Abstract Games

Picasso does Pictionary

All games are abstract, OK?  If I’m rolling a die to see if this guy hits that guy in the head with a halibut, that’s an abstraction of actually hitting someone with a halibut.  However, there comes a point where the halibut isn’t even a fish and that isn’t even a guy. Go is probably the perfect example. Your stones placed on a grid are pretty much stones on a grid.  They are not samurai, they are not stock investments, they are not space stations. They are stones on a grid. What the game is about fades to nothing under the rules. Checkers. Tic Tac Toe. The game universe represents nothing more than the game universe.  Chess might be a wargame, but it is more heavily abstract.

Yes, every time you roll a die or have a card in hand, you are somehow abstracting a situation.  It’s when the situation isn’t clearly defined that a game becomes an abstract.

TLDR: If the game has zero ties to representing actual situations, it’s an abstract.