, yet also vehicle for a rich teaching experience that carried over off the court.
Fundamental attractions of the game include: the sense of heightened experience; the enjoyment of play; & the sense of playing together. One may observe this comradeship element on a cross country or chess team, as well as in a band–musical or hunting. Even in a sport involving little or no explicit collaboration, the sense of teamwork can be a major part of participant & spectator interest. Even where the competitive element is paramount, as in head-to-head chess, a sense of kinship can grow between team-mates & opposing players, who are kindred spirits in that game.
Although chess is fundamentally competitive in its structure, running needn’t be. One may run against time, one’s own prior performance, or not against anything, simply for the pleasure (or necessity)–sans watch, alone or with companions. In a sense one can play chess the same way, for the joy of the exercise, as well as the companionship with one’s partner. The importance of companionship stands out in all but games played alone like solitaire, even where performance is essentially individual.
When listing the functions served by play, above, I thought first in terms of the individual playing in relation to others. For “in relation to,” one may substitute “against” or “with.” The structure of the game may pit players against each other, but the experience of the game puts players with each other, which is generally the dominant aspect. Hearing the incomplete list of functions I’d first spelled out, my son (Gus) suggested the addition of bonding–which, on reflection, now seems to me possibly the most basic function of all those performed by games, despite being so easily overlooked, taken for granted like the air we breathe or water to the fish.
Most games, no matter how competitive in structure, are played to some degree for the comradeship, in other words, the social bonding. The fact of playing together comes first & counts most, so that even a zero-sum card game like “war” represents a fundamentally mutual engagement, a cooperation. Team sports like baseball, basketball & soccer take cooperation to new levels, a model reiterated in the collaboration between teams and leagues.
We easily forget what social creatures we are, yet we exist only by virtue of our many “community” networks. It takes parental nurture, a village, a language, economic, political, educational & cultural systems–& more–just to be & become what we are. It also takes larger living communities, a living planet, solar system, galaxy, & universe to sustain us, each existing simultaneously at different scales, including time-scales.
Bonding itself crosses time, as well as those personal borders objectified in the physical realm. People sometimes speak of the “chemistry” between people, the fact that different individuals can evoke various aspects of ourselves, including levels of bonding &/or alienation, psychic overlap & separation. The game doesn’t change that, but it does mediate the relations between players, providing a shared focus that moderates contrary aims & diverse perspectives.
As discussed above, a game mode may not just “moderate” (i.e., “keep within reasonable limits”), but may also model, provide a representation of “real-world” events, relations & ways of relating, whether specific or in general. In a sense, the play-fighting of tiger cubs provides a muscular & otherwise informative model of some aspects what adult fighting involves–like in some ways, yet not in the same mode. As game, the model needn’t be static representation or involve outer imitation, but must simply provide a framework for similar situational choices as encountered in real-world action–not the actions themselves, but a representation of them.
In this ability to model, games take on a higher order of educational potential, whether for the transmission of knowledge-content already embedded, the skills & information developed only through practice, &/or the discovery of how people (self & others) may tend to behave in the given situations. With the proviso that “game behavior does not necessarily correlate directly with actual behavior in real, rather than represented, situations,” one may nevertheless learn quite a lot about strategic thinking, economic behavior & the interactive dynamics of complex systems from experimenting within experiential models & simulations.
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game theory
The fact that present action is both affected by past action & can influence subsequent actions goes to the essence of game theory, as von Neumann, Morgenstern et al. defined it in relation to economic & strategic choices. They & others following have presumed that structured games could be devised to explore the various outcomes, probabilities, & differentiating strategic factors. Where outcomes depend on one’s own choices in relation to how others choose, including how particular moves affect subsequent responses, games can clarify what’s called “theory of mind,” what others are thinking, enhancing one’s ability to consider alternatives from different points of view, & thus one’s ability to anticipate.
In its most basic form, the process isn’t necessarily different from what a predator does in trying to anticipate the movements of potential prey. The ability to sense another creature’s internal processing to anticipate its actions is so basic it has many applications, in child-rearing as well as predation, team-work as well as personal advantage-seeking. Humans & other animals have used play, simulation & games to develop a wide range of skills from time immemorial. We may experience both cooperation & competition, affection & aggression at the same time, in other words, in the kitten’s game of catch-the-hand & the more abstract rock-paper-scissors.
