Bernard Suits
American philosopher and professorWikipedia
15
MENTIONS
8
EPISODES
8
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Search complete. 15 mentions across 8 episodes found for "Bernard Suits".
Sep 20, 2026
speaker_0NARRATOR
It is mathematics approached as play.
speaker_0NARRATOR
The philosopher Bernard Suits wrote that playing a game is the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.
speaker_0NARRATOR
It is precisely this voluntary acceptance of the lack of necessity which turns mathematics into art and the kind of art which brings with it the joys of play.
speaker_0NARRATOR
No doubt the day will surely come when the universe will see fit, just as it did with us, to turn to these engines of our devising to answer its own enigma.
Ben MaddoxHOST
It is the difficulty that is the attraction.
Ben MaddoxHOST
The last sentence in particular fits quite well with Bernard Suits' definition of a game as the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles.
SteveHOST
God, everybody's got to reference something
Ben MaddoxHOST
now.
Ben MaddoxHOST
You're very clever.
Ben MaddoxHOST
We're all impressed.
Ben MaddoxHOST
He probably puts it better than me, Bernard Suits, I've got to say.
Ben MaddoxHOST
Me, than the writer.
Devin PersonHOST
Part one.
Devin PersonHOST
What is a game? In the 1970s, the philosopher Bernard Suits wrote a book called The Grasshopper that was his attempt to define the concept of games.
Devin PersonHOST
The Grasshopper is a delightful book.
Devin PersonHOST
It's based around the Aesop fable where there's an ant and a grasshopper.
Nick SutnerHOST
Is it even a game? The experience, experience 51, or experience one.
Nick SutnerHOST
Would Bernard Suits
Doug WilsonHOST
classify Miasma Tower as a game? Maybe that's a comment.
Doug WilsonHOST
No, we should not have that
Stephanie BolukGUEST
But I guess I'm compelled, like the aunt that I am, to go to a place of work.
Stephanie BolukGUEST
And that place of work is UC Davis, where Patrick and I both make games, play games, think about games, even sometimes write about games and podcast about games.
Patrick LeMieuxGUEST
And even sometimes teach Bernard suits.
Stephanie BolukGUEST
But
C. Thi NguyenGUEST
And there are two accounts of games that I've become, I mean, there are actually three, the accounts of what a game is that I find really interesting and getting at different parts of this one thing.
C. Thi NguyenGUEST
So Bernard Suits idea of a game is it's voluntarily taking on unnecessary obstacles to create the possibility of struggling to overcome them.
C. Thi NguyenGUEST
So that's part of it, right? Like part of what you were doing in these is we're becoming the interesting obstacles for each other.
C. Thi NguyenGUEST
I mean, I think it's really interesting that the way you, if you're playing a game like Risk or Settlers, the way you let someone down is that you don't try hard because they want a challenge and you are that challenge.
43 MINS LATER
Alex LeffHOST
And so how would we as a society move towards striving play? What would a society that encourages striving play look like?
C. Thi NguyenGUEST
Yeah.
C. Thi NguyenGUEST
I mean, my idea of striving play came from reading Bernard Suits, the philosopher of games, who defines games as taking on voluntary obstacles.
C. Thi NguyenGUEST
And Suits is an Aristotelian.
C. Thi NguyenGUEST
It's a thing we've always done, but we, but we normally use other capacities, so for by hyper-focusing on that capacity we plunge into it.
C. Thi NguyenGUEST
So Bernard Suits, the philosopher of games that really inspired a lot of my work, one of his interesting thoughts is that games through rules create new possibilities for action.
C. Thi NguyenGUEST
What he means is like there was no such thing as a checkmate without the rules of chess.
C. Thi NguyenGUEST
There's no such thing as like a layup without the rules of basketball.
C. Thi NguyenGUEST
Uh, the game Baba Is You, the one I talked about before, creates an action space where you're in a physics model and there are w- words inside the world with you that are the rules of the physics, and when you move those words around, you change the rules of physics, and that's not [laughs] a thing that is in this world, and someone has just created a new kind of action.
C. Thi NguyenGUEST
That's fascinating.
Debbie MillmanHOST
You introduced me to the work of Bernard Suits just through reading your work, and one of the things that I Came upon through your writing was his idea that playing a game means voluntarily taking on unnecessary obstacles for the sake of-
C. Thi NguyenGUEST
Yes
C.T. NguyenGUEST
What games really teach me is that the process is central to the value.
C.T. NguyenGUEST
So Bernard Suits, this philosopher that inspired me, the core of his argument really is that games are unnecessary obstacles that create extra struggle, right? A marathon says, don't use a car, don't use an Uber, don't use a bike, run in a bigger circle, don't take the most efficient path.
C.T. NguyenGUEST
If your goal was just the outcome, to be at that point, that would be idiotic.
C.T. NguyenGUEST
The only way to explain why we engage with these things is we care about a particular struggle or the experience of a particular struggle more than we care about the outcome.
Sean Philip CooperHOST
So I can go over there.
Lane HaygoodPANELIST
One of my favorite seminars that I took as an undergrad was on the philosophy of gains with Dr. Bernard Suits.
Sean Philip CooperHOST
Mm-hmm.
Lane HaygoodPANELIST
Who's the grasshopper games in new topia everyone should read lovely book and his point was that? Games are fun because we create self-imposed rules But those rules there is always some way that you can play within this the letter of the rules that nevertheless violates the spirit of the game and those people ruin everyone's fun and And so you have to have some sort of second order system to recognize when people are technically playing within the rules, but against the spirit of the game and have some way to stop that.