If you have any questions, suggestions or criticisms about The Game or this FAQ please post them in our forum, email us at mail@losethegame.com, or message us with the box on the right (if we're offline please include your email address so we can get back to you).
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What is The Game?
- The Game is an abstract mental game.
- The objective of The Game is for players not to think about The Game, and ultimately to forget the existence of The Game entirely. An alternative objective is to make everyone in the world aware of The Game.
- Play is continuous, consisting of alternating periods of losing (when you are thinking about The Game), and not losing (when you are not thinking about The Game).
- Players who lose The Game must tell other people that they have lost.
How do I play The Game?
- According to most interpretations, either everyone in the world is playing The Game, or, everyone who knows about The Game is playing. The Game is played all the time; players cannot quit, pause or take breaks from playing. [Rule 1]
- Standard play does not require any active input and players go about their daily lives as normal. However, if a player thinks about The Game, they have lost. Loss is temporary; once the player stops thinking about The Game, they stop losing, but they will lose again the next time they think about The Game. [Rule 2]
- Every time a player thinks about, and hence, loses The Game, they have to tell other people that they have lost it. Some interpretations require that you tell as many people as possible that you have lost, while others only require that you tell those with you at the time of loss. [Rule 3]
What are the official rules of The Game?
As the origins of The Game are uncertain, and it spreads mainly by word-of-mouth, there are numerous variants and interpretations, and no official rules as such. The three rules stated on our homepage represent the core rules that we have found to be most commonly played. The original version of The Game (see below) was simply a game that you lost by thinking about the game itself, and telling someone else every time you lost just made sense.
Some common additional rules played by many people are as follows:
- Grace periods
Following loss there is a period of time known as a “grace period”, usually 10-30 minutes, during which the player cannot lose again. In other words, thinking about The Game during the grace period does not constitute loss.
- British Prime Minister / Queen of England
A number of players believe that The Game ends once either the British Prime Minister or the Queen of England announces their loss on national television. Although we do not believe this will bring about the end of The Game, we do believe that it will make lots more people lose. Click here to help us make the British Prime Minister lose The Game!
- Chuck Norris
It has been proposed that Chuck Norris is the only person capable of winning The Game. We plan to contact him to ask him if this is true.
How many people are playing The Game?
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Some interpretations state that everyone in the world is playing The Game, but the exact number of people who are aware of The Game is impossible to determine and is growing all the time. However, it is certain that millions of people are losing The Game across the world. Some evidence supporting this includes:
- 1,000,000+ people have visited LoseTheGame.com in the last five years, and over 2000 people lose The Game by visiting our site every day. The Game Map (shown above) above shows the locations of visitors since January 2010. The biggest red dots represent over 1000 people.
- 1,000,000+ British people lost in December 2008 when The Metro published a full-page article about The Game on page 3. (Check out the Game Awards for more global media references to The Game)
- 150,000+ active losers have joined our Facebook group.
Who created The Game?
Some players believe that The Game has always existed as an undiscovered concept since the birth of time. Such interpretations mean that The Game was never created, only discovered, and, of course, immediately lost.
- The Finchley Central Hypothesis
Mornington Crescent is a game that parodies (makes fun of) games and sports with complex rules. Players take turns to announce the names of London underground (subway) stations, and the winner is the first player to announce "Mornington Crescent". The objective is to give the appearance of skill and strategy by referring to very complicated and confusing rules, although in reality no such rules exist. In the early 1970s, John Horton Conway, a prominent game theorist and the father of combinatorial game theory, attempted to create a game that did not fit the von Neumann definition of a game. He created a parody of Mornington Crescent, called Finchley Central, by reducing it to only one rule; the first person to announce "Finchley Central" wins. In 1977, members of the Cambridge University Science Fiction Society (see below) regularly met at the Horse and Groom pub (Kings Street, Cambridge, UK) to, among other things, discuss game theory and drink beer. One member, Richard Pinch, had been taught Finchley Central by John Conway and they would sometimes play it together. In attempt to violate von Neuman's definition of a game even further, they created a parody of Finchley Central by reducing its single rule to its logical extreme. The first person to think of Finchley Central would lose. The rest, as they say, is history. The members of CUSFS assert that the creation of The Game was a collective effort, but credit Nigel Goldenfeld and Mark Haslett with releasing it into the public. The CUSFS 1977 collective includes:
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So, after more than five years of searching for its origins, is it possible that we've finally tracked down the individuals who masterminded The Game over 30 years ago? Is The Game a parody of a parody of a parody, created by drunken game theorists who had no idea of what they had unleashed on the world?
