Winning, Losing, and Playing the Game

This chapter argues for two independent but related theses: that it is an essential feature of games that there be winners and losers; and that winning and losing should be replaced with the more general notions of success and failure in a game. The first thesis has the consequence that many activities Suits countenances as games are not games but mere pastimes, easily confused with games since they can readily be turned into games. The second thesis tries to incorporate winning and losing into Suits’s account, arguing that the broader notions of success and failure are what his account needs—someone is still playing a game even if she tries to achieve the silver medal rather than the gold—which has the additional benefit of showing how the abstract analysis of games in terms of success and failure is linked to the strategies players adopt in playing the game.