Problem This Solves
Fictional Games introduces a dense vocabulary combining coined terms, repurposed concepts from philosophy and game studies, and carefully scoped working definitions. Without a unified glossary, readers risk conflating terms (e.g., "minigames" vs. "nested games" vs. "fictional games") or missing the precise boundaries the authors draw. This reference collects every key term alphabetically with its definition and chapter of first appearance.
Key Principle
The authors' terminology is deliberately inclusive about what counts as a game (the "double definition") but exclusive about what counts as a fictional game. Understanding where each term sits on the spectrum from broad (any playful activity) to narrow (an unplayable, narratively significant ludic artefact within fiction) is essential for applying the book's frameworks correctly.
Good Examples
- Using "fictional incompleteness" to explain why Calvinball's ever-changing rules are an expressive feature, not sloppy worldbuilding.
- Applying the "ground/figure" distinction to sort Dejarik (background worldbuilding in Star Wars) from Azad (narrative engine in The Player of Games).
- Distinguishing a "nested game" (Triple Triad in Final Fantasy VIII, fully playable) from a "fictional game" (Kepesh-Yakshi in Mass Effect 3, only described).
Bad Examples
- Calling Gwent a "fictional game" after it was released as a standalone playable card game -- once formalized, it lost its ontological fluidity and became an actual game.
- Conflating "unplayability" with "bad design" -- unplayability is a constitutive expressive feature, not a flaw.
- Using "magic circle" without noting the critique -- Consalvo (2009) and Zimmerman (2012) himself revisited the concept as over-abstract.
Complete Glossary
A
Actuality -- Things or events currently the case in the world we natively belong to as biological creatures; distinguished from fictional worlds. (Intro)
Aesthetics of Imagined Agency -- The aesthetic relationship appreciators have with fictional games: appreciating games through imagination rather than play. Inspired by Nguyen (2020). (Intro)
Agency (in games) -- The possibility for players to take deliberate, intelligible action and experience the results of their choices. Building on Murray (1997). (Intro)
D
Double Definition of "Game" -- The authors' inclusive approach: (1) a nominal, loose definition of what a game is, and (2) qualification by virtue of being literally understood as a game by characters in the fiction. If characters call it a game non-metaphorically, it qualifies. (Intro)
E
Experience Machine Spectrum -- A continuum derived from Nozick's (1974) thought experiment, ranging from irrevocable total experiential replacement (plugging in is "a kind of suicide") to temporary, playful immersion with maintained awareness of artificiality. (Ch. 4)
F
Fiction -- Content supposed to be imagined -- not believed -- by its audience. Engaging in fiction consists of accepting the author's invitation to imagine. (Intro)
Fiction-Games -- Christopher Nash's term for the imaginative games involved in creating works of fiction (not games depicted within them). Two modes: neocosmic (forming coherent fictional worlds) and anticosmic (destabilizing fictional worlds). (Foreword)
Fictional Games -- Playful activities and ludic artefacts conceptualized as part of fictional worlds, meant to trigger imagination but not actually playable. Games that exist within works of fiction and occupy significant narrative or thematic roles. The book's foundational term. (Foreword/Intro)
Fictional Incompleteness -- The deliberate vagueness and under-specification with which fictional games are presented. Rules, boundaries, and success criteria are merely hinted at, serving narrative and worldbuilding rather than ludic functions. Not a flaw but a feature. (Ch. 1)
Fictional World -- Environments and events in a work of fiction meant to be imagined as experienced as worlds by the fictional characters who inhabit them. (Intro)
Figure (fictional game as) -- Focal fictional games central to narrative, serving as social instruments (maintaining or subverting the status quo) or tools for indirect characterization. The Gestalt counterpart to "ground." (Ch. 1)
G
Gadamerian Play as Entrancement -- Gadamer's understanding of play as a hypnotic, spellbinding force that absorbs and masters the player. "All playing is a being-played." Central to the analysis of deceptive fictional games. (Ch. 4)
Ground (fictional game as) -- Background fictional games that contribute to worldbuilding, make fleeting appearances, and are not crucial to plot. Often variants of familiar games enhanced with futuristic elements. Inspired by Gestalt psychology and McLuhan. (Ch. 1)
H
Hallucinatory Quality (of games) -- Drawing on MacPherson (2020): the quality of deceptive fictional games where player experience is "somewhat veridical" but "unexpected, incomprehensible or even monstrous." (Ch. 4)
I
Ideological State Apparatuses (applied to games) -- Althusserian framework viewing games as institutions that reproduce dominant ideology by both representing it and ensuring its continuation through production of goods and services. (Ch. 2)
Ideology -- A set of socially shared beliefs that contribute to constituting an individual's goals and determining their actions. Distinguished from values: ideologies are adopted implicitly and pre-reflexively; values are explicitly accepted as guiding principles. (Intro)
L