While there is no hard evidence to prove these claims, we have been in contact with all the above Cambridge graduates and their accounts fit with other evidence we’ve obtained over the years. So unless this is some kind of very elaborate hoax, it is certainly the most plausible account we've heard so far and the closest we've ever come to knowing The Game's true origins.
Feel free to use this information to try to find more evidence yourself and be sure to contact mail@losethegame.com if you do find anything interesting.
Other origin theories and useful information:
- Email correspondence supporting the Finchley Central hypothesis
- Earliest known internet references
- The Jamie Miller hypothesis
- The "Cheers mate" hypothesis
- The Eckhart von Hochheim hypothesis
- Further information
I hate The Game!
Do you think The Game should be banned, censored or made illegal? Some people feel that The Game is purposeless and find other people playing it annoying or disruptive. The Game has annoyed some people to such an extent that it has been banned at SomethingAwful.com, GameSpy.com, Fairless High School (Ohio), Massaponax High School (Virginia) and Keesler Air Force Base (Mississippi).
Documentaries explaining The Game
Further questions
- How do I win The Game?
Under most interpretations and variants The Game cannot be won, and there can be no final victory. Some people interpret the rules so that when you are not thinking about The Game (not losing) you are winning. More extreme variations pose that The Game will end or that everyone will win if either the British Prime Minister or the Queen of England loses The Game on national television. Although we don't believe it will make The Game end, we've started a campaign to get the Britsh Prime Minister to lose The Game on national television, click here to find out how you can help.
As The Game cannot be won, there are two potential objectives; to lose as little as possible, or to make other people lose more than you. The authors of this website has chosen the second of these options as our strategy. We make thousands of people lose every day and aim to infect the entire world with The Game. If you want to make your friends lose more often, or help us in our mission to make the world lose, please check out our strategies page.
- Are there any penalties for losing The Game?
The only penalty for losing The Game is having to announce your loss to others. Loss is only temporary, as soon as you stop thinking about The Game you stop losing.
- Can The Game be tied or drawn?
This can happen temporarily if two people think about The Game at the same time. This becomes increasingly common The Game becomes more strongly associated with different ideas within a group of friends.
- Can I cheat at The Game?
The only rule that can logically be broken is Rule 3. Many people choose to break this rule in certain situations, and some people never announce their loss.
- What do I do when I think about The Game?
Whenever you think about The Game, you lose, and if you choose to follow the rules you have to tell other people that you've lost. Usually this is done by saying something like "I just lost The Game", although different players announce their loss in different ways. Check out our forum for lots of examples of what people say when they lose.
In situations where speech is not possible or appropriate, some players have developed non-verbal ways of announcing loss, including sign language either for "game" or simply just "G", tracing the letters in the air, passing notes, or subtle actions that have previously had the intended meaning explained, such as rubbing their head or scratching their nose.
- What happens if I lose The Game but don’t announce it?
If you are aware that you have lost The Game, but you don't tell anyone, you have broken Rule 3 and are cheating. If you think or talk about The Game but don't announce your loss because you haven't realised that you have lost, then this does not constitute cheating under some interpretations.
- What happens if I think about The Game but don’t realise that I’ve lost?
It is possible for people someone to the think about or discuss The Game without realising that they have lost, and hence don't announce it. As they have not consciously broken Rule 3 this does not constitute cheating under some interpretations. The concept of "thinking about The Game" can be interpreted as a range of distinct mental states:
- Thinking about anything related to The Game. This does not necessarily constitute loss and is easily possible to do without realising that you might have lost.
- Thinking specifically about The Game. This is still posible to do without realising that you have lost as many experienced players are aware.
