A game is an artefact or a context that prescribes that the player shall traverse certain motivational structures in the course of play. In this presentation I examine how these actions and motivational structures are possible.  I first introduce the notion of a conative ecology. I argue that the notion of an “affordance” is unsuited to use as a basic concept to determine the reality status of the game environment, as an alternative I propose to analyse such ecologies as
consisting of agential properties that determined by the contents of practical reasoning. Next, I discuss representationalist understandings of game ecologies. I argue that we fail to see what games are if we assume that they essentially are systems of signs. While most games do utilize system of signs, I hold that their main function is to prescribe action guiding properties that are endowed by cognitive mechanisms very similar to those we use
when we establish social ontologies. In the last part I outline a proposal for how game ecologies consist of artificial
similarity spaces imposed by a process I call “deconditionalization”, and use this proposal to characterize the nature of computer game ecologies in particular. I put forward the claim that the function of the game mechanism is to instantiate forms of actions that are to be acted on for their own sake. The outcome of this proposal is an understanding of games that make them out to be works of actionable structures.

This presentation is based on the paper “The Ontological Status of Game Ecologies”, available in the archives for  Philosophy of Computer Games Conference, Krakow 2017. https://shorturl.at/AX469

References
Aarseth, Espen J. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. UK ed. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
25
Aristotle. Nicomachean Ethics. Translated by Martin Ostwald. 1 edition. Pearson, 1999.
Aristotle: Poetics, edited and translated by St. Halliwell, (Loeb Classical Library), Harvard 1995
Brandom, Robert. Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994.
Brey, Philip. The Physical and Social Reality of Virtual Worlds. In Grimshaw, Mark, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Virtuality. Reprint edition. Place of publication not identified: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Davidson, Donald. Actions, Reasons, and Causes. The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 60, No. 23, American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division, Sixtieth Annual Meeting (Nov. 7, 1963), pp. 685-700
Chalmers, David. The Virtual and the Real, 2015 (?). Unpublished, available online.
Gibson, J.J. (1950). The Perception of the Visual World. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Gibson, J.J. “The theory of affordances”, in Perceiving, Acting and Knowing: Toward an Ecological Psychology”, R.E. Shaw and J. Bransford (eds.). LEA, Hillsdale NJ, 1977, pp. 67-82. Gibson, J.J. The ecological approach to visual perception. LEA, Hillsdale NJ, 1986.
Gregersen, Andreas. “Designers, Games and Players: Same Game Different Rules?” In Digital Arts & Culture 2005 Conferance. Copenhagen: IT-University of Copenhagen., 2005.
Norman, D.A. “Affordances, conventions and design”, in Interactions vol. 6, no. 3, 1999, pp. 38-43.
Noe, Alva. Action in Perception. Cambridge, Mass: The Mit Press Ltd, 2005.
Frasca, Gonzalo. Simulation versus Narrative: Introduction to Ludology, in Video/Game/Theory. Edited by Mark J.P. Wolf and Bernard Perron. Routledge, 2003
Juul, Jesper. Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, c2005.
Linderoth, Jonas. “Beyond the Digital Divide: An Ecological Approach to Gameplay.” Transactions of the Digital Games Research Association 1, no. 1 (April 5, 2013). doi:10.26503/todigra.v1i1.9.
Searle, John R. The Construction of Social Reality. London: Allen Lane, 1995
Sageng, John Richard. “In-Game Action.” In The Philosophy of Computer Games, edited by John Richard Sageng, Hallvard Fossheim, and Tarjei Mandt Larsen, 219–32. Philosophy of Engineering and Technology 7. Springer Netherlands, 2012. http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-007-4249-9_15.