Let's discuss what a video game is

[BadHat]

I thought the point of the Mountain being released as a "game" was significant because it challenges people's notion of what a game is. In that sense, isn't there value to it being labelled a game whether it actually is or not? (Also, how do you define "actually" oh no help I'm falling into an endless void of subjectivity aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

 

Edit: I never post in this thread because I never finish games, which is often a result of the fact that I primarily play games which have no linearly defined end point. Where's my discussion about what comprises "complete" and how traditional definitions aren't broad enough to fit modern video games, huh? Huh??

 

(Alright now I'm just being contrarian for funs)

[Ninety-Three]

I thought the point of the Mountain being released as a "game" was significant because it challenges people's notion of what a game is. In that sense, isn't there value to it being labelled a game whether it actually is or not?

 

The creator made an impassioned defense of Mountain as a game, so unless he went deep on some kind of definition-challenging performance art thing, I think he genuinely wants Mountain to be called a game.

[SecretAsianMan]

I've only skimmed this discussion so forgive me if I'm rehashing anything already said.

 

It's silly because the author is not automatically right about the genre of their creation (maybe genre is a bad word, you can see what I mean though) any more than they're right about the meaning of it. If I as the author of this post state that this post is a movie, that doesn't make it so. Now I'm doing that deliberately, but it's easy for the author to be wrong about genre in good faith. The cleanest example I can think of is structured poetry like limericks or traditional haiku. If the author does not notice a mistake in syllable count, rhyming scheme, or so on, they will create something they call a limerick, but is objectively not one.

 

The problem with that as an example is that limericks and haikus have specific rules that define them.  As you've said, it can be objectively stated that something is or is not one of those things if it follows those rules.  As far as I'm aware, there is no objective, strict definition of game.  If there were then this discussion wouldn't be taking place at all.  Games as a concept are fairly nebulous and that idea is constantly being redefined as the medium gets explored.  I think one could make similar arguments about genre. 

 

Personally, I think the author has the right to say whatever they want about their game and not be wrong in the same way that you have the right to disagree with them about it and also not be wrong (unless we're talking about things that are literally objective).  People can argue about intent all they want, but one thing I've always said is that intent and result don't always align.  A developer might intend for a game to be serious but if it comes off as cheesy then you're probably going to laugh at it instead.  That doesn't make either one of those interpretations wrong, just disparate.

 

 

I'm sorry, but shouldn't this conversation be moved elsewhere? If we don't have a thread about "What is game?", we should.

 

Technically there is a thread called "What is game" but it's not about this topic.

[dartmonkey]

There's a stigma attached to labelling something other than '(video) game'. If I asked a friend whether they'd heard about Dear Ester and then described it was an Interactive Video Poem i'd expect to be ridiculed, however more accurate the description may be. It reeks like 'interactive experience' or any other nebulous term. Linear participant-fuelled digital content. Bloody 'content'! Ergh. The term 'video game' is stigmatised but it feels 'honest', if inaccurate. Avoiding the bullshitometer would be a major factor in the success of any new terminology.

[twmac]

I am just going to keep repeating the same things I have already said but with different words in response to both of Ninety-Three and aoanla, so I am going to stop. Especially as Tanu is right, this isn't the thread for this.

[Merus]

I've deleted about half a dozen snarky posts because I don't like how snarky I get on these here forums, but the disconnect here seems to be between people defining games in terms of its properties, and people defining games in terms of the critical apparatus best suited to critiquing a work.

 

I have given up on trying to elaborate on how I feel about this particular discussion but rest assured the people arguing for the limitations of the medium (or trying to invent a new medium no-one, in practice, cares about, and thus arguing for the limitations of the medium) are off my Christmas card list.

[twmac]

So, I can expect a Christmas Card then?

