Let's discuss what a video game is

[TychoCelchuuu]

Where is this evidence? Has someone conducted a study, done polling with a representative distribution? I'm not attempting to snarkily imply you have no evidence, I am intrigued by the idea of concrete data on this.

This would be like conducting a poll to see whether the majority of people call a peanut butter sandwich a "sandwich." It would not be a very worthwhile use of time and money. If you check the Steam reviews for Dear Esther, even most of the negative reviews call it a game. It is only a small number of the reviews (mostly negative ones) which deny that it is a game.

Tycho:

Firstly, I'd like to echo Ninety-Three's request for actual data or evidence on your claim re: the common use of the word "game". Explicitly, "game", not "video game", I note.

I'm not sure why you are drawing this distinction. Would you say it's correct to call Dear Esther a video game but incorrect to call it a game?

 

However, I actually think that the backlash against morons saying that Dear Esther is not a game and therefore has no value is what caused this massive and quixotic inflation of the term "game" to mean "anything basically I say it is, if it's software". In my opinion, the reaction to people saying "this isn't X, and therefore has no value" should have been "you're right, it's not X. But it's actually really valuable, and your cultural and genre limits make you look like a dick". Instead, what self-defined "video games culture" did was to say "oh, no, it definitely has value, so I guess we have to argue that it is X". (This is part of the generally toxic effects that GamerGate has in a whole lot of "video games culture" contexts, of course.)

I realize that this is what you think ought to have happened, because you have an odd personal idiosyncratic definition of what "game" means. But just like my desire that we all suddenly call peanut butter "flim flam" is likely to be somewhat unconvincing when it comes to my suggestions about what ought to have happened in the past and what ought to happen in the future, I find your desire that we stop calling Dear Esther a game to be unconvincing in terms of how people ought to have responded to Dear Esther criticism and so on. Notice that the majority of negative Steam reviews have no problem admitting that Dear Esther is a game. It never crosses their mind to deny it. They have other issues with it, legitimate or not, but most criticism of Dear Esther that I've seen focuses on how it's a bad game, or a pretentious game, not on how it isn't a game. So I don't buy your narrative about backlash and proper responses and so on. Even if I did, we'd have to change what words mean, and that is not easy. The ship has sailed.

 

This has the sad effect that, in the context of "video games" only, the word "game" now can't be used with the same meaning or precision it has in all other contexts. I think that this is sad, limiting to culture and generally a bad thing. To deal with the cognitive dissonance this develops in people, we've had an inflation of pretentious terminology (people using ludic a lot more) and people "talking around" the area which the word "game" would naturally be used in other contexts (using "gameplay elements" and other circumlocutions to mean what people would say "game" about in other contexts).

You are wrong that the word "game" has "meaning or precision that it has in all other contexts." Wittgenstein, who wrote before video games existed, demonstrated that "game" does not have any such meaning and precision.

 

In fact, I would argue that the insistence on using "game" in such a bloated way in specifically "video game culture" contexts is actually toxic to existing fields of cultural expression, via unconscious cultural appropriation. Taking the example of the interactive video / art installation Way To Go, as linked by clyde earlier in the thread; this is just one example of a large, preexisting field of digital and software art which has existed ever since we've had computers available to the public. None of these artists consider what they are creating to be games, as they come from a tradition in which it is understood that interactivity is a component of artistic projects without any pejorative. By inflating the noun "game" in "video game culture" so aggressively, you are essentially trying to swallow all of digital and software art into the genre and baliwick of "video games". I don't think that software and digital artists would like this to happen (and, actually, I've talked to some who were quite upset about being "demoted" to a subsidiary part of a different genre as a result of this kind of aggression).

I am not trying to swallow anything. I'm just speaking English. I have not made any decisions - they have been made for me by common usage. That is how words work. You may lament the effects of this. I personally do not lament the effects of this. But whatever the effects, you cannot argue that you are right and I am wrong. The best you can do is say that you wish that you were right and that I were wrong. But until wishes come true, Dear Esther is a game.

 

I submit that the examples of "things which claim to be games so they can be video games" are almost all created by people who are primarily already part of video game culture, and are not aware of the preexisting fields of software art. So, there's definitely an unconscious issue here of people trying to create without being aware of the creative context in which they are now working.

The idea that people like Dan Pinchbeck or Porpentine are "not aware of the preexsiting fields of software art" is ludicrous. The fact that people think the label "game" best fits their software art is not evidence of ignorance, it's evidence of people who aren't delusional about about definitions calling a spade a spade. Perhaps you think Dan Pinchbeck and Porpentine ought to join you on your crusade and thus ought to refuse to call their games games, because they have the power to change the world. I'm not really buying that, but even if you're right, this is a case where they would have to use the word wrong for a while until they use it right, like the people who used "literally" to mean figuratively before they won that fight.

(By analogy, this is very much like what happens when writers who are not part of a given genre's cultural or social circle write something which (unwittingly) enters into that genre's tradition. Often, the genre which is imposed on is Science Fiction or Fantasy, and often, those writers from a literary tradition are aggressively dismissive of attempts to include their work in that genre, often claiming that the genre in question is generally worthless or hokey.)

Would you say that software art is a genre of video game? If not, I don't think your analogy works, because everyone in your example agrees that a book has been written. If so, then Dear Esther is a game.

Certainly, this seems to be the case with Mountain, as the author's understanding of "games" seemed to be that "anything made with a game creation tool [in this case, Unity] is a game"; I submit that this reveals more about the shallowness of the author's understanding of tools and their limits within genre than it does about games and whether Mountain is one or not. It should be clear that, given the multiple non-game things made with Unity (including, for example, data visualisation tools: https://unity3d.com/showcase/gallery/non-games?platform=&genre=943&gametype=t-all ), this argument is not sufficient. (Similarly, for example, one can use Celtx, or other Scriptwriting software to write things other than movie scripts. If Cormac McCarthy had published The Road and claimed it was a movie script, most people would have asked him to justify that statement. The response that "well, I wrote it in Celtx, which is a script writing tool, so that makes it a script" would have been openly mocked, I suspect.)

