ABSTRACT
This chapter briefly outlines two classic accounts about what constitutes an evil action. It presents both a Kantian account of evil and Arendt's account of evil. The chapter reconsiders two influential definitions of what it is to play a game: the classical contribution from Caillois as well as the contemporary approach of Juul. It focuses on the combination of theoretical findings on evil and on games. The chapter highlights how the examined definitions of playing a game seem to coincide in that they exclude evil from the sphere of games. With Arendt's findings on the banality of evil, the problem of the potential of evil in games becomes that, if people are blindly following rules, evil things might happen even if the rules are the right rules generally speaking. A potential criticism might be that the focus on an abstract and idealizing definition of games excludes evil actions from concrete playing by what seems to be definitional prestidigitation.
