Kinds of Games

Kinds of Games sounds like a broad title for a book, course, or reference work that sorts games into types, and that is exactly the sort of thing teachers, designers, and curious readers reach for. By our assessment, its value would lie in organizing a messy field into clear labels, which is useful when you want to compare board games, video games, sports, or children’s play without mixing them together. The downside is that a title like this can only go so far before it becomes a list of categories, and a list is not the same thing as insight. In practice a work of this kind is usually more about structure and classification than about narrative or personality, so the reading experience is steady rather than exciting. Compared with a single focused study, it is broader but thinner; compared with a general encyclopedia, it should be more deliberate about how it groups things. Kinds of Games is for reference and overview, not for a deep argument about one game or one tradition.