Let's discuss what a video game is

twmac · October 21, 2015

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.

Whoops, sorry if that came out like that - The way you put it was far better written and compiled.

I always enjoy hearing about people's feelings on Bioshock, I am a bit biased as I got to watch two different people play through and, for the first time, get really excited about the possibilities of narrative in games.

Deadpan · October 21, 2015

I don't think there's ever been a point where a clear-cut definition did the subject justice, and in a sense video games are only catching up to how broad the concept of games has always been. If they're something we play with others (something video games call into question depending on whether or not you consider a computer an "other"), what of things like Solitaire, throwing a ball against a wall and catching it over and over again, or those hypothetical scenarios we like to play out in our heads? If they're meant to be fun, or voluntary (as in "the voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles"), or to have clear barriers seperating play from reality (as in the concept of the magic circle), then what of mind games, or the kind of games we're thinking of when we're telling another person to "quit playing games" in a romantic context?

aoanla · October 22, 2015

I think that an interesting phenomenon I've noticed in this thread is that "video game maximalists" (those who want video games/ games to mean as big a thing as possible) often assume or assert that people who disagree with them are using "clear-cut" definitions, or trying to bound words by strict sets of adjectives which must apply to all uses of the word.

I think it's actually fairly evident from the actual responses of those people who aren't "video game maximalists" that this is not actually the case.

For example: I already stated (and I know Ninety-Three, at least, agrees with me, and I suspect Gaizokubanou does too) that I do think Solitaire is a game.

It's important to remember that Wittgenstein was writing in a context where the dominant theory of language was purely based on hard, strict boundaries on words, applied almost to platonic forms of concepts (which were then considered to be approximated by reality). When he argues that we should be adopting a "fuzzier" view of meaning, he is contrasting that to those very hard, prescriptive, definitional approaches. What he never says is that words are always improved by making them fuzzier over time.

[in fact, he doesn't really prescribe how we should encourage language to develop, he's describing, mostly, how language is actually used.]

It's actually fairly obvious that there's an optimal fuzziness for word meaning which is less than total - if all words were as fuzzy as possible, then all words would refer to everything equally; they'd all lose meaning.

(It's also usually the case that, while you can't find a single strict definition of a word which fits all exemplars and cases, you can usually produce a cloud of qualities of which all examples will partake subsets. In the case of mind games, for example, it's clear that there's some sense of a contest or struggle being applied to this use of games - and "contest/competition" turns up as a rather common property in a lot of the looser "game" examples.)

I think my issue with "video game maximalism" is not just that the proposed additional exemplars (things like Mountain, Dear Esther) make the word too fuzzy to be useful (and also impinge on other words and cultures which already exist and deal with those concepts), but also that the "additional quality" which people seem to be attributing to those exemplars is "has value to me".

(In this, it's very much like the problem with "art" which Gaizokubanou mentions - "art" has slowly become a word which basically means "I quite like this thing and think it has value". I think "video game" is rapidly becoming "I like this software" for the same reasons.)

aoanla · October 22, 2015

(Also, since we're all using Wittgenstein, and his approach to meaning is empirical, it's important to actually gather real world data before asserting that an example is actually an exemplar of a word. One of the frustrating things about this discussion has been the refusal of the maximalist side to engage with counter examples which suggest that, say, Proteus, is not actually considered a game by a significant set of people.

Ninety-Three did some analysis on Steam reviews of Dear Esther a few pages back which anyone adopting a maximalist approach should probably actually read before asserting that their favorite example is actually a good example in reality of common usage.)

osmosisch · October 22, 2015

If anything the data only shows that this is a polarising issue, and the conversation shows that nobody's willing to change their particular defininition of 'game.'

There's obviously plenty of people who disagree that calling Dear Esther a game makes the term 'game' too fuzzy. I'm not sure where you're intending to go from here.

aoanla · October 22, 2015

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.

I make no secret of the fact that I don't consider the author to be the sole arbiter of the context or purpose or classification of their work. (But neither should you: the point of referencing The Waste Land is that Eliot considered it a poem. Even if the rest of the world all considered it a novel, by the arguments of some in this thread, we should still consider it a poem because Eliot said so. I am pretty sure that that's not how meaning in words actually happens, and you seem to actually agree with me (when it suits you).)

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?

