What is a Game?

We talk about games all the time.  We talk about the Everygame Casino Welcome Bonus as the key that unlocks all 300+ of our games.  As a gaming emporium, we talk about slots, table games, games of chance and games of skill, and casual games like Fish Catch and Banana Jones that our exclusive game provider SpinLogic designed just for fun.

What we would like to do in this article is to talk about what a game actually is!

The Everygame Casino Welcome Bonus

First we should talk a little about the Welcome Bonus which is actually four deposit bonuses and a no deposit bonus at the end all of which can add up to $5555 in bonuses.  We will have more to say on this later on in the article.

Now we can return to the discussion about games.

So, what is a game?

Definitions Abounding

As you might have imagined, a game is a much more complex enterprise than “just a fun activity”.  Some would call a hobby a type of game since it is clearly fun for the person who likes it even though it might be horribly boring to someone else!

Oliver Roeder wrote a book called “Seven Games” with the subtitle “A Human History”.  We can guess that the book is about seven unique and special games and that the author will connect these games to the history of the human race and of games taken as a unit.

Roeder’s seven games are:

1. Chess
2. GO
3. Backgammon
4. Bridge
5. Poker
6. Scrabble
7. Checkers

It may seem ironic that the only one of these games we offer here at Everygame Casino is poker and at that we offer video poker and Caribbean Poker.

We might make a much different list of the classic games:

1. Slots
2. Blackjack
3. Baccarat
4. Roulette
5. Craps
6. Bingo
7. Keno

We didn’t include video poker and Caribbean Poker even though we offer them and they are fantastically popular because we can’t call them classic games in the sane sense as the others.

Bernard Suits Offers His Definition

Mr. Suits says that even though people have been playing games for thousands of years, the one element of games that stands out is that the people who can play games are the people who have some free time to do so!

In this way, a game is a pastime in which the players try to solve an unimportant problem!  This is not a trivial way of looking at games!  In fact, it is exactly the way we would like gamers to see gaming at Everygame Casino: gaming is a form of problem solving where the problem is not important and the solution may or may not be important!

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What Do Online Casino Gamers Solve?

In the games of chance, gamers solve the problem of unwinding and relaxing in the evening after another long day at work!  The game is simply the conduit to relaxation and a calming down process.

Some do the same thing by reading, some by listening to music, some by taking a walk, and some by playing games!

In the games of skill, gamers solve the problem of activating their minds and accepting challenges that are not important in the larger scheme of things.  Blackjack and video poker are perfect examples of this kind of game and problem solving.

The Other Challenge Online Casinos Pose

Online casino gaming also involves making bets on the outcomes of the games.   In order to perform the task we have just defined for game playing, the casino has to also be a place where gamers can control their money.  Thus we encourage short gaming sessions fairly often.  We offer many bonuses and free spins.  We have many promotions that return money to gamers.

The challenge gamers face at an online casino—and much more strongly at land-based casinos—is to control their betting so that the games can serve the purpose for which they were invented and designed.  The challenge an online casino such as Everygame Casino faces is to help gamers conserve their money.

The bonuses and free spins we give are one way we do this.  We also publish many articles that help gamers learn the very important “art” of sound money management.

Our giant Welcome Package is a stepping stone to fun playing games.

Do Professionals Play Games?

Let’s backtrack a few paragraphs to Bernard Suits.  He defined a game as an activity that involved voluntary attempts to solve unimportant problems.  His definition was very narrow in that he considered games to be the province of people with time on their hands.

Some people do exactly what Mr. Suits said: they try to solve unimportant problems voluntarily.  Some of these people are considered to be “on the spectrum”.  Furthermore, many people play games professionally and for them the problems they seek to solve are very important as are the solutions!

So are professional sports games or not?

Fun is the Key

Here at Everygame Casino, our guiding philosophy can answer this question quite well!  Our guiding philosophy is that casino games should be fun and that gamers should see online casino gaming as a form of entertainment.

A professional athlete who does not have fun playing and does not see himself or herself as part of a troupe of entertainers is NOT playing a game!  Athletes who do see themselves as part of a troupe and do have fun playing are playing a game.  The games these two types of athletes play may be the exactly same game!

We have all seen this very thing play out on YouTube clips of professional poker.  On the one hand, Daniel Negreanu always seems to have fun playing while, on the other hand, Phil Helmuth always seems one card away from a major tilt.

Phil Helmuth and Daniel Negreanu both play professional poker.  Helmuth may even be better than Negreanu.  But for Daniel Negreanu, poker is a game while, for Phil Helmuth, poker represents all of his emotional baggage, his weaknesses, and his problems with self-confidence!

Is There a Bottom Line?

We have referred to Robert Pirsig and his great book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” many times.  It is relevant here as well!  In the book, Mr. Pirsig talks about good maintenance and poor maintenance.

Briefly, good maintenance is more than making the vehicle run well; it is also making the person doing the maintenance “run well”!  This is really the gist of this article: Good gaming is gaming that makes the gamer “run well”.  We wish good gaming for all of our gamers.

In order to achieve good gaming, we suggest that you JOIN EVERYGAME CASINO NOW!