[aoanla]

I think you're misinterpreting Ninety-Three and I if you think we're "arguing for the limitations of the medium". If anything, we're arguing that people are conflating a genre (video games) with the medium (software), and thus getting themselves into a definitional tangle because they therefore cannot actually describe the genre sensibly anymore. Note that there's not even a new medium here, just the obvious candidate for a medium in computers. (It's notable that the current critical split in "Theory of Video Games Criticism" between ludic and narrative schools is precisely what you'd expect if there were actually two genres - "narrative works" and "games" - which sometimes overlap to produce "narrative games"; but where everyone was convinced that there was only one, atomic, genre "video games" (which they might even think of as a medium). If you accept that the medium is software, and that you can create "ludic things" and "narrative things" (and other non-fictiony things like "productivity things") within it, and that, as in all media, genres can overlap, interpenetrate and complex together to make mixed genre pieces, then this naturally resolves the issue of definitional matters without needing to play games with meaning or create massively overloaded genre terms which lose all meaning. ) 

 

This also means that I take issue with you attempting to describe our position as taking a purely property-based approach to the definition of the genre "video games". It's clear from the above mentioned critical split between ludic and narrative schools that there are critical apparatuses suited to the genre of "games" and critical apparatuses suited to the genre of "narrative"; I agree that one can sensibly define genres in terms of the critical apparatuses suited to them, and further submit that this is clearly demonstrated by the inability of the ludic school to say anything interesting about Dear Esther (as it has no ludic component). Similarly, the narrative school has basically nothing to say about, say, Space Giraffe.

 

[i submit that any definition of "video games" which allows Second Life to self-define as "not a game", whilst allowing both Dear Esther and Minecraft to self-define as "a game" is incoherent.]

[Bjorn]

At this point, I'm willing to classify this entire argument as a competitive multiplayer video game and call it good. 

[Tanukitsune]

Sure, let's gamify the thread and each time someone says "that's not a game", they get 500 points and they'll get 2000 bonus points if they say "That doesn't make this thread a game!"

 

Posters that continuously whine saying "that's not a game!" will ALSO be gamified.  

[tabacco]

I've split this into its own thread so people can keep arguing about it without cluttering up other threads.

[twmac]

I think you're misinterpreting Ninety-Three and I if you think we're "arguing for the limitations of the medium". If anything, we're arguing that people are conflating a genre (video games) with the medium (software), and thus getting themselves into a definitional tangle because they therefore cannot actually describe the genre sensibly anymore. Note that there's not even a new medium here, just the obvious candidate for a medium in computers. (It's notable that the current critical split in "Theory of Video Games Criticism" between ludic and narrative schools is precisely what you'd expect if there were actually two genres - "narrative works" and "games" - which sometimes overlap to produce "narrative games"; but where everyone was convinced that there was only one, atomic, genre "video games" (which they might even think of as a medium). If you accept that the medium is software, and that you can create "ludic things" and "narrative things" (and other non-fictiony things like "productivity things") within it, and that, as in all media, genres can overlap, interpenetrate and complex together to make mixed genre pieces, then this naturally resolves the issue of definitional matters without needing to play games with meaning or create massively overloaded genre terms which lose all meaning. ) 

 

This also means that I take issue with you attempting to describe our position as taking a purely property-based approach to the definition of the genre "video games". It's clear from the above mentioned critical split between ludic and narrative schools that there are critical apparatuses suited to the genre of "games" and critical apparatuses suited to the genre of "narrative"; I agree that one can sensibly define genres in terms of the critical apparatuses suited to them, and further submit that this is clearly demonstrated by the inability of the ludic school to say anything interesting about Dear Esther (as it has no ludic component). Similarly, the narrative school has basically nothing to say about, say, Space Giraffe.

 

[i submit that any definition of "video games" which allows Second Life to self-define as "not a game", whilst allowing both Dear Esther and Minecraft to self-define as "a game" is incoherent.]

 

Right, so I think I understand your point more and see where we differ. I am arguing that 'game' is the type/art form/medium and that Dear Esther falls into a genre under that. Whereas you are arguing that the type/medium/format of Dear Esther is software based but that it does not fall into a genre under 'video game'.

 

Fair enough, I think I see the point you are trying to make. I, obviously, completely disagree but I don't really have anywhere to go with this conversation as we are stuck in very different frame's of mind.

 

As for what makes a game, if there is a level of interaction and the maker tells me it is a game - good enough for me. Now, whether I like it or not - different conversation.

[clyde]

Just some personal anecdotes:

-Less than a month ago, I played a piece of software made with Unity that had a narrative component and very little interaction on GameJolt. One of the few comments was that the piece of media shouldn't be on GameJolt because it was not a "game".

