Games as Futuristic Tools: Looking for an Advanced Definition

Abstract

The internet of things era brought a connected world that started to use datas of individuals and physical environments massively. These datas are important for individualized life experiences. Gathering and using these massive and complex datas are also a boring, distracting and discouraging process for both users and interaction designers. At this point, the basic instinctual products of humankind, games may have a key role in the new data oriented era from now on. Games appear in every part of daily life and it seems that they will be highly used as an interactional tools in mobile, wearable or smart environmental technologies to provide data from individuals. In this new era there is high linkage between big data, wearable technologies, digital games and game based applications. Herein understanding games is a crucial subject for researchers and educators. This literature review seeks to define diversified attributes of games. For this purpose, game definitions of the leading, well known-most cited researchers in the field of game studies were determined and reviewed. As a result of the review, it was obtained that games have at least 55 different attributes that make games a very complex concept. According to this finding and attributes classified, authors made a new specific definition of a game, as futuristic tool, that pays regard to new smart age. Games and their possible roles in the future life contexts and education was also discussed in the study.