You should probably read the link to the forum thread that I posted back on the first page of this thread. In there I explain why it's a profoundly misguided endeavor to come up with a sensible definition of "game." This is why the creator of Mountain failed and this is why you will fail any time you try.

 

But, as well as being harmful to preexisting fields of digital culture, this is also harmful to "video games culture" in itself. As the meaning of "video games" and "games as a shorthand for the nounphrase video games" expands, the meaning of the word "game" in contexts outside software is slowly erased in "video game" contexts. As I tried to point out with my Tomb Raider (2015) example, this means that it is now very hard to talk about the different aspects of "video games" with narrative, artistic and gameplay elements, because using the word "game" to mean "the work considered in its gameplay aspects" is now taboo. I dislike taboos, especially when they shut down reasonable or precise critical discussion.

Language is not a "taboo," language is a way of attaching meaning to strings of sounds or symbols. You might not be happy with how language has shaken itself out, but this doesn't mean that you can declare by fiat that "game" means something other than what it means. You might be unhappy that Dear Esther is a game, but this doesn't mean it isn't a game. It is a game.

[TychoCelchuuu]

If you don't think it is useful to be able to speak about the "game" and "story" aspects of Tomb Raider, and how they support and antagonise each other, then that's clearly your choice. I submit that the world is poorer for that lack.

The world may be poorer for the fact that Dear Esther is a game. But Dear Esther is a game.

So, as you can see, I realise that the opposition in this thread is using "game" in a sense which I don't agree with. However, I disagree both that this is a general use (I think it's limited to "video game culture" only) and that this has been a natural evolution.

There is no such thing as a (good) "natural evolution" in language as contrasted with a (bad) "unnatural evolution". Language means whatever we want it to mean. There is no "natural" meaning for a word. We made up all the words.

Further, it should be obvious from the tone of my submissions that part of my intent is to rehabilitate the more precise (not accurate) use of the word game in "video game" contexts. I am aware of how you're using it, I wish to convince you to use it more precisely and in a way which does not unconsciously perform cultural appropriation of existing fields of expression.

I really don't see any benefit to your approach. I honestly cannot make heads or tails of your Tomb Raider example. It seems to rely on the idea that it would be much easier to talk about things if game meant something other than what game means. But I don't see any difficulty talking about Tomb Raider the way we normally talk and I do not think your way of conceiving of "game" actually clears anything up. I can, however, make heads and tails of people harassing Twine authors for having not made games because they don't want queer people and trans* people and women muscling in on their gamer territory. So I think I know where I stand on this one.

[jennegatron]

For the record I agree pretty strongly with aoanla, and I think the more precision we allow language the easier conversations become and the better we understand the context in which something fits. I don't really want to contribute much more than that, and I don't think that most people agree with me in this case. The. "walking simulator"/"this isn't a game, it's garbage" comments outside of this community may have just tainted the waters of this discussion too thoroughly to be very productive.

[Ninety-Three]

TychoCelchuuu, on 17 Oct 2015 - 10:48, said:

This would be like conducting a poll to see whether the majority of people call a peanut butter sandwich a "sandwich." It would not be a very worthwhile use of time and money. If you check the Steam reviews for Dear Esther, even most of the negative reviews call it a game. It is only a small number of the reviews (mostly negative ones) which deny that it is a game.

Many of the reviews casually refer to Dear Esther as "this game", but counting that as a vote in favour of Dear Esther being a game is hardly fair. For instance, this review:

Quote

Considering this game is often on sale for dirt-cheap (and included in many humble bundles) it might be worth checking out if you're a fan of atmospheric walking simulator games. However, there are two things I wish I had known going into this title:

1). As many have stated in the reviews, it is art not a game.

That is a person who repeatedly refers to it as a game, while outright stating "this is not a game". Some people use the word game even though they don't think it is one. There are more reviews like that which repeatedly refer to it as a game while containing sentiments like "this book that calls itself a game". Even positive reviews will use the term game, then immediately suggest Dear Esther isn't one "This is a fantastic game, more of an interactive book than movie or game". This suggests to me that people are simply defaulting to calling it a "game" because they lack a concise label for "Narrative software experience", and it would be weird to write "This is a fantastic thing".

I went through the first several dozen negative Steam reviews and categorized them so that we would have some quantitative data, rather than talking in generalizations:

Outright agreement (deiberate cateogirization as a game ie "discussion of whether or not it's a game (it is)"): 3

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Avinite/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Futurato/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/derungrund/recommended/203810/

Implicit agreement (casual use of "game"): 14

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Supascury/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/drnoooo/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/spektor1337/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198004032428/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198050134215/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/85fastlane/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Panduur1/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/melodiousghost/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198110169252/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Hairspring/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/smalls139/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/anri2/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Vivianite/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/theonlinegamer296/recommended/203810/

Implicit disagreement (casual use of "game", major critique of lack of gameplay or disaparaging use of "walking simulator"): 4

http://steamcommunity.com/id/xcava86x/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/zach0330/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970291212/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/atrithau/recommended/203810/

Outright disagreement (either outright "not a game" or comments like "this is a work of art"): 18

http://steamcommunity.com/id/DarthMatt/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198075786620/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198019205444/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/xelios/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/thordred/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Zupe00/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/YellowJello/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198068563195/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198050154712/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/epiplon/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/PieInTheSky95/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/illumi-rorschach/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/megaseven/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198055389903/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Kasumiwumi/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/RPINerd/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197974877837/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/sexbad/recommended/203810/

EDIT: One item in the list of disregarded reviews was a video review that I did not have time to watch. I went back and skimmed it, with phrases like "a short story gets merged with the shell of a game" and the disparaging "quote unquote 'play' Dear Esther", I feel comfortable characterizing it as outright disagreement,and I have moved it to the proper category.

