Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theory of language games is to show how people learn to use language and can explain how, quite often, people don’t know what their language really means. For example, how children learn a language with mechanical responses before really knowing what their language means or what they are saying.

Wittgenstein starts by saying that within all languages there are language games. We play language games when we tell jokes, make riddles, give orders and obey them and sing songs. However, the term language game itself does not have one simple meaning, much like Wittgenstein is trying to explain with words themselves. He tries to show that a vast amount of words have different meanings to different people and that his theory is not just to show how we should use words but also to try to diffuse the confusion that is created with language games.

We can apply this theory to the word “game”. When we try to look at what the word “game” means we can see that there is a whole range of associated words and concepts. For most people the idea of “game” is something that is fun, with rules, competitive, aims, interacting between players, addictive, etc. However some people view some games as being more fun than others. Chess tends to be something that people can see as a fun game and others don’t. There is also the fact that some games contain some idea of what a game is, while others will have different ideas about games.
The game Samorost 2 doesn’t have the same “fun” appeal to some people as a game such as Doom 2 would have. Samorost 2 is a puzzle game to try and get back the main characters pet. To do this, you need to click on the correct pieces in the game in a correct order to move onto a new area. This has the idea of having a fixed aim within the game and having strict rules. However, Doom 2 has less fixed rules as the main aim is just simple to kill as many people as possible. This game has less rules than Samorost 2 but in both games you need to move onto a new area.


Bibliography:
Shawver, Lois. (Date Unknown) Wittgenstein's Concept of a Language Game
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