For the past few weeks I have been trying to quantify something in my mind, something that is a very large and complex subject, and was inspired by giantbomb's GDC coverage.

This subject is the Philosophy of games, and I am struggling because I am unsure if such a thing even exists, or if I am over thinking things or what. The general idea is that 'You can do things with games that you cant do in other mediums' which to an extent is true, but then you can do everything you can in games, except have viewer control, in other mediums as well.

What about 'You can engage the player in ways no other medium can do' This is true, TV, Movies, books, music wont engage someone to even half the extent that videogames do, but is this a philosophy?

I am not talking about the philosophy of games design here, I taking about games as a whole. If you sit down and think about games and what they do it is actually really hard to think about one philosophy for the entire medium. Different genres have a different philosophies attached to them, making this even hard to quantify, yet I can't dispell the notion that this over arching philosophy is there, I just need to find it.

It could be something as simple as 'games are designed to entertain, thats what they are and they dont fulfill thier full potential until they do', which now that I have written it, is actually fairly accurate. Everything has a purpose, a singular use that it will always be destined for, for example, an apple or an orange have the singular purpose to be eaten. So maybe once a game has entertained someone, somewhere, its purpose is fullfilled and that is the philosophy of games, so long as they entertain someone, thats all they need to be.

But the medium is growing all the time, pushing itself in new directions and taking on new challenges, so this philosophy seems a little simplistic. The notion that games help push technology in the systems that use them is true, but also simplistic and other factors contribute to that. Maybe its that people who are skilled in certain areas that arent viable to music, movies or other area's of IT come together and decide to be creative, forming something that means something to them, that is thier vision.

I have read through this piece and decided to call it a day, simply because my head hurts thinking about this and I can go off on so many tangents with each new thought. I think maybe, the philosophy of games is different to each and every person who plays/creates them, and that they are as much about individuality and what you take away from them as they are about the amount of effort, time and volume of people that go into creating them. If you have any thoughts on this, or think you have figured it out, please let me know, but for now, I am off to find some anadin...