Disregarded (no commentary on gaminess, one sentence joke review): 7

http://steamcommunity.com/id/botrytis/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/grasshole/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/MrJinxed/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/adamoluna/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Aetheryn/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/baskingshark/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/RBear/recommended/203810/

EDIT: One item in the list of disregarded reviews was a video review that I did not have time to watch. I went back and skimmed it, with phrases like "a short story gets merged with the shell of a game" and the disparaging "quote unquote 'play' Dear Esther", I feel comfortable characterizing it as outright disagreement,and I have moved it to the proper category.

Several reviews acknowledged that there was little to no gameplay, but did not use that as a major critique. Erring on the side of "Dear Esther is a game", I placed those in "implicit agreement".

Using standard survey notation, that's three "strongly agree", fourteen "agree", four "disagree" and eighteen "strongly disagree". The majority disagree, and weighing the strength of their disagreement makes it even more powerful. Even if you were to count implicit disagreement as calling it a game, that's only 21-18 in favour of game, hardly fair to say most of the negative reviews call it a game. Have you done a different count of the reviews, or were you basing your statement on a less quantified, vague impression of the reviews?

Let's take a quick look at the positive reviews (apologies for the shorter list, I've gotten a little tired of reading through Steam reivews by this point).

Casual use of "game": 7

http://steamcommunity.com/id/meeoowmeeoow/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197968514473/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970470391/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/zeroyalbatz/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198041880876/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/athena1994/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/MonoTheKing/recommended/203810/

"whether it's a game or not really [doesn't] matter": 1

http://steamcommunity.com/id/tp_GATE/recommended/203810/

"Not a game", "more a journey than a game in itself", etc: 5

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Resoula/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/feyling/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197970470391/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/Oulouimina/recommended/203810/

http://steamcommunity.com/id/louisotto/recommended/203810/

I filed positive reviews which used the term "walking simulator" but did not explicitly reject the "game" label under "casual use of game".

So you claimed that most people consider it a game, saying it wouldn't be a worthwhile use of time to poll people. As evidence, you referred to the Steam reviews, which provably do not support your argument. This is why you can't just say "the evidence is that the vast majority of people would call Dear Esther a game" without inspecting the evidence.

[aoanla]

Ninety-Three has made an excellent job of explaining why your tautological dismissal of a request for evidence was rather obtuse, Tycho, so I'll limit myself to replying to other issues with your comments.

 

Firstly, yes, I am willing to concede that (re. Wittgenstein, as you so helpfully introduced first, so that I couldn't be accused of being pretentious, as brkl did implicitly when I used the term "ludic") the noun phrase "video game" may now be so broad as to include things that are not "games". I think this is one potential resolution to the current unsatisfactory state of affairs, and it is not without precedent for a noun phrase like this to diverge from the meaning of the original root noun.

 

Secondly, I suggest you reread my comments about cultural appropriation, note the use of the word "unconscious" to classify it, and reflect on how, if a process is unconscious, you are probably not consciously aware you're doing it. 

 

Thirdly, I suggest you reread my sentence where I use the word "taboo". I don't claim that "language is taboo", I claim that a particular contextual use of a given word is taboo. The last time I checked, the word "taboo" could be used to mean "an action which is prohibited or strongly inhibited due to moral or cultural constraints". Given how intensely vehement you are about the use of the word game, at a level which feels to me as an outsider to be deep-seated and based on reactions concerning your cultural identity, I think I would not be totally out of place to describe this as related to common reactions to "taboo" behaviour. You may, of course, disagree.

(In general, though, you're wrong anyway - words are frequently described as taboo - see, eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_taboo )

 

Fourthly, it's odd that you seem confused by the Tomb Raider example, despite my making it quite clear what I mean by the word "game", by using it in the context of "gameplay". Let me try a different example, with some more descriptive prose to try to make this a bit clearer for you:

 

Accepting Wittgenstein (and, to be fair, not everyone does, but I do quite like his theory of language-games, so I'm happy to go along with it), one of the obvious generalisations and extensions of his approach is that different communities or cultures may use words in different ways. This is quite obvious, actually, since if meaning is negotiated, then meaning is also dependant on who you are negotiating with (and potentially the context in which you are negotiating).

 

My assertion is that the word "game" is currently used differently in the culture self-defining as "video games culture" as compared to the rest of English-speaking culture. [i further assert that the meaning of "game" in the self-defined "video games culture" is essentially incoherent, but that's not actually important to this part of the discussion.]

 

To help you see this, consider a thought experiment: Imagine an art installation, a large area of land landscaped with various dramatic scenery and items strewn around. The path you can walk in this art installation is tightly constrained (perhaps there's a glass tunnel which you walk through, or a rope which you are expected to follow). As you pass particular parts of the installation, hidden speakers broadcast (semirandom) prose fragments, intended to appear as if they are parts of a letter written by single individual. Eventually, you get to a high place in the art installation, where a hidden mechanism tips you into the darkness (and then you land on cushions, and it's all okay).

 

I submit that no-one who experienced this art installation would talk about it in terms other than art. I further submit that no-one, in particular, would refer to it as a "game". 

 

As you will have already noticed, Dear Esther bears a tremendous resemblance to the given art installation, with the only difference being that it is implemented in software, rather than in real life.

