Suitsonian Games

Bernard Suits came up with unique perspective about games in his book The Grasshopper, Games, Life and Utopia. The book redefined in many ways the treatment of games in philosophical terms and also set in motion the treatment of sports in logical and definitional perspectives.  Thomas Hurka who wrote an introduction to this book edits an anthology of detailed scrutiny of the book in Game, Sports and Play: Philosophical Essays. The analytical description in these works offer avenues to explore multiple dimensions of games and sports through a prism of philosophy. Further, it allows an extension of the insights into the domain of practical reality.

To understand, the dynamics of the same, it would be prudent to begin with the definition  of the games as constructed by Suits. He proposes the definition as “To play a game is to engage in activity directed towards bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by rules, where the rules prohibit more efficient in favour of less efficient means, and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity”.

The arguments by Suits are portrayed over a conversation between the Grasshopper and its disciple Skepticism. It is modelled similar to the dialogues of Socrates with Plato with the similar ending leading to death of Socrates except for resurrection of the Grasshopper. Interestingly, the character of Grasshopper is derived from the Aesop’s fable of grasshopper playing all the time while ant working to store for the winter. Ant has created sufficient reserves of food for survival in winter whereas the grasshopper with no food and all play dies in the winter.

To come back to the definitional construction, intrinsic to the game is an attainment of state of affairs. The state of affairs is independent and external to the game and intelligible to the observers. A soccer is all about outscoring in terms of goals your opponent. A game of cricket is about scoring more runs than the opponent while for chess it is checkmating an opponent. The achievement of objective is through the permitted rules. While in soccer, anybody in theory could take a ball and throw it as many times as they can into the goal but that is not what the rules dictate. There are certain rules that govern the state of play. Incidentally, these rules are not the best means or the efficient means to achieve the state of affairs. But by accepting the rules willingly, the players make it possible for such an activity to happen.

To Suits, games are indisputably choices exercised to achieve an end through the prescribed means. Therefore, what would be essential would be identification of the elements of the game play. It is obvious that the ends and the means to achieve the end constitute the first two elements. The attainment of the end-mean activities implies a presence of rule based activities.  The final element would be the attitude of the players towards playing the game. In fact, Suits goes on further and calls the attitude component as lusory attitude. Using these building blocks, the constituents of game play could be divided into 1) the goal itself 2) means of achieving the goal 3) the rules 4) the lusory attitude. To Suits, the lusory attitude is what integrates the other elements in the game play.

Through the construction of the elements of game play, the pointer is towards the involvement of players being autotelic. It is for the sake of enjoyment or pastime that a players gets into the game. The autotelic is about the kick the participation gives. It is about the successful execution of challenges leading to the attainment of the objective. To the players, it is the marginal utility that they derive from the activity that drives their participation. The marginal utility derived is not necessarily through winning though competition is critical element in many games. It is about achievement of a personal best or mere feeling that they have cracked something that gives them that kick. To attain their objective, they have to fulfil the conditions which they would willingly do. Thus the lusory attitude towards a prelusory goal is what drives and builds the games.

However, as Eric Bernie would point out, games need not be driven autotelic impulses but many an occasion driven by instrumentalist objectives. Suits somehow skirts it though he addresses at some length the issue. He makes it believe that he is taking a middle path between radical autotelic and radical instrumentalism. This also would perhaps explains the professionalism in sports as opposed to the ancient paradigm of sports being the epitome of amateur achievement. Till recently, the Olympics was strictly for amateurs and professionalism was shunned. The lusory attitude need not be stand alone to borrow from Suitsian analysis but could well have add on conditions.

In Suits parlance, there has to be an element of autotelic for the games to be called so. Games are in his words achievement of a goal by navigating an artificially constructed set of obstacles. The running race is about running in certain lane through a certain distance without cutting the field to reach the finish line. The lusory attitude of the players makes the race possible. To a farmer, ploughing a field is a physical activity with an instrumentalist goal. If he shuns the mechanical tools to demonstrate his prowess in manual ploughing might set conditions for a possible game, but his preference for utilising the most efficient means to achieve the goal precludes it from being described as a game. There is an instrumental objective in work whereas in play, the same is absent as a primary motivation though some add on instrumentalism might not be avoided.

Yet many instrumental objetives emerge as untended outcomes of the autotelic activities. Innovation is perhaps one such example. It is about who will create something novel, something new first. There might or might not be an intention of producing something utilitarian but nevertheless, the objective in race to produce first creates a game out here. The game is not even explicit, the rules perhaps implicit and self-regulated but a game nevertheless. Suits perhaps concedes to the possibility albeit very indirectly and subtly in the exposition on the life in Utopia but would a game as defined by Suits holds good to these deviations perhaps need greater elucidation. In fact, at every level even on an assembly floor there is an element of competition, a game to outperform the peers. In a Darwinian world of competition, this is what spurs the survival. There are existential games and there are games driven by frivolities. Yet the definition must consider the possibilities of both. Any construct is subject to both over-inclusiveness and under-inclusiveness. Suits tries to counter both through varying examples from diverse arenas. What Suits does set is the framing of the game analysis into a boundary, a boundary that is underlined by philosophical moorings rather than an anchor in science social or natural. This is the contribution of Bernard Suits.