A video game is usually a regulated, structured form of active play, normally undertaken for fun or entertainment, and at times used as a learning tool. Games are different from work, which typically are carried out only for profit, and from literature, which are primarily an expression of cultural or aesthetic concepts. Games by their nature encourage the player to think, to evaluate and modify their strategies according to changes in the environment.

Gaming takes a variety of forms, depending on the type of game and the participant’s goals. For example, a platformer, action or adventure game requires the player interaction through jumping, running and shooting. Strategy games normally take the player through a single story line, requiring some degree of thought and planning. The last two are known as “idle games” because the player is required to do nothing but view the environment and carry out little or no action.

Most adventure games are first played on consoles, although some have been released to PC. Action games are more common to handhelds and personal computers. As a result, video game genres tend to be divided into three categories: shooters, racing games and role-playing games. Each category has its own level of complexity, requiring players to exert a significant amount of skill and inventiveness in order to succeed.

Shooter games are multiplayer games that are played with a group of people in close proximity. They are designed to simulate a battlefield by providing varying degrees of realism, including realistic sounds, various visual aspects (such as aiming and firing) and various game mechanisms, such as aiming for cover. The player has a limited number of lives and is often given various objectives, such as protecting his position or making it across a battlefield. The objective may be reached one level before failing, providing the player an opportunity to attempt again, this time restarting at the beginning of the level if necessary. This type of game usually involves complex planning, careful maneuvering of the character, timing their actions against those of the enemies and a great deal of strategic thinking.

Strategy games are single player games that require no interaction from the players (they are often played in isolation). Often they are military simulation games or simulations of classic battles. The player takes control of a major piece of military equipment and the mission of the game is to defeat their opponent; sometimes this involves overcoming obstacles and combating superior numbers of enemy soldiers. These games are very similar to war games and board games, where the objective is to conquer land by employing tactics and strategies. There are many popular strategy games, some of which are: Age of War, Territory War, Fire in the Lake, War in the East, Fall of Rome Gold.

idle games are single player games where the player has no desire to advance the storyline or solve puzzles or achieve goals. They are often related to card or board games, but often have no relation to any of these games. These types of games include: Bunkers & Rabbids, Dr. Darkkan, Lemonade Tycoon and Mentalist. There are many other idle games available including musical games, word games and memory games. Some of these games are online games, where one player runs a machine that interacts with other players to build tracks and levels, while the other players try to beat the machine at each level.