 

You assert, vociferously, that Dear Esther is a game, however.

 

This indicates that your use of the word "game" is, apparently, contingent on a mere matter of medium, rather than the actual intrinsic nature of the experience. I assert, then, that you are using "game" differently to the general population (non-members of the "video games culture").

 

Using "game" in the manner that the non-video game culture has arrived at, generally, we tend to mean things that "have gameplay". Again, nodding to Wittgenstein, I can only give examples of what people tend to think of as "gameplay", but it's something that sports, boardgames and role-playing games have, but movies, music and poetry tend not to. It is not narrative (to echo your own statements with some tautology of my own: narrative is narrative, so gameplay can't be.) 

 

Now, take Tomb Raider (2015). It clearly has a narrative - there's a sequential series of events which occur, which tie together with all the aspects and paraphernalia that people generally expect will make up a "story". It also clearly has gameplay - there's definitely aspects of it which you could use adjectives commonly used to describe the "essence" of sporting, boardgame and role-playing game endeavours. I assert that these aspects make up a "game" in the sense understood by non-members of the "video games culture". So, because I'm using "game" in this sense, which you no longer have access to, apparently, I can talk about Tomb Raider being both a story and a game. Now I have these handy nouns I can use, I can also say things like "Tomb Raider, as a story, has aims that are not always supported by Tomb Raider as a game.". For you, this is presumably incoherent. 

[Griddlelol]

This thread is the worst. I feel pretentious even looking at it. 

[itsamoose]

By no means is this opinion evidence based, but I've always seen games as more akin to problems (as in word or math problems) than the mediums they are typically associated with. Sure the physicality and methods of play are similar to movies and the like, being on screens and controlled via a device made for the purpose, but I think forcing a comparison in this regard is what creates the whole "not a game" categorization. If I had to put it simply, I would say a game is a problem that can be solved, but lacks a particular solution. To the comments regarding games like Dear Esther, why is making it to the end of a narrative not considered the same as making it to the end of a level? In other words, why does the goal, or why is the goal the determining factor in the categorization?

[aoanla]

Well, because that would make reading a book a game.

[osmosisch]

It can be.

[itsamoose]

Well, because that would make reading a book a game.

Well first I would ask why isn't it? And second I would ask why can't anything be a game? Isn't a game just a structure or goal of some sort that guides an activity? Can't anything be played like a game, or used as part of a game? It seems to me like the goal shouldn't determine whether or not something is a game, but rather the method of interaction. Watching a movie probably isn't a game, but drinking every time a character says a particular line while watching that movie is. The distinction of something being a game seems to be determined much more so by one's interaction with it as opposed to the goal.

[Gaizokubanou]

Well first I would ask why isn't it? And second I would ask why can't anything be a game? Isn't a game just a structure or goal of some sort that guides an activity? Can't anything be played like a game, or used as part of a game? It seems to me like the goal shouldn't determine whether or not something is a game, but rather the method of interaction. Watching a movie probably isn't a game, but drinking every time a character says a particular line while watching that movie is. The distinction of something being a game seems to be determined much more so by one's interaction with it as opposed to the goal.

 

Goal in drinking games are to get shit faced but yes, definition of a game is pretty personal so as much as I enjoy discussing it on pseudo-high-brow-kind-of-smug-way of discussion what it REALLY means (meaning attempt at persuasion), that's only when all participants are in for that sort of thing or... well this thread.

 

Hence the famous expression, "this is all a game to you?!".  One's misery caused by another's light take on serious situation.  Pretty much any time there is a 'goal' in life and you are taking some social context into account for what you can do and can't do, it can technically be called a game but most of us don't think we live our life like a game cause we have varying but most definitely existing degree of threshold for how 'light' a situation has to be (contest to hold breath underwater vs waterboarding) for it to be a game to us, etc.

 

As for awards and such where $$$ is involved, the event should simply clearly define what can and cannot enter the contest.

[ihavefivehat]

Dear Esther and Mountain may not be games, but they are definitely video games. The people who made them seem to be video game fans. They are using the skill sets and methods, as well as the language and tradition of video game development to express their ideas. What's more, they are clearly seeking to engage with the video games community. Much of the potency Dear Esther and Mountain comes from the fact that they are presented as part of the video game continuity, and thus challenge and expand what that continuity can entail.

 

If you label them as something else, like a 'software poem', you are effectively robbing them of that potency (unless you allow that a 'software poem' is itself a type of video game). They are seeking to join the 'video games' conversation and you are categorically denying them entry. That may not be your intent, but effectively and emotionally that's what you're doing.

[Gaizokubanou]

Edit: removed.

[itsamoose]

If I'm understanding ihavefivehat correctly, and to make a crude analogy, Dear Esther is kind of like the horse of video games (as in the basketball game HORSE where each player must attempt to recreate the other player's shot). Games of horse use the language, and often the rulesets of basketball ( no double dribble, up and down, etc) but have odd or offshoot rules. Games like it therefore shouldn't be precluded from the conversation, just focused on a particular part of it.

[Gaizokubanou]

Yeah that's kind of what I didn't get, like the need to be within this what I thought to be specific but value-neutral conversation but I'm getting that to many people, conversation of video games has become as broad as conversation of art that is charged with positive value so more reason to avoid that word for me then.

[Mangela Lansbury]

Well, because that would make reading a book a game.

 

Reading a book is 100% a game you play with yourself.

 

EDIT: There are so many varying types of play that trying to define a game is absolutely pointless. Everything can be a game, depending on your approach. I can treat scheduling a meeting at work as a game, and I can treat vacuuming as a game, and I can treat picking something out of the fridge for dinner as a game, and I regularly treat peeing in urinals as a game. Watching a movie can be a game, and reading can be a game. Staring at the ceiling can be a game, and if you remove the ceiling then stargazing can be a game.

