What is a game? Seems like a fairly obvious question, we all know what games are, we all play games. So, it's easy to define, right? A game is a game. Turns out that it's extraordinarily difficult when you think about it, to figure out what it is that makes something a game. And we don't want to get too hung up on semantics here. It's not that in order to do a gamification, you need to get some approval by the official game board that what you're doing truly involves games.But to understand how to tap into the power of games. And to understand how to create things that are actually game-like, would help to have as a starting point an understanding of what a game is. So, it turns out that this is a deep, philosophical question. And there've been a number of works by major philosophers that've taken on just this challenge, defining what a game is. And of course, this is not a philosophy course, but it's helpful to understand some of those perspectives because as we'll see, they teach lessons that are going to be very valuable in understanding the power of games as used for gamification.