A Minimal Definition of Games
Games consists of two things: oracles, which determine "what happens next?", and one or more players, who determine "how do I feel about that?". If players act, they begin playing; some of these acts trigger or consist of negotiation of/with an oracle, others may not; some portion of playing is role-playing. The output of this system is work and feelings.
Collapsing the Diegetic Frame
Acts by the players can be framed as diegetic or non-diegetic, where diegetic is within the fictional world of the game. Using TTRPGs as an example, in-charactar speech by the players is diegetic if in the same language as spoken. Expansions of what is included in the fiction allows introduction of other acts: description of character actions if the fictional world is a narrative about the world; questions for the referee if the fiction includes access to character interiority where such doubts can be represented as internal dialogue; game mechanics if the fiction includes the acts of players playing a game about the world. This collapse of frames allows the same simple model to represent an audience watching a game, where the audience becomes the players of a new "audience game" and the original game becomes the oracle.
The Main Frame
No frame is preferred, but we want to examine frames which minimise the number of expansions and maximise the mapping of player acts to diegetic acts: we call the frame that balances these two quantities in an aesthetically appealing way the main frame. How close, how frequent and how sustained the mappings in the main frame are will vary from medium to medium and game sessions to game session. Examples of close mappings include VR games with motion controls, immersive LARPs and role-playing sessions where the oracles are in-character problem-solving, consensus-building and rhetorical effectiveness.
Oracles in the Main Frame
Many negotiations with oracles have the awkward property that they are not diegetic in the main frame. A game controller can only rarely represent a human body in motion. However through repeated play, the human brain is highly capable of internalising these acts so that negotiating of/with the oracle feels like the diegetic act it represents. While more research is needed, it seems likely that the easiest to internalise negotiations are interacted with tactilely, in clear and unambiguous ways to allow other players to recognise them and which don't require players ask for permission or clarifications before doing so; such as moving miniatures in an I-go/you-go grid-based environment.
Simulation and Oracles
Oracles which simulate the game world have the advantage that conversations about them can be diegetic. A map board with armies on it can be talked about as if the players talking were generals planning an attack. Likewise if the acts required negotiate with an oracle are named after diegetic acts, even if the acts themselves are not diegetic.
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