The compatibility of games and artworks

People often refer to games as “works of art.” In a recent article (Rough 2017), Brock Rough argues that being a game is incompatible with being an artwork. I argue that Rough’s reasons for endorsing this incompatibility thesis are unconvincing. Rough’s arguments implausibly discount the possibility of objects whose status as the kinds of thing they are can depend on multiple constitutive prescriptions. His arguments also presuppose that the prescriptions which make something count as a functional kind must be part of the thing in question. In fairness, this presupposition is often made, albeit rarely defended. I argue that we should reject this presupposition and understand the relationship between such prescriptions and functional kinds non-mereologically, and that this further undermines Rough’s argument