- Being aware that you are playing The Game. Again, possible to do without realising that you have lost, but much less likely.
- Being aware that you have lost The Game.
- Why should I play The Game?
There is no reward for playing The Game, but like most other games, it poses a challenge that players try to achieve. The strategies involved in making your friends and strangers lose more than you are fun and the mental associations that become linked to The Game are also interesting to players. If you're looking for games with a reward, you'd be better off playing your favorite casino games.
Some players believe that you have no choice to play The Game, as stated by the rules. They would argue that anyone who claims not to play The Game is actually playing, but simply choosing to break Rule 3 by not announcing they have lost The Game every time they think about it. Participation in a game requires neither consent to play or awareness of its existence. For example, whoever reads the previous sentence wins this example game. You won this game even though you were unaware you were playing it.
- Is The Game really a game?
Although some people would argue otherwise, The Game does fit into most definitions of a game; it involves a number of players trying to acheive an objective.
- Is The Game a meme?
The original definition of a meme, coined by Richard Dawkins in the 1970s, is any information that can be stored and replicated by human minds. This makes The Game, and every other idea and concept, a meme by definition. The more recent usage of a meme as a rapidly spreading concept (usually online) also applies to The Game. In terms of memetics, The Game is interesting as its rules represent the fundamentals of memetic replications. The Game is simply a concept that can be thought about and then replicated to other human minds, it does not have any other properties.
- Is The Game a virus?
[UNDER CONSTRUCTION]
- How can The Game be studied?
See gameology.
- Can I take a break from playing The Game or quit permanently?
No. You are playing The Game all the time and you lose if you think about The Game at any time.
- Do I have to explain The Game to people who don't know about it?
Although not within the standard rules, one variant requires that, upon losing, players explain the rules of The Game to anyone who is unaware of them. Another variant requires that a warning/disclaimer is given before explaining The Game to those unaware.
- Is there a way to keep score?
There are score-based variants of The Game. When one person loses The Game, they lose one point and everyone they announce their loss to gains one point, or, alternatively, those present receive the lost point shared between them (in other words, everyone gains one point divided by the number of people that loss has been announced to).
- What if someone talks about The Game but they don't know what it is?
This is very open to interpretation. It comes down to whether "thinking about something" requires an understanding of the nature of the thing that is being thought about. If someone asks "What is a pentagon?", are they thinking about pentagons even though they don't know what one is?
- Do I lose The Game when someone else loses and announces their loss to me?
Under most interpretations, yes, you do. However, some variants do not require loss to be re-announced by everyone present. Usually, although everyone has lost, the initial loser is "blamed" for the loss of the group. An anology would be a team losing a game because of the action of one team member.
- Has The Game already ended?
No. Nobody has the power to end The Game (except possibly Chuck Norris). A number of people claim that the xkcd comic really frees them from The Game, but even the comic's creator, Randall Munroe, is aware that it's just an ironic way to make you lose more. A more recent claim is that the following 4chan post ended The Game:
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Many 4chan users believe that whatever is written in a post ending in triple digits becomes true. It could be argued that this post spawned a new version of The Game that can be ended by a 4chan triple. The Game (4chan version) has ended according to its rules, and thinking about it no longer causes you to lose (that version). However, thinking about The Game (original version) still causes you to lose the original version, as this version is a concept that does not include the 4chan modification.
A 4chan post ending in triples is hardly an amazing occurrence as there are one thousand possible permutations of the last three digits (000,001,002... 999) of which for each of the ten digits (0-9) there is one triple (000,111,222... 999). So there is a ten in one thousand, 1 in 100, or 1% chance of any given post ending in triples. As such, we encourage people to end this dilemma once and for all. Any 4chan triple can be countered with another 4chan triple, so if you have some time, go to 4chan and post "If this post ends in triples, The Game starts again and you lose." If your post does actually end in triples (we should get one after 100 attempts) then take a screenshot and send it to us.
- Was The Game created on 4chan?
No. 4chan was created in 2004 whereas the earliest known online mention of The Game was posted in 2002.
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