 

And a video game is a game -- which can be anything -- that includes that electronic element. There are different types of video games , but they are all video games -- to pull a comparison from earlier, like how the Waste Land is a novel, but a verse novel. Favoring a certain type of play over any other type of play is simply exclusionary. A person can play with a plot like a person can play with controls. They just have different inputs and outputs.

[aoanla]

So, hopefully you guys aren't surprised that I (almost) entirely agree with you.

 

When I say "Reading a book is not a game", I was being a little loose - I hope you understood that what I intended was that there's nothing inherent about reading a book which makes it always a game. (Obviously, you can play a game around reading a book, and some books encourage you to do so, either very explicitly (in the case of, say, Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books, or books with puzzles or cryptograms built into the text) or less so.)

 

I hope you noticed that I've been quite careful to use the word "game" and not "video game" when talking about if (say) Dear Esther is a game. This is because (as should also be evident in my last reply to Tycho), I am pretty sure I might agree with ihavefivehats regarding the expansion of the term "video game" to be a cultural thing which includes a lot of modes of expression which aren't "games".

(I do dislike this happening, because it means that people shortening "video game" to "game" unconsciously tend to get Very Angry at people who aren't because they have a lot of Emotions tied up with cultural membership; and it also leads to the phenomenon of the Dear Esther reviews that Ninety-Three pointed out, where people write stuff like "The thing about games like Dear Esther is that they aren't really games", which is just awful to parse and will probably result in the coming of Big Dog when we point AI natural language parsers at it.) 

 

I do also genuinely worry that this expansion of video game culture as a phrase/idea is marginalising, further, all the pre-existing software and digital art people who don't get to hang their work on the Giant video game Culture Train (just like Literary Writers Who Dabble In SF get the Privilege (in the "male privilege" sense) in mainstream culture that SF Writers don't (Iain Banks, notably, consciously rejected this privilege, and all credit to him for that)) that. But that's an aside to the whole "what's a game/what's a video game" thing, I guess.

 

I think that my one wrinkle/extra point is that I am not saying that you cannot play a game with Dear Esther.

 

 It seems reasonable to recognise that, within the kinda loose meaning of game we're working with here, there are some pieces of software (or other media) which "encourage you to play a game", or actively provide explicit or implicit contexts in which to play a game with them. (So, boardgames and sports come with rules, etc). Obviously, as well as choosing to play the game that they come with expectations around, you can play other games (for example, with a chessboard, you can play different chess variants, or drafts, or something completely different to those things).

There's software which comes with the same kind of context baked into it - arcade games clearly expect you to contextualise your "game" in terms of the rules encoded via collision detection, scoring and so on. There's nothing stopping you from playing a different game (say, playing Tetris, but aiming to make the tallest, narrowest tower, or make patterns in the play area), but software games are somewhat unique in that they often strongly enforce their version of the rules (trying to make a really tall tower in Tetris quickly results in a game-over, trying to be hit by every third shot in a shmup results in you losing all your lives), so there's a sense in which they "are" the game they come with. [The equivalent, I guess, is having really grumpy referees in a sports game, who tell everyone to go home because they're picking up the soccer ball and running with it, or a similarly grumpy GM in a pen-and-paper RPG] 

(People use pretentious terms like ludonarrative dissonance to talk about the problem where the "game that the software wants you to play" is at odds with other signals that the software is giving you - for example, narrative cues. Tomb Raider has a lot of this. Undertale, by contrast, gets critically lauded because the game it wants you to play is deeply intertwined with the narrative and artistic vision it wants you to experience. Tomb Raider is like a big budget AAA Blockbuster, in that its artistic vision is inherently compromised by the priorities of the Producers and their lack of deep concern for integration of the experience. Undertale is like an indie movie where everything is carefully rolled together into one whole which is bigger than its parts.)

Because people want to play around and play their own games with software contexts, people have tried various ways to break out of the "game context" which these things come with - so, you get mods and hacks of existing games, things like Kaizo Mario, etc. And, given that people will play with anything, people even started playing games with the tools you can use to make software - Garry's Mod, for example - or virtual worlds (Minecraft:Creative Mode is more popular than Minecraft: Survival Mode precisely because it isn't inherently a game - it leaves the user free to decide what context they want to interact with the world in, which can involve playing a game, but can also involve other collaborative or creative activities which are not games).

Now, because this side of the evolution of "things you can interact with without having it be a game, necessarily" has started from "video games", I agree that people tend to contextualise them as "video games" too.

 

My point is that there are also things which reached precisely the same position, from different starting points - there have been computer simulations used for non-game purposes for as long as there have been computers, for example; and there have been people coming from the artistic tradition who have been creating digital art since computers existed as well. 

If Dear Esther, or Mountain, had been made by either of those traditions, then no-one would call it a game (or a video game, for that matter).

Dear Esther is not, inherently, a game, in the same sense that Minecraft: Creative Mode is not a game, and the same sense in which Asteroids, say, is a game. (Although, actually, Dear Esther appears to actively and intentionally try to limit the ways in which you can interact with it in order to get you to experience it as a narrative, so I think the scope of "games you could play with Dear Esther" is much narrower and less interesting than the scope of "games you could play with Minecraft:Creative Mode - hence why I want to call it a "poem", rather than a "toy"/"tool" like Minecraft: Creative Mode is. That is: Dear Esther does not appear to want you to play games with it, Minecraft actively encourages you to (it just doesn't try to tell you which game to play).)

