Zimmerman's definition of game: it is a voluntary interactive activity, in which one or more players follow the rules that constrain their behaviour, enacting an artificial conflict that ends in a quantifiable outcome. From a layman's point of view, I'd say yes Calvinball is a game... Except that it's a horribly lousy game cuz it wouldnt make sense at all what goal am i trying to achieve and how i can go about winning this odd game. However, this is a gaming culture module... so... based on Zimmerman's definition, Calvinball will be very near a game... but not yet a 100% fit. Although Calvinball has a score (quantifiable outcome) at the end of the game, it does not carry with it any logical meaning at all ( Legal scores include 'Q to 12', 'BW-109 to YU-34, and 'Nosebleed to Trousers') and there's no logical consistency to it too. In addition, the rules are not exactly effective in setting up the boundaries of the game too. It's played such that any player can change any rules at anytime and the whole game will then undergo a change in how it's played accordingly which makes everything very confusing and hard to keep up. This creates a problem where the game will always have to be on hold for a new rule to be explained... eg. the part where calvin gets touched by a babysitter flag and he had to ask what's that? We can just imagine what a pain it'd be to play such a "jerky" game and worse... to find out that you've lost the game all of a sudden only because there was a new rule added -_-" how irritating... so conclusion = not exactly qualified to be considered a game...

Can't make out any meaningful play out of it too I believe... since the rules and objectives of the play can be changed so quickly, it's really hard to put your finger there and say that's the objective of the game and whether or not you've achieved it. I'd classify just classify this under informal play... and YES!! i've managed to finish this before midnight... which means I can finally get to zzz early!!! after all the late late nites I've had... starting to fear CNY more than looking forward to it now... cuz I get sooooo BUSY!!