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They call gambling a disease, but it’s the only disease where you can win a bunch of money.

— Norm Macdonald

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Sometimes to my wife’s chagrin, I’ve got a penchant for collecting a wide variety of odds and ends that intrigue me, especially games. A few years ago, I came across a curious little game called “The Royal Game of Ur.” It is a sort of reproduction by The British Museum of an ancient Sumerian game in their collection, believed to be one of the oldest extant board games in the world. My wife’s scruples about my habit of treasure hunting were exceeded only by her graciousness in agreeing to play the game with me. The game is not only good fun, but strikingly resembles many games that are still common today, especially backgammon, though I recall reading that “Ur” may have been largely supplanted by the development of backgammon in the ancient world, and having played both I am inclined to believe it. In my experience, backgammon’s increased complexity enables more varied and interesting interactions and strategies. It is a game far less likely to stagnate or stalemate.

Games like Ur, Go, and chess are a ubiquitous staple of human history across all places and cultures. Play is somewhat common throughout the animal kingdom, but games are a rarer sight. A game is basically a framework of rules, that is, laws, in which play takes place. The spoken word, a facet of being made in the image of God, gives shape to the rules that become games. We embody God’s image through our creativity and also our ability to articulate boundaries. Games are a distinct example of this.

But more than Ur or backgammon, I enjoy card games like poker, especially Texas hold ‘em. By God’s good grace, to date, I’ve never played hold ‘em with real money, and I shudder to imagine the debt that fact has saved me from. I have my hot streaks, sure, but I certainly wouldn’t consider myself “good” at poker. I’m too unsure, inconsistent, tantalized by the prospect of a big win, and hence easily frustrated and put off-balance. That’s part of what I love about poker, though, that these traits of me as a player (even as undesirable as they may be) reflect traits of me as a whole person, not just in the context of the game. That’s because poker creates an environment that’s natural, that reflects the real world, and so forces the players to contend with reality by simulation. The context of the game mimics the context of the wider world, the traits of the game mimic the traits of life.

I think that’s what makes all games interesting, really, and perhaps it’s why I don’t like chess as much as poker. Chess is so calculated, so sure, so precisely mapped out and deterministic. The players may be unpredictable, but the game itself involves no chance whatsoever, and that isn’t consistent with my broader understanding of the world. Ironically, perhaps this is also why I hated Parker Brothers’ “Risk” when I was younger, because I couldn’t yet accept the truth that every strategy, no matter its merits, must stand and give account to chance. The strongest army is at the mercy of the dice. In hindsight, maybe “Risk” would make a pretty good title for most games, because it’s a decent title for the pattern of life itself. Despite my gripes with the lesser reflection of this in chess, in a sense all games are gambling because of the constant evaluation of reward in the context of an indeterminate, or at least obscure, future. 

Physicality is only incidental to conceptual games like chess or Risk or even something like rock-paper-scissors, whereas physical reality is essential to athletic sports like basketball, football, baseball and the like. This might help explain the popularity of the grand sports metaphor, i.e., the sports movie with a heartfelt lesson for life, the inspiring and life-changing talks from coaches to struggling teams, the much touted benefits of sports in school to the maturation of children, and so on. Physical sports incorporate chance in all the same ways as the rest of physical existence, regardless of their rules, just as they incorporate the same risks always incumbent upon mortal creatures. Even the apostle Paul didn’t shy away from using sports as a metaphor for the Christian life because of their representative contention with the limits of our fallen flesh. 

It should come as little surprise, given I’ve already shown my hand (forgive me) in confessing my love of chance games, that I have a dear place in my heart for Pascal’s Wager. During the time in my life when I struggled most with my faith, the view of faith as a wager made a great impact on my commitment to faith over the honey-yet-wormwood allure of agnosticism. I’ve heard more than one objection to Pascal’s Wager from Christians, atheists, friends and strangers all, and I admit that it is not a comprehensive view of faith, but I contend that it is a poignant one nonetheless. We are indeed mortal creatures of fallen being, grappling with sin and ignorance and separation from our Creator. For everyone alive, that is the game, and our lives, our very souls are at stake — whether we like it or not. We who live are already in the game. There are plenty of things Pascal’s Wager can’t accomplish, but its success lies in conveying a functional mode of confronting obscurity, and by framing the stakes in this way it opened my eyes to the need to place a bet. By God’s grace, I’m all-in on the cross of Christ.

The value I find in games is in their existence as microcosms of this truth. I recently heard something said to the effect of, “The way you play games is the way you do everything,” and, strangely, my first thought was of Jordan Peterson’s “clean your room” mantra. For perhaps the first time, it really made sense. When Peterson drifts into lofty soliloquies about how making your bed is reenacting the creation of the world, I think this is what he’s basically trying to say. Just as your room as the heart of your home is a reflection of how you treat your whole life, which in turn reflects your structure of values and beliefs, games are a reflection of how you navigate the world. They present in miniature prizes to be valued, threats to be avoided, problems to be solved — and, in the best games, a healthy element of the unforeseen, the random, the inexplicable, and the unavoidable.

