Like every other games researcher, I’ve had to come up with some useful definition, or at least a general notion, of what a game is. Unlike many others, I’ve dispensed with a lot of the obvious stuff to get to what I find to be most essential.

In my definition, gone are victory conditions or even explicit goals. I’ve discarded conflict and competition and, perhaps most surprising, even interaction.

I’ve boiled and sifted, reduced and sorted until I came up with a definition that I think works:

Games are algorithmic entertainment.

While many of the classic definitions have trouble figuring out what to do with Tony Hawk and kite flying, Second Life and professional soccer or playing Grand Theft Auto for the sheer thrill of viewing sunsets on the beach, my own definition is plagued by the fact that I have to consider screensavers a form of game.

And I do (although a very limited sort). This has always bothered people who entertain this definition out of curiosity or, perhaps politeness. But I think I’ve come up with an example that helps connect the lowly screensaver to the broader ecology of games.

Thinking Machine 4 is a fascinating and beautiful little program that lets you play chess against a computer. It adds the extra dimension of illustrating the chess program’s move analysis by showing thin threads of color as it traces each considered move across the board. The selection of colors and the simple geometric representation of the pieces add to the effect, creating an active, animated 2-D sculpture.

It also happens to show visually why games are so much fun to play and watch.

As Raph Koster points out in his book “A Theory of Fun” we are pattern-matching creatures. More so, we are a race of beings that likes to watch patterns work over time. An algorithm is a way to talk about patterns that operate over time, because in a sense, that’s exactly what they are.

Whether you can visualize the lines of possible chess moves streaming out across a playing board or not, you see this dance inside your head. This is a fundamental pleasure of chess—watching the patterns play out. On top of this enjoyment we add the challenge of solving puzzles and beating an opponent. But underneath, we watch a delicate flicker of possibility and actuality played out. If you didn’t think so before, play with Thinking Machine 4 for a while. Whether you play to win or not, you find yourself wrapped up in the patterns each move spins. It is easy to find yourself only watching the patterns, disregarding the outcome of the game.

Thinking Machine 4 turns chess into a screensaver.

And that’s what I’ve argued before. A screensaver is a limited form of videogame because it lets you enjoy the unfolding of pattern over time. And this is algorithmic entertainment—patterns over time that give us pleasure. Thinking Machine 4 just helps make that more clear.

Why does any of this matter?

I know that spending time erecting definitions for things everyone already knows about seems like the worst kind of ivory tower thumb-twiddling. And maybe it is.

But from my point of view, a failure to understand what makes a game a game is at the heart of the game design problem. You can argue that money-hungry, risk-adverse publishers strangle the creativity out of game designers, demanding cookie-cutter derivative games. Then again, are designers really brining the most interesting new ideas to the table? Or are they just piling new cargo on the same old, creaky cart?

As long as we see games as stories or graphics or even collections of ever-expanding piles of verbs (with apologies to Chris Crawford), we can miss the heart of the game—the algorithm.

A good game might have a fabulous story, elegant graphics and a staggering array of things for the player to do. But none of it matters much if they don’t find the choices interesting, And the game system, the algorithm as I like to call it, is fundamental.

When I saw Spore this year at E3, my first though wasn’t,“Will Wright is a genius,” or “Ah, what a fabulous combination of genres,” or even “This game elaborates on the inherent potentials in the connection between procedural content and interactive narrative.” Nope. My first and most furious thought was, “Can I have the mouse? I want to play with that!”

Will Wright is a genius, Spore does tear down genre barriers and shows the promise of the computer as a storytelling tool. But it’s all because this game itself has come to terms that what is really fun, the system, the algorithm.