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If a cheat wins the match, has he even played the game? Help me with Suits

Gerrit Venter Contributor
· 6 replies · 228 views
Play, sport & humourAnalyticBernard Suits#cheating#definition-of-games#games#lusory-attitude
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I coached under-16 rugby for thirty years and I am now, in retirement, working through a book my grandson gave me: Bernard Suits's The Grasshopper. I like it, but I keep losing the thread on one point.

Suits says a game is an attempt to reach some goal using only the means the rules allow, where the rules forbid the easier means, and where you accept those rules because they make the activity possible. He calls that acceptance the lusory attitude. Fine. Then he seems to say that a cheat is not actually playing at all.

That sounds wrong to me as a coach. I have watched boys cheat, and they were very much playing. They were sweating, competing, trying to win. The other side certainly felt they were in a game. If the cheat isn't playing, what exactly is he doing out there for eighty minutes, and why does it make us so angry if it isn't a game he is spoiling?

Could someone explain what Suits actually claims here, and whether there is a sensible version of it that a man who has refereed a lot of muddy Saturdays could accept?

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6 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Tomasz Wójcik

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    Gerrit, that gap between what the scoreboard says and what happened is exactly the point. Suits gives three figures who fall short in different ways. The trifler keeps the rules but doesn't care about winning. The cheat cares about winning but breaks the rules. The spoilsport cares about neither and just stops pretending the game matters.

    The cheat is parasitic. He needs everyone else to keep the lusory attitude, otherwise there is no win for him to steal. That is why he makes you angrier than the boy who simply walks off: the one who walks off ends the game honestly, while the cheat keeps it running so he can take what it produces.

    So the sensible version of the claim is not that nothing happens when he cheats. It is that his ‘victory’ is a counterfeit: it only looks like the real thing because everyone else is still playing.

Other answers

  1. Huang Wei-ting

    Contributor

    I design puzzle games, so this is my daily bread. The key is that Suits separates the goal of a game into two layers. There is the pre-lusory goal, which is just a state of affairs you could reach any old way: the ball over the line. Then there is the lusory goal, which is winning, and winning only exists inside the rules.

    The cheat is aiming at the second while using means that only get him the first. So he can produce the state of affairs (ball over line) but not the achievement (a try). That is why your boys looked like they were playing: from outside, the physical activity is identical. What is missing is the thing that makes it count.

    Helpful · 2
    1. Gerrit Venter

      Contributor

      That helps. So the scoreboard records something the cheat never actually earned. But the scoreboard still says he won, and the medal is still in his drawer.

      Helpful · 3
  2. Sam Ellery

    Contributor

    Debate coach here, and we have exactly the same structure. A student who invents evidence can win the round on the ballot, and everyone in the room knows he has not won the argument. Tomasz's word ‘parasitic’ is right. Fabrication only works because the others still treat evidence as binding.

    Helpful · 1
  3. Brian Otieno Ouma

    Contributor

    One small worry. In the prison class I teach, a man told me the game he grew up in had rules that were themselves rigged, and cheating was the only way to have any game at all. Suits's account seems to assume the rules are fair enough to be worth accepting. When they are not, does the cheat become something closer to a protester? I don't have an answer, but I didn't want the lovely tidy picture to go unchallenged.

    Helpful · 2
    1. Gerrit Venter

      Contributor

      Brian, that is a fair hit. On a rugby field the rules are agreed and the same for both sides, so I can live with Suits there. Off the field I suspect you're right that it gets messier. Thank you all, I think I finally see what he was after.

      Helpful · 3