Many readers are familiar with Bernard Suits' definition of 'game' in The Grasshopper. For those of you who aren't, Suits offers this definition of playing a game: "engaging in an activity directed towards bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by rules, where the rules prohibit more efficient in favour of less efficient means, and where such rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity" (pp. 48-9).
I'm wondering whether video games are a counter-examples, because of the condition "the rules prohibit more efficient in favour of less efficient means." This makes sense for most games: in golf, it would be more efficient to just carry the ball by hand and put it into the hole; in poker, it would be more efficient to just reach across the table and take all your opponents' chips/cash. But what is the analogue of these 'more efficient' ways in a video game?
One might point to cheat codes, but even if a cheat code does satisfy this condition of Suits' definition, we can at least imagine a video game that doesn't have cheat codes.