No. Dear Esther is like a poem because it has characteristics deeply associated with the purpose and artist expression of poetry. It's a work that mostly leverages imagery, explicit and implicit, to achieve emotional states in those interacting with it, if you insist on trying to force me to be a reductive parody of the person you think I am. But it's a poem because it feels like a poem to me, and because using that word seems to be a good way to express what the creators were intending (via family-resemblances, if we're going to be all Wittgenstein).

The resemblances Dear Esther has to video games are, on the other hand, not deep resemblances, in my opinion. There's a control scheme - but of course there is, everything we interact with on a computer has a control scheme - checkpoints are used to trigger audio - but of course there are, everything we interact with on a computer uses events to trigger actions. This is all window-dressing being mistaken for deep resemblance - accidentals, to use a pretentious term just to fit with your mental image of me.

If you'd bothered to read my argument about what people would think of Dear Esther if it was a physical experience, not in a computer, then you'd understand that.

Categories that are created in order to exclude are terrible categories.

I agree, and that's not what anyone here is doing.

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.

Ahh, conflating value judgements with categorical distinction. You'll notice, of course, that no-one in this thread has ever made the implicit value judgement you're asserting we have.

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.

Are categories useful for consumer purposes? Absolutely. This, by the way, is why Dear Esther and Mountain get categorised as "video games", so they can be added to Steam without putting them in "Software".

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.

Good job I'm not doing that then, isn't it. (Please actually read things I've written, rather than assuming that because I disagree with you about some members of a category that I'm some easy to attack strawman. This is why twmac got short shrift from me too.)

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.

It isn't. Please actually read what I'm saying.

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?

The problem with your rhetorical position is that it doesn't actually allow anyone to disagree with a positive assertion.

If I say "Microsoft Windows 95 is a video game", then anyone disagreeing with me is automatically an evil, petty and foolish human who is driving only to destroy the beautiful socially constructed and fluffy world of language (and probably hates kittens). This is true even if there's no actual relevant connection I want to make, or if there are good reasons to disagree with me.

While, obviously, we shouldn't exclude things from categories for trivial or political reasons, the converse is also true: we shouldn't add things to categories for trivial or political reasons. Both approaches are equally bad.

(The maximalist approach that you and twmac want to use is just reducing word categorisation to a value judgements - "This is X" means "This is good", rather than "This is X".)

Of course, as you yourself argue, the meaning of words is primarily socially constructed. This means that actually, neither approach is really relevant - what's relevant is the empirically determined scope of a word (which can be different in different communities). Again, if you actually cared about this, rather than pursuing an agenda based around crypto-cultural value judgements, you'd have paid attention to Ninety-Three's empirical study of Steam reviews of Dear Esther. (It appears that the use of the word "game" to describe Dear Esther is shaky, amongst even the set of people who positively reviewed Dear Esther on Steam.)

Just as I don't get to say Dear Esther isn't a game if the World disagrees with me (at least, without stating my reasons and context), you also don't get to say it is (if the World disagrees with you).

aoanla · October 22, 2015

If anything the data only shows that this is a polarising issue, and the conversation shows that nobody's willing to change their particular defininition of 'game.'

There's obviously plenty of people who disagree that calling Dear Esther a game makes the term 'game' too fuzzy. I'm not sure where you're intending to go from here.

Where I'm intending to go from here is to note that, given this, it's as much for the people who want to argue for "maximalist" definitions of 'game' to make good cases as it is for the "non-maximalist" people to make theirs. There's not strong evidence that the "maximalist" position is actually reflective of the dominant real-world use, but most "maximalist" arguments start from the assumption that it is.

(Also: the other point is that word use is contextual - this is the use of the word "game" in the context of the community of "people who leave Steam game reviews". Firstly, this is a small subset of "all people in the World"; most of whom don't, probably, have the same use of the word "game" as people in this thread do.

(As an experiment, I tried showing a few people I know Dear Esther who are not members of the "video games" community at all. It's a sample size of three, so mostly anecdote, but none of them described it as a game (I'd carefully avoided using any specific descriptors for it - just described it as a "thing I'd like their thoughts on") when asked about their thoughts. (To be fair, none of them described it as a poem, either, so...)).

