Sunday 18 February 2007

Wittgenstein's Family Resemblance

It is almost impossible to give a definite definition of what a 'game' is as there are so many different types. "A game is a structured or semi-structured activity, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes also used as education tools." This was the best definition that Wikipedia could generate and still it is vague and doesn't tell exactly what a game consists of.
Since is is so hard to find a definition of a 'game' it is also difficult to find 'what is common to all these activities and what makes them...' Wittgenstein (no date). In his work Wittgenstein explains that games to not have a set of characteristics that they all must follow but that if studied you will find a mixture of characterstics that appear through games, that overlap with each other and that follow certain trends. He called this the 'family resemblance' as certain members of a family may hold a certain family 'trait' that connects them to each other.

This can be applied to two of the module games, Doom 2 and Manhunt. Although they were created at different times, by different companies and are based on a different 'plot' they both hold the characteristics of violence, menace, death, destruction and self gain by killing. They each have their own characteristics such as Doom 2 being set as a battle against creatures that do not exist whereas Manhunt is set against actual human beings.
Some characteristics here are unique to the game while others such as the level of violence overlap. Wittgenstein explained how these characteristics functioned as 'a complicated network or similarities, overlapping and criss-crssing' (no date).

Word Counts: 368
Bibliograghy:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein

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