Ludic Subjectivity -- The alternative mode of being that emerges when a player inhabits an avatar, arising from convergence of the player's subjective experience with the avatar's affordances in the virtual world. Drawing on Vella (2016). (Ch. 5)
Ludic Transcendence -- The authors' term for forms of overcoming directed toward surpassing physical, cognitive, or existential limitations through game-like activities, especially involving augmentation of one's biological body. (Ch. 5)
Ludification of Culture -- The progressive blurring of boundaries between play and non-play in society, where game-like structures permeate jobs, economy, and relationships. Perceived as a "mounting danger to our culture." (Ch. 6)
M
Magic Circle -- Salen and Zimmerman's (2003) concept of the boundary where a game takes place. The book explores what happens when it expands to encompass a character's entire existence, is critiqued as over-abstract (Consalvo 2009), and is reinterpreted as incantation rather than separation (Schrank 2014). (Ch. 4)
Meta-Referentiality (of fictional games) -- The capability of fictional games to suggest critical and/or satirical perspectives on how actual games are designed, played, sold, manipulated, experienced, understood, and used as part of culture. Almost all fictional games possess this quality. (Ch. 6)
Minigames -- Playable sub-games within a digital gameworld, uninfluential on the main narrative, sharing control schemes with the broader game. Examples: archery challenges in Zelda, fishing minigames. Distinguished from fictional games by being fully playable. (Ch. 1)
N
Nested Games -- Playable sub-games "ludically isolated" from the wider gameworld, accessed via in-game arcade cabinets or consoles, often structurally simpler. Examples: Geometry Wars in Project Gotham Racing 2, Triple Triad in Final Fantasy VIII. Distinguished from fictional games. (Ch. 1)
O
Ontological Fluidity -- The quality fictional games possess by virtue of their incompleteness: the capacity to become more than they are through imaginative engagement. Lost when games transition from fictional to actual. (Ch. 1)
S
Satirical Fictional Games -- Fictional games that present humorous critique of how actual games are made, played, used, and shared socially. Examples: Bonestorm and Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge (The Simpsons). (Ch. 6)
Symbolic Dramas (games as) -- Murray's (1997) concept that games synthesize and compress human experience into finite, regulated objects. Monopoly as "an interpretation of capitalism"; Tetris as "a perfect enactment of the overtasked lives of Americans." (Ch. 2)
T
Teleological Crispness -- Nguyen's (2020) term for the quality of actual games where "the functions of objects and the meaning of actions are entirely obvious." Fictional games deliberately lack this crispness; their ambiguity is their expressive power. (Ch. 1)
Thought Experiment -- An imaginative act consisting of engaging with a hypothetical situation, often unlikely or impossible in the actual world. Some fictional games function as philosophical thought experiments. (Intro)
Thrownness (Geworfenheit) -- Heidegger's term for being thrown into existence in a certain way and world, confronted with unchosen qualities and conditions. Transcendent fictional games help characters overcome their thrownness. (Ch. 5)
Transcendence (working definition) -- The act of deliberately overcoming obstacles and limitations that bound and define one's condition. The authors restrict this to physical, perceptual, and cognitive overcoming through games -- excluding merely imagined or political forms. (Ch. 5)
U
Unplayability -- The defining impossibility of accessing fictional games as players. Four sources: (1) fictional incompleteness, (2) impossible magical/technological features, (3) nonhuman design, (4) ethical impermissibility. Not a deficiency but the condition enabling philosophical and expressive functions. (Ch. 1)
V
Virtual Existentialism -- Application of existentialist philosophy to virtual worlds and video games. Play understood as "an alternative mode of existence" free from non-negotiable aspects of actual life. Cronenberg's sceptical take: games as places where one is "deprived of possibilities." (Ch. 5)
W
Worldbuilding -- The efforts on the part of authors to present a detailed and plausible fictional world, originally literary but now encompassing film, games, and video games. (Intro)
Key Quotes
"Unlike actual games, fictional games are neither formally complete nor teleologically crisp for the fiction appreciator." -- Gualeni and Fassone, Chapter 1
"When fictional games are formally resolved into actually playable artefacts [...] they become effectively different artefacts with substantially different properties." -- Chapter 1
Rules of Thumb
- If characters in the fiction literally call it a game, it qualifies under the double definition -- even if it violates classical game definitions (Huizinga, Caillois).
- If a game-within-a-game is fully playable by the real-world player, it is a minigame or nested game, not a fictional game.
- Ontological fluidity and teleological crispness are inversely related: the more crisp, the less fluid.
- Every term above has a specific scope; avoid using them interchangeably with everyday synonyms.
Related References
- Key Case Studies -- see these terms applied in close readings
- Rules of Thumb for Analyzing Fictional Games -- practical heuristics that operationalize these definitions