Edited October 18, 2015 by aoanla

[Ninety-Three]

If you label them as something else, like a 'software poem', you are effectively robbing them of that potency (unless you allow that a 'software poem' is itself a type of video game). They are seeking to join the 'video games' conversation and you are categorically denying them entry. That may not be your intent, but effectively and emotionally that's what you're doing.

So this is a sentiment that keeps coming up, and I disagree. I don't think there is such a thing is "the 'video games' conversation", it has always been "the 'entertainment software' conversation", so no matter what you label Dear Esther, it will not be excluded from conversation. That conversation has been dominated by games, but it has demonstrably had room for non-games since at least 1989's self-described software toy Sim City. There are people in the entertainment software discussion who think Dear Esther isn't a game, but I've never seen anyone say "This is not a game therefore it's off-topic, let's move on" (unless you're counting angry one-sentence Steam reviews). Spaces featuring what would have been labeled "the video games conversation", even ones where the prevailing attitude is "not a game", will spend far more time discussing Dear Esther than they will spend discussing any work outside the software medium, because really, they have always been "the entertainment software conversation".

Now sometimes people will be uninterested in Dear Esther because they think it is not a game, but that is a matter of genre preference. Yes, labeling Dear Esther as "software poem" will cause those people to not buy Dear Esther, but that is labeling working as intended to inform the consumer, just like labeling something "hidden object game" will cause me not to buy it, because I know that's not something I want.

[Dragonfliet]

I'm going to wade into this, having read all of the first three pages, then skimming the forth and mostly reading the fifth.

 

I think that the idea of separating out the "game" from the "Video game" is completely and hilariously pointless, as well as falsely intellectual. I can think of no better example of this, by the way, than the ludicrous example you gave, aoanla, of calling "The Wasteland" a novel. 

 

Why? Simply because it was called a poem, and not a novel, and there is no particularly compelling argument that could be made to change the nomenclature. 

 

Likewise: why are games that don't feel gamey to some people still called games? Because we call them that. It's really that simple. If the author calls it that, it is. And I swear to god, if you trot out some Roland Barthes like it's a revelation, I will write you off as a fool.

 

Because here is the thing: these distinctions are meaningless. What, for instance, is the difference between a romance and a novel? What made Daniel DeFoe an innovator? Largely, the accepted definition is that a romance was a retelling of another tale, a slave to the "great" stories, whereas the novel was a new (hence: novel), original story with completely new, original characters. So, if Ulysses is a retelling of the Odyssey, does that mean it's not a novel? Is Atwood's Penelopiade a romance also? Or how about John Gardner's Grendel? There are thousands of examples. No. Why? Because despite what may have been the original case when the phrase was coined, it dramatically and quickly expanded.

 

Is Jennifer Egan's Visit from the Goon Squad a novel or a collection of linked stories? Egan called it a novel, so it's a novel. How about Molly Gaudry's Novel/novella We Take Me Apart? It won a bunch of poetry awards, so is it a really long prose poem, or is it a novel? The latter, because that's how Gaudry has named it (and how the awards have celebrated it). How about people like Julie Otsuka, Lance Olsen, Ben Marcus, Michael Martone, Andre Breton, Julio Cortazar, John Ashbury, Alaine Robbe-Grillet, Dimitru Tsepeneag, Pamela Lu, Carol Maso, I could go on for a VERY long time. Works that are called poetry or prose depending on what the author has decided to call it--work that exchanges in a dialog between genres, and will be mentioned "outside" the genre it is claiming itself, but is still what it claims to be?

 

Is Dear Esther like a poem? I mean, I guess? It has words, and poems often have words. It's not particularly long, and sometimes poems aren't particularly long. It confuses some people, I guess? Is it like a story? I mean, I guess? It has words written in prose, composed in sentences and gathering narrative meaning through their accumulation. It uses structural patterns to build meaning like some stories also do. Is it like a game? It has rules and systems composed, that, if followed, can lead the player to a win-state of completing the game. It follows many of the conventions of a game, from control schemes to path structure, reaching various checkpoints triggers a reward (in this case more narration). So...I guess it could be attributed in some small way to any of these, no?

 

Categories that are created in order to exclude are terrible categories. They serve no purpose outside of creating a sense of (false) superiority among those that create the exclusions. To decide that some video games do not deserve to be called that is both petty and foolish. Are categories useful for consumer purposes? Absolutely. This, by the way, is why the derogatorybutnot subcategory of "walking simulator" was created for such games, to classify what KIND of Video game things like Dear Esther are. It's a silly name, but it makes sense to identify it, and it still avoids silly exclusionary games of intellectualism. 

 

You are free to argue that a game must be X, Y, and Z, and that children aren't "Playing games" when they compose a random set of rules onto an activity with no real win or lose states. You would be wrong, as the word has a socially constructed meaning that makes sense and is in wide use, but you could make that anti-saussurian argument, I guess. You are free to argue that things like Dear Esther aren't games, though that you want to call it a videopoem (as if it is somehow closer to a poem than a game--seriously, what set of rules did you use to determine that? It seems mostly that you are ignorant about what composes a poem and then just jammed it over there), and I understand your logic in composing such an argument, but it is pretty ludicrous. It's like arguing that poetry must be narrative, or that it can't be narrative. That a novel must contain all or mostly "new" characters, or that it has to be a "new" plot. It goes on.

 

Instead of wasting our breath trying to exclude things from being a Video game (I hate the space between when people write video game, but that's another pedantic argument for another time), why not better spend time discussing what about video games interests us, or confounds us? For instance: I find Dear Esther to be a frustratingly loathesome game: a neat idea with some beautiful work done, but a pandering buildup and poorly done ludic element. Or: how is it that stories in games are so pathetic and childish that Bioshock is still held up as a narrative success instead of a cute few moments and an otherwise blundering miasma of twaddle?

[osmosisch]

Bravo!

