Eric Berne - Games People Play

1. GAMES are passed on from generation to generation. The favored game of any individual can be
traced back to his parents and grandparents, and forward to his children; they in turn, unless there is
a successful intervention, will teach them to his grandchildren. Thus game analysis takes place in a
grand historical matrix, demonstrably extending back as far as one hundred years and reliably
projected into the future for at least fifty years. Breaking this chain which involves five or more
generations may have geometrically progressive effects. There are many living individuals who
have more than 200 descendants. Games may be diluted or altered from one generation to another,
hut there seems to be a strong tendency to inbreed with people who play a game of the same family,
if not of the same genus. That is the historical significance of games.

2. "Raising" children is primarily a matter of teaching them what games to play. Different cultures
and different social classes favor different types of games, and various tribes and families favor
different variations of these. That is the cultural significance of games.

3. Games are sandwiched, as it were, between pastimes and intimacy. Pastimes grow boring with
repetition, as do promotional cocktail parties. Intimacy requires stringent circumspection, and is
discriminated against by Parent, Adult and Child. Society frowns upon candidness, except in
privacy; good sense knows that it can always be abused; and the Child fears it because of the
unmasking which it involves. Hence in order to get away from the ennui of pastimes without
exposing themselves to the dangers of intimacy, most people compromise for games when they are
available, and these fill the major part of the more interesting hours of social intercourse. That is
the social significance of games.

4. People pick as friends, associates and intimates other people who play the same games. Hence
"everybody who is anybody" in a given social circle (aristocracy, juvenile gang, social club, college
campus, etc.) behaves in a way which n:ay seem quite foreign to members of a different social
circle. Conversely, any member of a social circle who changes his games will tend to be extruded,
but he will find himself welcome at some other social circle. That is the personal significance of
games.