First try this, then that, to see what happens. Keep on fine tuning. Studies of how we develop observation skills in infancy have shown how basic this feedback loop is, as our earliest theories of the world are shaped by the expectations associated with pattern-recognition, forms learned from interactive observation. Add to this a capacity to surprise &/or be surprised, and you have the beginning of art, as well as game.
One of the first encountered is probably peek-a-boo–a game of eyes & smiles….
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1. Origins, nature & nurture, little self & bonded self: It’s chicken-&-egg whether our first play is what spontaneously arises exploring an environment that includes our own fingers & toes, voice, etc., or is primarily responsive, something happening with (&/or provoked by) others. Starting with the universally celebrated smile & laugh fostered by happy surprise &/or the bright eyes of glad good will, you can’t say who triggers whom where responses are so mutual. In fact, these responses originate in more than one place at the same time–being fundamentally correlated with the experience of connectedness (an emotional version of the physicist’s entanglement).
From peek-a-boo, rockabye baby, riding to Boston, & play-monster, on to hide-&-seek, gotcha, you’re it, play-house & spin-the-bottle, soon we’re adding car, card & board games; sports, war & quest games. From there we play love games, parenting games; academic, financial & political games; and invent other forms of play that meet or share some game criteria, most notably the arts. We call presentations in a variety of forms plays, and use the same word for what musicians do with instruments & each other.
The root source of dance & poetry are also found in play–with movement, rhythms, & nursery-rhyme games. Hey Diddle Diddle. London Bridges. Ring Around A Rosey, we all fall down. I still remember the warmth in my mother’s arms, looking up at the night sky, learning the wishing game, twinkle twinkle little star….
Not accidentally, the oldest board games trace their roots to the times of earliest writing. Whether or not this is inevitable, another example of chicken & egg, games themselves go back much further, not just before writing, but to early language itself, when it is still mostly music. The explorative sound-&-feeling play called babbling involves experimenting with the rules of language &, eventually, thought. A mother’s lullaby can have many game features, and songs like “Riding to Boston” also (using different cities in different languages). Nursery rhymes often have game-play characteristics, especially when accompanied by particular actions.
Just as brain activity involves not just individual neurons or individual cells, but circuits, relationships become visible in patterns of language & neurological activity. Language itself defies the distinction between individual & group. Even in the most solitary & entirely present use, it derives all but its babbling, musical meaning from use by others in the past, while projecting potential meaning for others “out there” in the land of the future, whether 0a fraction of a second or centuries later.
So, too, each voice is distinct, even while singing together in the same chorus, or playing in the same band. The sense of “I” & the sense of “we” are often inseparable, the I being composed of the we as well as vice versa. The same inter-penetration seems to show up in the linear & non-linear faces of time. The linear arrow progresses in one direction, whereas the geological is also layered & folded, with actions of countless ages visibly present together. (Never mind for the moment, cyclical & reciprocal time, as in the equations of particle physicists.)
We could explore this time element further, jumping on a light-thought with Einstein, trying to understand the implications inherent in such fundamental mysteries of existence playing in the mind. Closer to home, we come back to the play inherent in our own multiplex of identities, changing through time, layered with genetic & cultural legacies, adapting in response to changing conditions, ‘chemistries’ & particular interactions.
That we play with each other in many different ways may seem fairly elementary, the range of potential forms always being greater than the particular situations which “collapse” them. We don’t know in advance where the ball will go next, at what speed, etc. until the play itself unfolds, the probability wave turns the infinitely variable possibility into the singular happening where individual, group, ball actions & game-forms meet in the framework of the game.
No action is entirely individual, even in solitary play. If the solitary game-form itself doesn’t come from others, for example, the imagined content nevertheless tends to reflect its environment, actual or (more often) already media-represented. The forms emerging in an improvisational game like “playing house” t5end to be highly influenced by the mediated fictions encountered in stories, picture-books & on tv. Apart from such reflections, an infant may invent games playing with whatever’s handy, like fingers & toes.
Peek-a-boo, a disappearing face reappearing with a big smile, may be considered a version of the SURPRISE game, though surprise is also a kind of fundamental working element of games, balanced by repetition. A Jack-in-the-box also combines both elements, turning a wheel that plays a repeating tune until–POP! up springs the surprise.
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Many dynamic factors affect how individuals react & respond, including chance elements, previous experience, programming, the actions of others, landscaping, topography & changing conditions. In a highly developed team-game like baseball, all these may factor into each play, as pitcher, batter, catcher, fielders, base runners, stadium, weather, rule-book, tactical & strategic situations, coaches, umpires, fans, the history & art of the game interact.
