My pal Greg Costikyan has a fantastic primer on game-design-theory up — it’s old, but I hadn’t seen it until today.
In The Art of Computer Game Design, Chris Crawford contrasts what he call “games” with “puzzles.” Puzzles are static; they present the “player” with a logic structure to be solved with the assistance of clues. “Games,” by contrast, are not static, but change with the player’s actions.
Some puzzles are obviously so; no one would call a crossword a “game.” But, according to Crawford, some “games” a really just puzzles — Lebling & Blank’s Zork, for instance. The game’s sole objective is the solution of puzzles: finding objects and using them in particular ways to cause desired changes in the game-state. There is no opposition, there is no roleplaying, and there are no resources to manage; victory is solely a consequence of puzzle solving.
To be sure, Zork is not entirely static; the character moves from setting to setting, allowable actions vary by setting, and inventory changes with action. We must think of a continuum, rather than a dichotomy; if a crossword is 100% puzzle, Zork is 90% puzzle and 10% game.
Almost every game has some degree of puzzle-solving; even a pure military strategy game requires players to, e.g., solve the puzzle of making an optimum attack at this point with these units. To eliminate puzzle-solving entirely, you need a game that’s almost entirely exploration: Just Grandma and Me, a CD-ROM interactive storybook with game-like elements of decision-making and exploration, is a good example. Clicking on screen objects causes entertaining sounds and animations, but there’s nothing to ‘solve,’ in fact, no strategy whatsoever.
A puzzle is static. A game is interactive.
(via Robot Wisdom)