Games Exist in Symbols and Syntax

Consider the game of Chess. Typically it's played with a collection of Chess pieces on a chessboard consisting of black and white squares. We can all agree, I think, that these are indeed real-world objects. Moreover, the game involves a set of rules specifying how the pieces can move, what constitutes a legal position on the board, how one piece captures another and so forth. This is the real-world version of the game of Chess. But there is another version, one existing purely in the world of symbols and syntax (i.e., formal systems), and this version mirrors exactly the real-world game we normally see…the game of Chess is really a relationship between one set of abstract symbols (the black and white pieces) and another set of abstract symbols (the squares on the board). In short, there is nothing crucial about the material embodiment of these symbols insofar as the essentials of the game are concerned.