System approach to games and competitive playing

Abstract

A deep understanding of sport competition is essential for games because the success of coaches and players in such events is dependent on many qualitative and latent factors, which are explainable by means of highly problematic and complicated procedures. The difficulty of setting out the “winning-factors” in games in orderly fashion has forced researchers to study a game as complex entitites, and in particular as dynamical systems (Bar-Yam, Y. (2000). Applications of complex systems: Sport and complexity. NECSI. Website publication: http:/necsi.org/guide/examples/basketballcomplexity; Bar-Yam, Y. (2003). Dynamics of complex systems. New England Complex Systems Institute: Perseus Books Group; Mayer-Kress, G.J. (2001). Complex system as fundamental theory of sports coaching? Keynote presentation. International sports coaching symposium. Taichung, Taiwan, 01/11/16-18, arXiv:nlin.AO/0111009 v1 2 Nov 2001; McGarry, T., Anderson, D. I., Wallace, S. A., Hughes, M., & Francs, I. M. (2002). Sport competition as a dynamical self-organizing system. Journal of Sport Sciences, 20, 771–781). This article is a further attempt to explicate games in this fashion. The article examines games by analyzing three main and interrelated categories: “game” itself, “system”, and “conflict”. I will try to prove that the match (the process of game playing itself) is a conflict of at least two complex dynamical systems. Such a vision stands in debatable contrast to the published, well-known approach of Tim McGarry and colleagues (McGarry, T., Anderson, D.I., Wallace, S.A., Hughes, M., Francs, I.M. (2002) Sport competition as a dynamical self-organizing system. Journal of Sport Sciences, 20, 771–781), which contends that competitive playing itself constitutes a dynamical self-organizing system.