Not A Game / Literature

Times where somebody gets informed that "This is Not a Game" in Literature.

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By Author:

• In Dorothy L. Sayers:
  • Whose Body?, at one point, Lord Peter Wimsey talks with Parker about his misgivings, and Parker points out that, though he started this as a distraction, it's not a game, and he can't act like a sportsman in it.
  • In Clouds of Witness, Peter goes to see his brother in jail. Gerald tells him he wishes he'd stop playing at detective, and Peter tells him that it's not a game.

By Title:

• Subverted in the Black Jewels trilogy, in that to the Sadist, it is a game. Near the end of the series, when Daemon's not quite as cold-hearted to everything, the phrase he (and other characters) use to tell themselves they've got to keep going is, "Play the game," or keep the deception against the Big Bads going. Similarly, when witnessing an Arcerian execution, one character says, "He [the huge intelligent tiger] is playing with him [the man to be executed]." Another character replies, in a grim, low voice, "He's playing, but it isn't a game. This is an Arcerian execution." The tiger then proceeds to precisely, brutally, mercilessly murder the man by batting him around as he would a toy. Considering said tiger weighs in at around 800 pounds, the man lasts about a minute before being gutted and left to die as everyone else watchs. In case you're feeling even the slightest bit sorry for the guy, the reason for the execution was several (like, twenty plus) counts of rape, including gang raping the village's Priestess, murdering a whole village, and betraying his race, cause, and Jewel. Don't read that unless you have a strong stomach or you don't visualize things as you read them.
• A similar sentiment comes up in one short story published in Cicada magazine. The main character, Brian, gets a telescope from his Defrosting Ice Queen stepmom Monica, who tells him that it isn't a toy. Brian agrees, but notes that she said the same thing about the Playstation 2 she gave him earlier.
• Dawn of War: In C.S. Goto's Dawn of War: Ascension, Gabriel threatens an Eldar to try to get a translation from him, informing him that it was not a game.
• Terry Pratchett's Discworld:
  • Small Gods has the repeated line(s), "This is Not a Game, Here and Now You Are Alive."
  • In Making Money, Mr. Bent tells Moist that banking is not a game, but Moist replies, "It is, and it's an old game called What Can We Get Away With."
• In Shanna Swendson's Don't Hex with Texas, Owen tells Dean that magic is not a game.
• In Adrian Tchaikovsky's Dragonfly Falling, Drephos annoys a Wasp officer by speaking of the next move in the game (the war); when asked if it was a game to him, Drephos retorts that it is the officer, too, and they knew the stakes.
• In Jim Butcher's Dresden Files novel Summer Knight, Ebneazer, trying to get Harry to meet with the senior members, tells him this is not a game; later, the Summer Lady asks whether he thinks it a joke or game.
  • In the same vein, Harry is later trying to teach a rebellious, headstrong apprentice of his own. She turns invisible and hides in his car, but he finds out and yells at her that this is not a game or a joke, but serious, life-or-death business-she could get badly hurt, or worse. Cue the one time in the entire series Harry refrains from being his usual Pop-Cultured Badass self.
    Molly: Yoda never gave anybody a bracelet that...
    Harry: I. Am not. Yoda.
• The Exile's Violin: Jacquie tells Clay repeatedly that detective work is dangerous but it doesn't sink in until they are captured and tortured under suspicion of spying.