Secondly, as Ninety-Three notes, there's a strong social tendency for people to "use a known bad word" to refer to a thing in a conversation if that's the first word used for that thing. If Bob comes along with a microwave oven and says "My TV is isn't working", you would probably unconsciously reply "That TV isn't a TV, it's a microwave.". This is especially true if there's not an immediately good word that comes to mind to use instead - Dear Esther is certainly hard to apply an existing software-thing word to, other than maybe the most generic ones. People will tend to use a more specific feeling word in preference to a very generic feeling one, if given a suggestion of such a word, even if it isn't actually the best fit for their own conception. So, we get a lot of people saying "This game isn't a game" in the reviews, because the first "game" is them engaging in the language-game as above - applying a token or label because it's the one that's been suggested to them, and the second "game" is them asserting their own conceptual meaning. This is all classic Wittgenstein, by the way, and the process of negotiation in language-games that he talks about makes it fairly clear what's going on here - these assertions are all people negotiating over the meaning of the word "game" (and declaring that Dear Esther doesn't fit it). )

osmosisch · October 22, 2015

Well, whatever. I'm just going to go ahead and keep calling interactive software entertainment artefacts video games, which so far has served me excellently in communicating with my peers. You keep on yelling at that cloud.

aoanla · October 22, 2015

1) I wasn't "yelling at the cloud" until your peers tried to prevent me from using words in the way that my peer group uses them. This thread is me defending myself from you guys.

2) All software is interactive, and is an artifact. "Software Entertainment" seems okay, though. We could use a synonym for entertainments though, and call it "software art"

Mangela Lansbury · October 22, 2015

Software art is separate and distinct from any kind of video game, and is already a term in use. See Scott Draves, Lia, Martin Wattenberg, Netochka Nezvanova, Shirley Shor, Deb King, Duncan Holby, Lalo Hernandez Diez, Alan Bigelow, Pall Thayer, etc.

Software Entertainment is also a term that's already in use, and it is used interchangeably with video game. The Entertainment Software Association boasts members like Ubisoft, Capcom, EA, Epic Games, Activision/Blizzard, Nintendo, Square Enix, Playstation, etc.

aoanla · October 22, 2015

Mangela, I do know this. I'm being light-hearted. [still, I do quite like Software Entertainment or Entertainment Software as phrases - they go along with the commonly used phrase "games and entertainments" in a natural way.]

tberton · October 22, 2015

I'll probably get involved in this conversation more deeply tomorrow, despite myself, but I will point that the video games industries lobbying body is called the Entertainment Software Association. And the regulatory board in the States is the Entertainment Software Rating Board. So there's precedent for the term.

itsamoose · October 22, 2015

I guess I would consider myself a video game maximizer, but not as a method of categorization per se. I don't think a game is a thing, say the way that an apple or an airplane is a thing. Instead I see games as a manner or method of interaction, or perhaps a set of rules that govern a thing's use. To use the drinking game example again, a movie on it's own probably isn't a game, but if all participants decide to interact with it by a certain set of rules that contextualize or define their behavior, it can be one. I've mulled over the arguments for both sides on particular games, and the common thread seems to be that a game is more a set of rules and interactions than some immutable thing. To come at it from the other side, it is possible to turn something that is a game into something that isn't by eliminating or manipulating the ruleset.

Deadpan · October 22, 2015

A lot of words

To a certain degree, these conversations are always going to involve a weird balance of arguing about these concepts as they are presented in the actual current discussion and the way they exist out there in the wild, as hard to pin down attitudes that you can't really get a clear taxonomy of. So, I understand where this is coming from, kind of. Still, the fact that you come here to say "don't make assumptions about what people are saying" while going on to make a hell of a lot of assumptions about what myself and others are saying is pretty frustrating.

1) The exact reason I used the word clear-cut in the follow-up to my original, intentionally vague post is because Gaizokubanou explicitly mentioned missing "the clarity of old definitions" and how the term is now probably broad too the point of being meaningless. So I super don't appreciate the accusation that the longing for more precise definitions is just something folk like to pin on you for no reason.

2) The point isn't that I honestly think people would not consider Solitaire (or other examples) games. It's that as soon as you try to come up with some universal rule or feature to define games, these kinds of examples are left unaccounted for, even though most people, even the ones making these definitions, would intuitively describe them as games.

3) Your point about Wittgenstein not arguing for maximum fuzziness at all times looks completely misplaced to me given that nobody here seems to be arguing for this either. I mean, if you think that including cases near the existing boundaries of the word (like Mountain and Dear Esther) in my definition of games is about wanting to maximize the territory claimed by that term, you are seriously underestimating how far a radical approach could take these thought experiments. Is TV a Video game? Are museum audioguides video games? Are programmable gadgets video games?