-I talked with strangers younger than myself at my wife's co-worker's child's birthday-party. They asked me what I liked to do. I told them that I make games. They started asking about Xbox distribution and money and stuff. I was like "No, no, I don't make commercial products, I make games as a hobby; I participate in these things called 'game-jams' where we make games within a couple of days. We also just make little weird experiments and talk about them and collect each other's games, it's super fun, there's no money in it."

Then they said "Oh, you make apps!"

-In preschool we did this thing where all us toddlers sat cross-legged and slapped our thighs in rhythm with the teacher who would narrate about the environment we were walking through. When we did things like cross a bridge, the teacher would change the way they slapped their thighs or what portion of the body would be the drum for that particular fictional material. The teacher called it a "game" and it didn't seem to negatively affect anyone's expectations. It was super fun, I'd be down to do it again.

[aoanla]

twmac -

 

So, I think the issue I have with your presentation of "game" as a medium/ur-genre is that you're essentially conflating "interactivity" with "game". I think this is problematic, because of the counterexamples outside software: there are art installations which are interactive (say, http://works.timo.ee/memopol/ ) or participant (say, for example, Sleep No More and other promenade/environmental theatrical productions) in media other than software which are not considered games automatically by virtue of this (and which I think you would agree with me are not "games"). Essentially, it feels to me that you're giving special status to "software which is interactive" over every other kind of work in different media which is interactive. [it's also a bit weird to me, as surely one of the key things about all software is that it is, in a sense, minimally interactive, as it executes on a computer which you are always interacting with.]

 

(Plus, the word "game" already referred to a genre of sorts, before computers came along - "Choose your own adventure games" are games in the medium of prose text, for example.)

 

So, what I'm interested in is how you square the difference in meaning and intentionality attached to the word "game" when in a software-mediated context versus "non-software" contexts.

[brkl]

You like to through around words like 'ludic' in favour of your argument, so I think you should read Huizinga's Homo Ludens before arguing that 'a game' is historically some clear cut thing that's now being violated by these pieces of software with silly authors who use the word for their creations. The only reason to define it so strictly is to claim ownership and power over what's accepted and what's not.

[SuperBiasedMan]

Actually I would say that Sleep No More fits as a 'game' if you think of it more as a thing you get to 'play' in. Similar to roleplaying in a LARP, you're simulating an experience that is not real within certain boundaries in order to create an enjoyable interactive atmosphere.

[aoanla]

brkl - No, I used "ludic" to refer to the "Ludic Theory of Video Games Criticism", which is called that. I don't think I used "ludic" at any point when it wasn't in connection with that school of criticism.

 

I'd also appreciate it if you would stop using pejorative language deliberately to imply that I'm belittling or attempting to attack people who write primarily-narrative-software. If you read my comments, you'll see that you're unfairly ascribing negative motivations to what is an attempt at producing a richer language for talking about software creations.

[aoanla]

Actually I would say that Sleep No More fits as a 'game' if you think of it more as a thing you get to 'play' in. Similar to roleplaying in a LARP, you're simulating an experience that is not real within certain boundaries in order to create an enjoyable interactive atmosphere.

 

Which is not considered a game by the creators of Sleep No More (or any other promenade or environmental theatre, to my knowledge), which is kinda my point.

[clyde]

Following this line of argument, wouldn't all single-player campaigns be better defined as "puzzles" rather than games. "Games" could be exclusively used for multiplayer software.

Also, should something really be called a "film" if it's digitally captured?

[aoanla]

Well, "puzzles" are, I'd say, a particular type of "single person" game in general, but drawing analogies from things we call puzzles in other media suggests that they tend to be "smaller" than a lot of other games, and generally based upon showing some kind of mental insight into a problem. I'm not sure that all "single-player video games" are small enough, or based enough on mental ingenuity solely, to be strong members of the puzzle genre. (And those that are tend to already be categorised by people as puzzles!)

 

(The lack of a competitor, other than "the designer of the game", does not seem sufficient to make a game a puzzle, although there's some discussion about that, I believe. Certainly, Patience/Solitaire and Mahjong Solitaire are both generally considered "games" generically, rather than "puzzles", despite being single-player pursuits. In addition, there's a sense in which many "single player games" can involve competition at a higher level - speedrunning, competing on score leaderboards etc - which seems to make them "sequentially multiplayer" in a sense. Certainly, old-style arcade games have a culture of scoreboard competition, as do quite a few more recent games drawn from the same tradition.)

