There’s a les­son here. The great­est thing I learned from my for­mal­ist train­ing in paint­ing was actu­al­ly not about paint­ing. It was about the nature of knowl­edge itself: what it means to define a cre­ative prac­tice as a craft, or as a dis­ci­pline, or as a set of ideas, and how such a prac­tice relates to cul­ture at large. In oth­er words, the impor­tant thing to ask is not What is paint­ing? or What is game design? Instead, the real ques­tion is: What is gained and what is lost when we define it in a par­tic­u­lar way?

(via How I Teach Game Design. (Les­son 3: Games and Rules) | being play­ful)