1 Games are not cooperative
2 Games are not designer intentions
3 Games are not references (of the conventional sort)
4 Games are not narratives
5 Games are not beliefs
6 Games are not gameplay
7 Games are not toys
8 Games are not simulations: part one
9 Games are not simulations: part two
10 Games are not commodities
11 Games are not what you think
12 Games are art (because games are not art)
Index

The nascent field of game studies has raised questions that, so far, that field has been unable to answer. Among these questions is a foundational one: What is a game?

Despite the widespread appeal of games, and despite the rise of digital games as a global cultural phenomenon, vexing problems confront those who design, play, and think about games. How do we reconcile a videogame industry's insistence that games positively affect human beliefs and behaviours with the equally prevalent assumption that games are 'just games'? How do we reconcile accusations that games make us violent and antisocial and unproductive with the realisation that games are a universal source of human joy?

In Games are not, David Myers demonstrates that these controversies and conflicts surrounding the meanings and effects of games are not going away; they are essential properties of the game's paradoxical aesthetic form.

Buttressed by more than three decades of game studies scholarship, Myers offers an in-depth examination of games as objects of leisure, consumption, and art. Games are not focuses on games writ large, bound by neither digital form nor by cultural interpretation. Interdisciplinary in scope and radical in conclusion, Games are not positions games as unique objects evoking a peculiar and paradoxical liminal state – a lusory attitude – that is essential to human creativity, knowledge, and sustenance of the species.