• Dan Abnett's Gaunt's Ghosts novels:
  • In Only in Death, after the loss of Gaunt, Rawne informs his officers to tell the men that if they slip up, they will make Gaunt's sacrifice in vain. When they are shocked:
    Rawne: I'm not playing around because they're not playing around.
  • In His Last Command, when Gaunt orders Ludd to leave him, and Ludd objects that his orders were to stay with him at all times, Gaunt answers that that was fine when it was just a game, but it wasn't a game anymore.
• In Sarah A. Hoyt's Gentleman Takes a Chance, Keith thinks a power is cool, and Rafiel starts to rebuke him. Keith says he knows it's not a game or a play, but it's still cool.
• In The Greatest Game: Hunters, one of Major Karl Bolle's first lessons to his trainees for the fighter branch after introducing himself, laying down the ground rules, going over what he's going to teach and saying how few of his trainees survive long enough to become aces, is to disabuse them of the notion that dogfighting is a game.
  Bolle: An Englishman once called air combat "The greatest game that God ever invented." I would bet money that he now lies in a shallow grave in Flanders. THIS IS NOT A GAME!
• The Heartstrikers: Julius's brother Bob is a Mad Oracle, and crazy even by that standard. Julius eventually gets fed up with his antics.
  Julius: This isn't a game, you know.
  Bob: Of course it's a game. Everything's a game, Julius. It has to be. Life is whimsical, random, and cruel, but a game is something you can win.
• In one of Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot novels, Hastings rebukes Poirot for his deceptive tactics by saying he's not 'playing the game.' Poirot sternly replies that murder is not a game.
• In John C. Wright's The Hermetic Millennia, Menelaus watches an interaction not turn out as he expects. He is disappointed, and catches himself, reminding himself this was not a game.
• In Julie Kagawa's The Iron Daughter, when Meghan realizes that the Iron Fey are still killing the wyldwood, Puck argues that this is not a game to try to get her to go home.
• The Jenkinsverse: A variant comes up in the Salvage story.
  Trycrur: Think of it like a game. Except if you lose you kill everyone.
  Adrian: That's real fucking reassuring.
• In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, when all four Pevensies swipe coats from the wardrobe to wear in snowy Narnia, one of the younger siblings suggests they could pretend they're Arctic explorers. An older sib points out that their circumstances are already exciting and mysterious enough, there's no need to pretend anything. Not quite a Matter of Life and Death, but same trope.
• In Poul Anderson's "Lodestar", Nicholas van Rijn deduces where they are getting the transuranics to sell and asks for a cut. Coya and David Falkayn argue that it's just a game for him, he doesn't need the money, but it's not a game for those doing it. He gives it up — and Coya realizes that he's old.
• In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings,
  • Just after the conspiracy is unmasked, Frodo uses a similar phrase to try to convince Merry and Pippin not to come with him.
  • Gandalf tells Pippin that "this is a serious journey, not a hobbit walking-party" after he tosses a rock into a deep pit in Moria.
  • At Gondor, Pippin might have liked his new get up, except that he knows this is not a play.
• In Terry Pratchett's Only You Can Save Mankind, the Captain criticizes humanity for thinking all of life as a game. Later, during a class discussion of the war (Iraq, then ongoing), Johnny hears someone asking whether they think the pilots treat it like a game, when they could be killed at any time, and saying that people turn everything into games and it's not games. Then he realizes it was him.
• In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Percy rebukes Nico for not taking a game of capture-the-flag seriously, pointing out that they had real weapons that could really hurt: this is serious.
• Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Supervillain:
  • Most of the super community, heroes and villains alike, treat the whole thing as a game, with lots of grandstanding and speeches and posing for the cameras. Not Generic Girl. She just stops crime.
    Generic Girl: You're mining a trash heap. Not for uranium, just for junk. Stop pretending to be a supervillain, Penelope. This isn’t a game.
    Bad Penny: Then why are you playing, Claudia?
  • In the prequel novel I Did NOT Give That Spider Superhuman Intelligence!, we find out why the community treats it like a game. When they didn't, things got very personal, lots of people died, and LA was turning into a mad science warzone. It took Spider stepping in to turn things around. Interestingly, she only did this because she owed Goodnight a favor, and knew that Goodnight wanted superheroing to be fun.
    Neon Rider: This isn't a game.
    Spider: Perhaps we should make it one.
• In Hannu Rajaniemi's The Quantum Thief, Pixel discusses Isidore's detective work as if it were a game, and Isidore objects that it's not. This becomes an uncrossable cultural boundary, as Pixil is a Zoku, who perceive their entire existence as a series of games and distractions and react with horror and disgust to people controlled by ideologies.
• In L. Jagi Lamplighter's Rachel and the Many-Splendored Dreamland, when Nastasia is once again being a stickler for rules (which she can push to Lawful Stupid levels), Zoe tells her that they are not playing a game of D&D and the princess is not Lawful Good.
• In Dale Brown's Sky Masters, Patrick calls Dr. Masters out on his flippant, overly casual attitude with regards to the oncoming battle.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • During the first book, Jon brings up Daeren Targaryen, who conquered Dorne at the age of fourteen. His uncle Benjen isn't impressed.
    Benjen: Your Boy King lost ten thousand men taking the place and another fifty trying to hold it. Someone should have told him that war isn't a game.
  • In the second book, Catelyn visits Renly's camp and witnesses a tourney being held in the middle of the war. She can hardly contain her contempt for the "knights of summer" who have no idea what war is.
  • Also from the second book, Theon tells Bran, "This is no game" when demanding that Bran surrender Winterfell to Theon and the Ironborn. Ironically, Theon is the one who didn't take capturing Winterfell seriously enough.
• The Stormlight Archive: Due to their Blood Knight nature, the Alethi treat war as a game, with the reward being a place battling in the afterlife. It's more formalized than most examples, as they even keep a big scoreboard in the king's main meeting room, which tracks how much money each highprince has won. The board notably does not track how many soldiers have died, and Dalinar spends a lot of time trying to convince people to take the war seriously, out of respect to the fallen if nothing else. It's also pointed out that the Alethi could easily defeat their enemy for good if they would just work together, but the highprinces have far more fun racing each other for the prize.
• Walter Jon Williams's appropriately titled This Is Not a Game, about an Alternate Reality Game producer using her forums and players to get her out of a burning Jakarta, has the forum admins constantly reminding the players that this one is Not a Game.
• In Poul Anderson's The Un-Man, Naysmith, in the headlong flight from government agents, is a great pains to invert this trope for the two-year-old boy he's rescued, convincing him it's just an exciting game, because the trauma from terror would be too great at that age.
• Warformed Stormweaver: The Simulated Combat Tournaments have become humanity's most popular form of entertainment, as soldiers use the incredible Combat Assistance Devices in non-lethal combat against each other, displaying strength and speed far above normal human limits. Captain Valera Dent, a former champion of the SCTs who now works as an instructor at an academy, repeatedly reminds the cadets that the Devices are primarily tools for war. They are all explicitly soldiers being trained to fight on the front lines, and only the top twenty percent will have the choice to opt out in favor of the tournaments. Everyone else will be fighting and dying for the cause. She herself volunteered to go to the front lines despite being exempt, and was severely injured as a result.
• In James Swallow's Warhammer 40,000 novel Red Fury, when Kayne speaks of how interesting the Chapters' gathering is, Rafen rebukes him: "This is not a game."

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