"Game" gets used to analyze human behavior a couple of unrelated ways. Game theory as a branch of mathematics is about analyzing adversarial and potentially li

"Game" gets used to analyze human behavior a couple of unrelated ways. Game theory as a branch of mathematics is about analyzing adversarial and potentially limited knowledge systems. It is unrelated to whether some theoretical game is embedded in any particular social or moral system. You can look at dating, the voting patterns of the United Nations, and poker all under the lens of game theory even though the former two wouldn't generally be considered "games". Unrelated to that, over in the world of "ludology" or game studies and game development, people discuss what it means for a certain system to "be a game" or "not be a game". Likewise, they discuss what makes an activity "play" versus "not play". Why do we feel some moves are "play-like" and others aren't. What defines our notion of fair play? What is sportsmanship? What is cheating? Where is the line between the game and the metagame? I'm using "game" in the second sense here, which I think applies. When people say something "is a game", often what they are implying is that "all legal moves are fair play". But I think that value statement is only morally justifiable in an environment that is actually game-like. And for a social system to be game-like in that way means that everyone participating has agreed to the rules of the game and accepts that all moves are fair play.