It’s often said that there’s no “I” in team, but even team sports thrive on individual play. It’s not the lack of I, but the addition of we, within which individual I’s self-organize according to need, situation, skill sets, etc. Individuality of play & differences in skill sets may expand the collaborative potential. Conversely, learning to operate as part of a team may be considered an individual skill, as may be developed by practice under well-informed guidance.
Playing sports, chess, in a band, on a poetry team or at a mixed arts festival is a social, networking, community experience in which a good part of the fun is generated where personal activity & exchange with others join. Obviously, play can be collaborative (e.g., a Tinkers to Evers to Chance double-play in baseball, or wherever working together is involved) as well as competitive (whether head-to-head or in terms of team outcome).
One may as easily say there is no “I” in the pure escape of solo play, as in Robert Coover’s wonderful novel, The Universal Baseball Association, in which author disappears into9 a narrator disappearing in all the characters he makes up. Whether internally in the world of the imagination or externally in the more or less “real world,” the play takes place at the intersection of individual & larger identities. Initially, it’s where self & mother meet, as well as mind & body. From there, play knows no end, but develops across orders of magnitude, taking countless forms.
We also apply the word to what waves sometimes do along the shore & to a kind of presentation in dramatic form, as well as to particular actions in a sport or other game and a kind or quality of active imagination. At one side of the spectrum, the imagination may play out forms like waves in transit, none lasting, but freely retreating, giving rise to the next. Even traditional forms change, however, rarely fixed for long.
No absolute line separates play from game. All games involve some play; all play involves some form, which ultimately gives a game its attributes. Nevertheless, the true game tends may be considered more or less distinct from the play that drives the action; play continues day to day, for example, while individual games end.
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2. the social aspect–from beginnings to Basho & beyond
Even solitaire games have a social component, however imaginary the world or personal the rules, at times in the inverse, with therapeutic effects derived from “real-world” escape into a re-creational experience capable of engaging an otherwise hurting attention. (One may note the similarity with arts & crafts, as in the play & mood-changing power of music.) Both solitude & being together have functions–nor are the two necessarily separate.
Play & games mediate the progressive separation of mother & child; the child goes on exploring identity & world in the make-believe realm of the imagination, mediated by games, whether actually played with others or individually imagined. The ability of games to mediate between imagined-selves & worlds-as-conceived goes on developing, including use in sophisticated strategic & economic modeling, with implications as well for many situations in daily life, where “theory of mind” can help anticipate responses to presented alternatives, clarifying one’s own position. In this sense, “gaming” a situation internally may be analogous to Einstein’s use of thought-experiments.
With sufficient understanding of human nature, and of the particulars involved, the game doesn’t need to be carried out to clarify the situation, in other words, although the real test is always in the playing, as is the game’s value as a useful; model. One of the driving forces in the development of game theory has always been to clarify how people are likely to respond to particular real-world economic &/or strategic situations by means of the game-behaviors revealed in & through the playing. Market analysis and war-gaming are two of the most obvious “adult” applications.
Economics & strategic relations are two of the most socially centered disciplines, emphasizing the role of games in efforts to improve social outcomes, whether the challenges involve matters of strategic logistics & physical execution or the psychologies involved in predicting behaviors. The social aspect of games is equally evident in sports, however, the companionship of & about teams having much in common with the hunting band, working clan & tribe with interests & traditions in common.
The game or other playful art may connect us with others beyond, too, across time, space & circumstance. As with stories & poetry, some sense of game-sharing may happen without airborne sound, across physical & cultural distances, each with its own language. In sports, for example, games (golf, tennis, baseball, track, etc.) regularly bring players together from all over the globe. Surprisingly, even some language games have this border crossing quality.
A special case–Basho & renga: The great Japanese poet, artist & teacher “Basho” made art out of various kinds of linking–prose & poetry, verse & sketch; nature & culture, history & present moment; journey-book & seashell game, a game of stanzas & artful conversation. In his own time, he was considered a traveling master in a poetry game called haikai no renga, playfully linked poetry, bringing to the fore its down-to-earth folksiness & its capacity for both artistic & personal impact. ‘Rules’ of the game vary by form chosen, as well as by school or style, house custom, or group’s choice at that time. Modern renga, in Japanese & American circles, have been made in a wide variety of both traditional & experimental forms.