This intent is also what differentiates games from mere play. Games are ordered, designed, created expressions within creation by creatures attempting to grasp it. Games consist in the word, in law, and in structure that animals simply aren’t capable of. Animals certainly play within certain unspoken rules, but the difference between an unspoken and a spoken rule cannot be understated here. Human beings are the only creatures capable of making the rules rather than just instinctually, biologically conforming to them. Video games, games built purely out of code, logic, and math, games that by the magic of technology enforce the rules themselves, are perhaps the epitome of this fact. Video games are the most obvious example of microcosms because they literally contain their own worlds operating by their own rules.

The nature of games makes contemplating the contemporary medium of video games with a view to human history an interesting task. In the last two decades especially, video games have exploded in terms of scope and variety. It is clear that a great deal of artistry goes into their development, so the debate about whether or not they constitute art really should be framed as whether video games are art or merely contain it. My opinion has generally been that video games are not art, they are games. Their essence is the rulesets programmed to direct the objectives, constraints and conditions of play, though the experience itself may contain art. There is one example that has challenged my opinion on this.

Dark Souls is one of, if not the greatest video game series of all time — yes, especially Dark Souls II, the hill I am cursed to perpetually die on. The reason this example proves such a problem for my understanding of video games is how intelligently integrated the rules of the game are with the narrative and world those rules are framed by. Dark Souls does a lot of interesting things in both areas, but I think what’s most basically fascinating about it is its meta-commentary on the very significance of games as such.

For the unfamiliar, Dark Souls, among other things, mythologizes the basic pattern of a video game with archetypes from a vast breadth of folklore and fantasy. It’s also a sort of examination of Western archetypes under an Eastern lens. It is the story of the knight who must slay a dragon, but that story is stretched out into an endless cycle of death, reincarnation, and repetition. That is, after all, the standard format of a video game. Most video games are repetitious cycles of death and rebirth in quest of an enduring, even independently existing objective. The game exists despite the player and, though the character the player controls is confined to the objectives of the game, the human player must decide whether the objective is even worthwhile, if the game is even worth playing, à la Pascal’s Wager. It acknowledges that, like life, the game is not contingent on the player, but the player is contingent on the game.

There is so much more I could say about Dark Souls, but my point is that its artistry, like all art, lies in its bearing out of reality. The world of the game, not just the trappings of its fantastical setting, but the very logic of its simulation, is true. The best video games make the game itself artful, the worst are those in which the story, theming and gameplay are merely incidental to each other. Many video games nowadays are really movies. The artistry is largely relegated to elements of the “game” as a whole product which take agency away from the player, and the rules of the game, its essence, are almost completely unrelated. They are engaged with almost entirely passively. 

Anyone who has played the Dark Souls games, whether or not they enjoyed them, can tell you of their infamously frustrating difficulty. These games are like poker, all about risk, the weighing of cost against benefit, the measuring of the prize against the stakes, and sometimes the player loses big. The story of the game is about, on one level, whether seeking the obscure purpose of existence is worth the risk of losing one’s humanity, while the story of actually playing the game is about whether the rewards of beating a certain level are worth the havoc it wreaks on your patience and blood pressure. This aims the question from Dark Souls II‘s Scholar character, “What is it that drives you?” not just at the player character but at the player himself simultaneously. He’s not just asking the character whether his existence is worthwhile, but asking the player why he has played the game to that point in spite of its difficulty. The story of the game is about humanity and the world, the nature of fate, the point of existence, because that’s what playing the game is about. 

Good games, from poker to football to Dark Souls, are artful in that they are pictures we paint of reality. Their purpose is explanatory and experimental. They help kids develop into adulthood by providing safer, smaller versions of the world where its logic can be processed in bite-sized, isolated, narrative experiences. They help adults maintain a life that is social, a mind that’s sharp, and a view on the world that is dynamic and growing by functioning as the same pockets of truth that good works of art do. 

Games aren’t identical to art necessarily, but in this way they are basically stories. The narrative of life is made digestible in the mini-narratives of sports and games. Part of the narrative of poker is its round-based structure. Each hand is like a self-contained game in itself. The player has no control over what he is dealt, and not every hand is worth playing. He must not only decide how much to bet, but whether or not to wager anything at all. Life is a big game, a collection of games, a game of games, and in the broadest view the stakes could not possibly be higher. We all have only so much to bet, and you can be sure most of what you can sacrifice your life to is not worth the buy-in. But as Pascal proved, the only way to guarantee you lose is to not play.

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. — Ecclesiastes 9:11 (KJV)

Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. — 1 Corinthians 9:24 (KJV)

Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.

— Hebrews 12:1-2 (KJV)