No single attribute is necessary for something to count as a game

Evidence

The classic example is the concept of a game. Various games have many characteristics in common when they are compared, say, pairwise. However, there are no characteristics that all games share; hence no properties necessary for an activity to be considered a game. In other words, for any attribute proposed as necessary for something to be a game we can find activities that we all consider to be games, but which do not possess that attribute. — Gary Goertz, Social Science Concepts, 200

Categorization

• DEFINE: Wittgenstein’s family resemblance: category membership via overlapping similarities, not shared necessary properties.
• XREF: Connects to the book’s core argument against necessary-and-sufficient conditions, which Goertz builds on in later chapters.