[Merus]

I'm still not bothering to participate in this discussion, but mathematical taxonomy requires games to have at least two players. If it's just one player and rules that constrain their actions, it's a puzzle. It doesn't help that most single-player video games are heavily biased towards being solvable.

 

Mathematicians tend not to use this taxonomy outside of papers because it's confusing.

[clyde]

Defining "puzzles" by their length and difficulty/complexity seems like it will probably cause even more confusion. Couldn't large, single-player campaigns be considered labryinths that are gated by puzzles which require varying amounts of knowledge, logic, and dexterity to solve? But then those examples which branch would be best described as "mazes" rather than "labrythinths". So having separate names there would assist consumer-expectations of whether or not their choices change the automation of the puzzle.

As far as high-score chasing, that's an arbitrary context that players are agreeing to. Would everything with scores be a "game"? Are credit-scores a "game"? I don't think it's the score that makes pinball a game, I think it's the expectations with which the player approaches pinball. I could approache Skyrim as a tone-poem and get different things out of it than if I approach it as an interactive music-accompaniment. I think "game" is a suggestion that the audience should "play", just like a novel is a suggestion to read text as a coherent narrative. Someone could read a novel as a series of poems if they wanted.

[twmac]

Which is not considered a game by the creators of Sleep No More (or any other promenade or environmental theatre, to my knowledge), which is kinda my point.

 

That's really interesting as I would have called Sleep No More a game. If (Rohrer?) the developer doesn't  call it one, that's fine by me. I really enjoyed the little I played of it.

[Irishjohn]

I think this conversation is missing examples from non-digital games, which have always had a loose definition that is mostly built around a philosophy of "play" and not systematized challenge or complexity.

 

I still recall waiting for a train at the L near DePaul and hearing a couple of students complain about their game design professor having them read about and discuss ancient games and the evolution of chess. Seemed to me it was an interesting approach (though I wasn't in their class, I do know someone at DePaul that teaches that stuff; if it was the person I know the approach would have been very well thought out). 

In sports history, which I write about, the concept of "play" really comes into it when debating whether or not something is a sport. I really need to write an article on eSports soon, but in essence I find the question of what IS a sport, or a game, fascinating but I don't really care about what an outcome of such a debate would be. Basically, I want the debate because it gets us thinking, but the debate doesn't need a resolution.

 

I actually did not like Gone Home all that much. I admired it, and I liked what it was doing. As a historian, in particular, I loved their recreation of a very specific 1990s vibe. I grew up in Ireland, not the Pacific Northwest, but that world-building felt very real to me. I just found the central story disappointing. However, the idea that Gone Home should be criticized because it's "not a game" (I know that's not being said here, but that narrative is unfortunately implicit when we bring up Gone Home as an example) is just plain silly.

 

 

You like to through around words like 'ludic' in favour of your argument, so I think you should read Huizinga's Homo Ludens before arguing that 'a game' is historically some clear cut thing that's now being violated by these pieces of software with silly authors who use the word for their creations. The only reason to define it so strictly is to claim ownership and power over what's accepted and what's not.

 

Yeah, also this. Homo Ludens is interesting. Also consider, although it's about sports specifically, From Ritual to Record by Allen Guttmann, particularly the introduction.

[brkl]

brkl - No, I used "ludic" to refer to the "Ludic Theory of Video Games Criticism", which is called that. I don't think I used "ludic" at any point when it wasn't in connection with that school of criticism.

 

I'd also appreciate it if you would stop using pejorative language deliberately to imply that I'm belittling or attempting to attack people who write primarily-narrative-software. If you read my comments, you'll see that you're unfairly ascribing negative motivations to what is an attempt at producing a richer language for talking about software creations.

 

But you did belittle the creator of Mountain for even claming that Mountain is a game. Dear Esther and Mountain are based on video game culture, use its vernacular, are presented in the same places and are in conversation with it (obviously). Arguing that they should be placed in some make-shift genre that means nothing to anyone is an attack, just not a direct one.