Describing Games: An Interaction-Centric Structural Framework

Björk and Holopainen's "Describing Games: An Interaction-Centric Structural Framework" proposes a vocabulary for describing games that serves as a bridge between abstract game theory and the practical needs of game designers. The authors argue that existing models from game theory, play theory, and game studies are either too abstract to guide design or too narrow to apply broadly, and they position an interaction-centric structure as a complement to game design patterns. The framework organizes game components into four categories, namely holistic, bounding, temporal, and objective, and grounds its concepts in examples drawn from board, card, and digital games.

The framework's core contribution is a shared terminology rather than empirical findings. Its foundational concepts include the game instance and game session, which range from a few seconds in Paper-Rock-Scissors to indefinite durations in massively multiplayer online games, along with play sessions, rules, modes of play, goals, actions, events, closures, end conditions, evaluation functions, players, interfaces, and components. Each concept is defined and situated within one of the three component categories, with the aim of giving designers and analysts a consistent language for discussing how games are structured and how players interact with them.

The authors draw on a broad base of sources, spanning classic works such as Huizinga's Homo Ludens and Caillois's Man, Play and Games, foundational game theory from von Neumann and Morgenstern, and practitioner literature including Crawford's The Art of Computer Game Design and GDC presentations from 2003. This combination of academic game studies, design theory, and design-pattern research reflects the framework's intent to connect analytical rigor with practical application. The work is primarily conceptual and taxonomic in character, and its value lies in offering a structured, interaction-focused vocabulary that can support both the analysis of existing games and the process of designing new ones.