[Jutranjo]

exclude things from being a video game (I hate the space between when people write video game, but that's another pedantic argument for another time)

 

You'll notice the forum filter changes videogames to video games. It will also change MOBA to LOMA and will outright censor pineapple. PINE APPLE *********.

[twmac]

I'm going to wade into this, having read all of the first three pages, then skimming the forth and mostly reading the fifth.

 

I think that the idea of separating out the "game" from the "video game" is completely and hilariously pointless, as well as falsely intellectual. I can think of no better example of this, by the way, than the ludicrous example you gave, aoanla, of calling "The Wasteland" a novel. 

 

Why? Simply because it was called a poem, and not a novel, and there is no particularly compelling argument that could be made to change the nomenclature. 

 

Likewise: why are games that don't feel gamey to some people still called games? Because we call them that. It's really that simple. If the author calls it that, it is. And I swear to god, if you trot out some Roland Barthes like it's a revelation, I will write you off as a fool.

 

Because here is the thing: these distinctions are meaningless. What, for instance, is the difference between a romance and a novel? What made Daniel DeFoe an innovator? Largely, the accepted definition is that a romance was a retelling of another tale, a slave to the "great" stories, whereas the novel was a new (hence: novel), original story with completely new, original characters. So, if Ulysses is a retelling of the Odyssey, does that mean it's not a novel? Is Atwood's Penelopiade a romance also? Or how about John Gardner's Grendel? There are thousands of examples. No. Why? Because despite what may have been the original case when the phrase was coined, it dramatically and quickly expanded.

 

Is Jennifer Egan's Visit from the Goon Squad a novel or a collection of linked stories? Egan called it a novel, so it's a novel. How about Molly Gaudry's Novel/novella We Take Me Apart? It won a bunch of poetry awards, so is it a really long prose poem, or is it a novel? The latter, because that's how Gaudry has named it (and how the awards have celebrated it). How about people like Julie Otsuka, Lance Olsen, Ben Marcus, Michael Martone, Andre Breton, Julio Cortazar, John Ashbury, Alaine Robbe-Grillet, Dimitru Tsepeneag, Pamela Lu, Carol Maso, I could go on for a VERY long time. Works that are called poetry or prose depending on what the author has decided to call it--work that exchanges in a dialog between genres, and will be mentioned "outside" the genre it is claiming itself, but is still what it claims to be?

 

Is Dear Esther like a poem? I mean, I guess? It has words, and poems often have words. It's not particularly long, and sometimes poems aren't particularly long. It confuses some people, I guess? Is it like a story? I mean, I guess? It has words written in prose, composed in sentences and gathering narrative meaning through their accumulation. It uses structural patterns to build meaning like some stories also do. Is it like a game? It has rules and systems composed, that, if followed, can lead the player to a win-state of completing the game. It follows many of the conventions of a game, from control schemes to path structure, reaching various checkpoints triggers a reward (in this case more narration). So...I guess it could be attributed in some small way to any of these, no?

 

Categories that are created in order to exclude are terrible categories. They serve no purpose outside of creating a sense of (false) superiority among those that create the exclusions. To decide that some video games do not deserve to be called that is both petty and foolish. Are categories useful for consumer purposes? Absolutely. This, by the way, is why the derogatorybutnot subcategory of "walking simulator" was created for such games, to classify what KIND of video game things like Dear Esther are. It's a silly name, but it makes sense to identify it, and it still avoids silly exclusionary games of intellectualism. 

 

You are free to argue that a game must be X, Y, and Z, and that children aren't "Playing games" when they compose a random set of rules onto an activity with no real win or lose states. You would be wrong, as the word has a socially constructed meaning that makes sense and is in wide use, but you could make that anti-saussurian argument, I guess. You are free to argue that things like Dear Esther aren't games, though that you want to call it a videopoem (as if it is somehow closer to a poem than a game--seriously, what set of rules did you use to determine that? It seems mostly that you are ignorant about what composes a poem and then just jammed it over there), and I understand your logic in composing such an argument, but it is pretty ludicrous. It's like arguing that poetry must be narrative, or that it can't be narrative. That a novel must contain all or mostly "new" characters, or that it has to be a "new" plot. It goes on.

 

Instead of wasting our breath trying to exclude things from being a video game (I hate the space between when people write video game, but that's another pedantic argument for another time), why not better spend time discussing what about video games interests us, or confounds us? For instance: I find Dear Esther to be a frustratingly loathesome game: a neat idea with some beautiful work done, but a pandering buildup and poorly done ludic element. Or: how is it that stories in games are so pathetic and childish that Bioshock is still held up as a narrative success instead of a cute few moments and an otherwise blundering miasma of twaddle?

 

Really appreciated you saying pretty much what I wrote multiple times. I agree with pretty much everything you wrote.

 

But come on, 'blundering miasma' seems to be a bit harsh on Bioshock.

[Dragonfliet]

Really appreciated you saying pretty much what I wrote multiple times. I agree with pretty much everything you wrote.

 

But come on, 'blundering miasma' seems to be a bit harsh on Bioshock.

 

It's super likely I accidentally stole some of your points. I read the first three pages a few days ago and then skimmed a bit before posting, so I don't doubt I gleaned some of your points along the way. If so, I do really apologize.

 

Related: blundering miasma is a bit harsh. It's mostly just a dumb, though fun, story with a painfully blunt Rand rebuttal, as well as various nonsensical twists (if you're a robot who must obey, why, for instance do you try to "save" the family? Nothing was even accomplished there) with a great twist that then completely undoes itself (you're no longer a robot, now do this this and this). It's really a perfectly acceptable story, overall, with some neat moments, but mostly it stands out as being better written and more intellectually engaged than most games, which is frankly just SAD for the medium. I blame the harshness on the late hour, as I was desperately trying to clear my brain of a Derrida essay I've been rewriting for the last week.