At the heart of traditional renga, most of the action takes place in the pivots & shifts, the surprising leaps & connections between stanzas, as in the dynamic relations between linear & non-linear progression. Multiple approaches & perspectives are built into the framework-forms, the number of makers & rules (or customs), which mandate frequent shifts in more granular forms (like grammatical structures) & perspective (points of view). An individual stanza often has its own pivot & shift, en route to ending up with multiple, context-determined identities: e.g., with the stanza before (or in the case of the opener, a link with the setting); on its own; as opener for the unknown stanza to follow; part of its developing “fold” or section; role in the poem as a whole, reflecting the diverse world in & beyond, with all its parts, dimensions, kinds of experience & perspectives in motion.
Like other arts, renga thrives on its own play, needing no boost from competitive urge, spirit or format. Of course participants want to wow companions, bring joy & pleasure, generate a good laugh, a deep ahh , an occasional aha!, & lots of hai! hai! hai! That’s part of the game, not so different necessarily than when old &/or new friends get together over dinner & drinks, beer & pretzels, wine & crackers, for lively repartee.
Renga helps give such conversation an aesthetic form, shaping the shared attention–leaving much of the ego behind, even when fully engaged in the action at hand. As when playing on a team, one’s aim isn’t to grandstand or even draw attention to oneself, just do the best one can in the circumstances. A perfect pass, assist or set-up can be even more prized for what it makes possible, opens & invites than the responsive follow-up, both part of the effect or score.
Dialing down or eliminating the competitive structure of the play entirely can make the mutuality of contribution all the more evident, without removing the individual or diminishing creative range. Jazz provides an examples in the American experience of an analogous relationship between individuality of play within an essentially collaborative format. But so does baseball…, only in its case, with a game-based framework.
Given the varieties of play, form, format, media & platforms, there is no firm line between games & arts involving play. Basho embodies a relationship with each not just in renga, but even more so in his masterpiece, Backcountry Ways (oku no hosomichi), with various arts, genres, forms & games woven into its prose-&-poetry road-trip fabric–including both a hidden renga & a match-the-verse version of a traditional seashell-matching game. [Our Basho Wing will have more on such themes (though chapters on the hidden renga & seashell-matching game aren’t up yet).
Note the “dragonfly-pepper” story re his take on the need for integrity in the relation of art (play) & life. Basho weaves games, arts & life into a new whole, joining genres while making connections of all sorts. In this, he may be considered an early, singular master of what are now collaborative, network-based, and multi-modal arts, where parties from otherwise separate arts & media work together on a single project within a multi-media framework –as with the modern film.
His interest in games didn’t end with renga itself, however. In his great journey book, Backcountry Ways, he playfully embeds in the seemingly free-flowing prose-poetry sketches both a semi-hidden renga & a verse-focused version of a popular “seashell game,” in which players try to match shells up with their “other halves.” In this case, the game is matching up verses from the 50 woven into the fabric of his account. (Most scholars & translators have missed all but an abstract sense of both these games, caught up in the richness of its other qualities.)
The art of the game is distinct from game-art. The latter is what artists in other media do to enhance a game-idea. The former is inherent to the game, along with an aesthetic basis for evaluation, meaning our sense of its best qualities, whether structural or in the dynamics of the play generated. We may not be able to articulate the artistic quality of forms & elements any better with a game than with a moving Alexander Calder creation, but we respond.
The art of the game draws on a variety of arts. It’s more rare for the arts to incorporate game elements, though both share many attributes in common, notably the sense of ‘exploratory play’ the details of which aren’t known in advance, bringing SURPRISE! into the equation, along with its companions, e.g., alertness, attentiveness, expectancy, suspense…, all of which occur in the audience. In a stage play, for example, the real action takes place as much or more in the audience as on stage. That’s where the impact is focused, yet also from which an intensifying energy is supplied. The resulting play isn’t anything on a script.
This is even more obviously so in the case of games. Even where there is a product, e.g., an artistically designed & produced game board, with crafted pieces, etc., the real action takes place in (& the art unfolds through) the players inter-acting with each other within the game forms. In designing a game, the maker may be like a playwright scripting just what the players will give voice to spontaneously in the action generated. Sometimes, the unwritten script is even verbal, but it needn’t be, potentially including all the possible moves, actions, & dynamics of any game played in silence….
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[to be continued….]