What is a game?

I found a nice description of this thing that I really, really like to do.

A game is:

A system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome

Quoted from Rules of Play by Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen.

It came from this article: http://shufflebrain.com/etech06.htm, and I found another very interesting blog that brings multi dimensional views about games: http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/

Coincidentally, one of posts in there - How to be an expert - kind of ties in with one comment that I made in another blog today. In that comment I stated that genius are born, while the post said that anyone can be a genius, as long as they are dedicated, willing to put in all the time and focus. Here is the crutch. I believe that people are somehow born with an inclination to certain abilities. Whether they develop it or not, is another story.

For example, assume that person A and person B both put in the same amount of effort (per hour) learning Japanese. However, person A might just need to put in 800 hours of study to clear JLPT1 compared to person B's 1200 hours. They will both end up at similar competency level, but unless person B really, really likes or needs Japanese, he might have been served better by pursuing, let's say Cooking (where person A regularly gets sugar and salt mixed up). The time required is of a different scale altogether.

Sure, I probably could be a Scrabble GM like Sonic by putting in the hours. Why would I want to do that if I can probably learn another language in the time I would need to memorize the scrabble dictionary :P.