[Deadpan]

I didn't anticipate there'd be this much interest in discussing this here, but the fact that there is makes me think it'd be a good idea to plug my weekly Game Crit Club, where we had several conversations on this early on, particularly opposite a short reading from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations, which both precede and, in my opinion, solve this problem. He even uses games (although not video games, obviously) as a recurring example in the text.

The long and the short of this is that it approaches the question not by looking at how games work but at how definitions work. I first encountered the text in linguistics, where it was used to explain the difference between invariant and prototypical definitions. Invariant are the kind that assign universal features that all candidates need to have in order to be allowed into a category. This doesn't really work well for language because there are all sorts of cases where (for instance) words do some of the things that are expected from a word class but not all of them. Some adjectives can only be used attributively or predicatively ("The child is afraid" but not "An afraid child" and "the main reason" but not "the reason is main"), others can be used both ways.

So linguistics relies on prototypical definitions instead. These assume a modifiable catalogue of features (based on established members, this is where the prototype part comes in), any number or combination of which is enough to be considered part of the group. With these, some members are closer to the center and some are closer to the edges, like doing all the things that are expected of adjectives vs. only doing some of them, but where exactly the center of such a definition is located can change over time and the boundaries are quite fuzzy overall.

One lesson you could take from this is simply go from looking for a clear-cut definition of games to trying to figure out their exact feature catalogue, i.e. to replace a binary game/nongame model with a prescriptive hierarchy of gameness based on certain key requirements. The salient point, however, is that Wittgenstein is arguing that definitions on the whole could stand to be a whole lot messier. The existence of weird fringe cases or atypical examples inevitable threatens to topple invariant definitions, since they don't allow for deviation. So for them, something that is considered a game by some people and not a game by other people represents a loss of knowledge because it calls into question their established conception of what games are. Prototypical definitions, on the other hand, only stand to gain from such cases because they are always willing to expand by adopting new members and revising their own understanding of the concept accordingly.

In other words, asking "Is Proteus a game?" is kind of a boring question. Asking "What does it mean for games that Proteus exists?" is a much more interesting one.

[Gaizokubanou]

This also reminds me of the worst argument I ever had with a friend over whether trucks are cars or not.  I argued that trucks are subcategory of cars.  He said trucks are trucks and not cars.

 

At least now I know that when he say car, I know he does not mean trucks.

 

Edit 5 or whatever: TLDR ver: Deadpan's prototypical definition is great, I like it and that words 'video games' should grow based on new samples... but miss the clarity of old definitions because currently I think now samples vary so much that it has rendered the word function-less.

 

So for them, something that is considered a game by some people and not a game by other people represents a loss of knowledge because it calls into question their established conception of what games are.

 

This seems pretty close to where I am.  BUT that is with accepting prototypical model because I think the word just loses so much of its functional elements, kinda like how the word 'art' is utterly meaningless.

 

Like take genres for example.  When someone mentions "I played 4X game last night", I exclude lot of activities and games from my mind.  It's not as specific as say, "I played a Civilization game last night".  But it is more specific than "I played a game" or "I did something that require electronic device".  This is possible under prototypical model... except when a word contains wide variety of prototypes that render its use too vague, which is where I think words 'video games' is at.

 

Interesting analog to this would be a common question asked among Civ/PDX fans... where does games like Europa Universalis 4 stand?  Are they 4X or something else?  This works under prototypical definition cause it's very narrow in scope (both are very specific subset of strategy genre).  And it is a fascinating discussion where it serves as an entry point to explore various mechanics of strategy genre, benefit of real time vs turn, what exactly is real time to begin with, etc.  Also on side note, most people don't look at those discussion and go "look at those asshole Civ fans trying to rob EU4 fans of the genre", it is purely mechanical question and says nothing of the value (but the discussion is not valueless, as it functions as a gateway for discussion on how the two different series/games function on design/play point).  

 

I just miss the possible discussion entry points (at least ones without antagonizing lot of people) about when something becomes a video game.  Or maybe the earlier limitations of video games were too limited and I'm just sensing a loss of simplicity that was always bound to be removed by improvements in technology?  Like if I were asked if MGS4 was a game or a movie back in early 90s (assuming I had similar mental facility that I posses now, which I did not historically), given the technological fore runners of gaming at that time, I would have said it was more of a movie than a game?  But today it just seem to obvious that it's a game, just one with crapload of cutscenes.

 

And about the understanding and concept via more samples... IDK, I think words 'video games' at this point is really similar to word 'art', in that it is so broad that it is rendered function-less outside of some really lame insult (like "that isn't art").  I'm not sure what it is that we have gained from that?  For example that question that you posed in the end... is to me, like asking 'what does it mean for art that works like Proteus exists' to which my thoughts are as broad as the question itself, 'it means a human being (or group of them) created a work of fiction'.  I can't comment anything more specific than that cause question is so broad to me.

 

But perhaps video games were pretty much going to become this broad and function less because it is just... very capable medium that can hold virtually all other known medium in itself.  So in that sense maybe I shouldn't lament the loss of clarity in the word but rather just note that at some point in our history, it just seemed 'clearer' due to mechanical constraints, not theoretical ones?

 

Edit: Made like 2 edits because it was very rambly and didn't really properly address the idea behind protypical usage and benefits (it still doesn't do it well but it was worse before the edits)

 

Also me keep coming back to this despite keep saying "I won't discuss it" just shows how much I miss it! ;P

 

And on more thought, perhaps I'm shouldn't worry and just reference genres instead which does serve very well as a clarifier (is this even a word)