thoughts, words, deeds

playing games

In his book The Club Dumas, Arturo Perez-Réverte says, “Even if there is foul play, without the rule there is no game.”
What does this quote mean, and how does its meaning reflect in your life?

Huh. Well, to begin with, all games need rules. If they don’t have rules, there is no way to cheat. Those rules must be mutually agreed upon by all participants in the game. There is nothing more frustrating than to come to a point where the rules suddenly change and instead of playing the game that you thought you were, you’re suddenly playing something else where the rules are undefined but seem to be designed to make you lose.

The most haunting and creepy villains are those who treat things as a game. For example, in the fourth Harry Potter, when Voldemort is resurrected, he doesn’t kill Harry out of hand the way he does Cedric. Instead, he forces Harry into a duel, complete with formal rules like bowing to the opponent. He tries to follow the formula because that will make Harry’s defeat (that doesn’t happen) more clear to his followers. In other words, it’s more about the rules and Harry ends up breaking them (by running away) instead of following the rules and dying which was the endgame.

I try not to run my life as if it was a game. However, I’m very aware of rules. Most of them are personal ones. Constraints that I place on my own conduct so that I feel good about the life that I’m living. It’s not a game, it’s a way of being.

On the other hand, stories are a kind of game. They need to follow rules so that the world that they describe can be shared between writer and reader. So, I guess, as a story teller, I am a gamer.