4) If you want to break it down this far, "has value to me" or "doesn't have value to me" is also the frequently literal reasoning used by Video game traditionalists to argue against including certain titles. Regardless, the personal enjoyment that I, for example, draw from these games hardly precludes them having a larger effect on the medium, as we have seen in the proliferation of walking simulators, for instance. Either way, I'm not sure by what kind of yardstick you thought it possible to judge in a more holistic sense whether or not a new entry would benefit a category overall.

5) At what point in history do you think art transcended a definition of "I like this and it has value to me" because as far as I see the only things that really change over time is what people consider to be of value and which fancy reasoning they use to sell their personal tastes or cultural mores as the natural and desirable state of things.

A side-note: Dan Pinchbeck gave a talk in Vienna recently and described his intentions with Dear Esther mostly as honing in on the sense of "really being there" he got from first-person shooters, making it less an exercise in poetry than an attempt to stretch the short, visually and narratively impressive scenes in traditional games where gunplay is paused for a while to the length of a full experience, a possible precursor in that sense to the kind of VR dioramas being made these days.

aoanla · October 22, 2015

Deadpan:

Firstly, I apologise for taking your use of "clear cut" to be perhaps more extreme than it may have been intended. I do still think that there's a difference between "clear-cut" as an absolute signifier, and the relative sense of "clarity" and "precise" that Gaizokubanou and I have both used. In comparison to the "maximalist" interpretation of "games/video games", I think our usage is more precise, and possibly has more clarity - but I don't think we're actually being particularly hard-edged in our classifiers either. It sounded to me like you were suggesting that our definitions of "game" would exclude a lot of common usages outside of "video games", but I don't think we do - our beef is mostly with the extension of the word "game" in the video game context, I think.

I went on a bit of a side-comment about Wittgenstein which wasn't really aimed precisely at you (I think you got caught in the wash, because you were the last person of a chunk who all commented - this was more really at Dragonfliet, who I then decided deserved a fuller reply devoted to them), but I do think has some merit: in so far as I can discern it, the qualities which describe Dear Esther (and Mountain) together as examplars of "game" in the "video game" context do essentially extend the meaning of "video game" to basically all of software. I think this is pretty much maximally fuzzing "video game" within the class of things which video games is a subset.

I do admit that the fuzzing of "art" started quite some time ago. Evidentially, I think there was still a strong sense of "work which produces emotional effects in the interactor, via the application of masterful skill or craft" in the 17th and 18th centuries, maybe? Definitely in the 15th. So, no, this wasn't a recent decline or anything.

It may interest you that your side note actually totally convinces me that Dear Esther isn't a game. The "bits between the gunplay/action" in FPSen feel to me definitely like the bits where the FPS is trying most to be like a movie which you're immersed in, and not like a game (they're also essentially like the effect of wandering around a really well realised area in something like Second Life, which is also not trying to be a game - I'd argue that Second Life is a purer precursor to quite a lot of VR stuff being done, being that it was influenced strongly by the whole Metaverse stuff in Snow Crash.). So, if Dan Pinchbeck was going for that, he was essentially going for removing the bit of an FPS which makes it "game" , and making it into a just a really well realised virtual setting. (I'd still argue that adding the narrative element makes it something other than just a virtual setting like that, but I'm happy to accept that the effect I experienced wasn't quite what he was aiming at.)

Dragonfliet · October 22, 2015

Oh God, the blocked out quote sections instead of responding to an argument as a whole. Fine.

I make no secret of the fact that I don't consider the author to be the sole arbiter of the context or purpose or classification of their work. (But neither should you: the point of referencing The Waste Land is that Eliot considered it a poem. Even if the rest of the world all considered it a novel, by the arguments of some in this thread, we should still consider it a poem because Eliot said so. I am pretty sure that that's not how meaning in words actually happens, and you seem to actually agree with me (when it suits you).)

I heard you, hence my Barthes comment. Here is what I am saying: it is not WORTH examining "The Wasteland" as a novel, and the author's point of view is the MOST IMPORTANT aspect of this. What good is it to argue that the author is using the wrong word? What is gained? It is using definitions to prove the author of a work incorrect about their work, rather than asking how this IS what the author said it is, which is a much more interesting perspective. This does not require, as you imply, that we must change the definition of the word, or let it be controlled (as Saussure argues to be pointless), but rather is an important and useful frame.

No. Dear Esther is like a poem because it has characteristics deeply associated with the purpose and artist expression of poetry. It's a work that mostly leverages imagery, explicit and implicit, to achieve emotional states in those interacting with it, if you insist on trying to force me to be a reductive parody of the person you think I am. But it's a poem because it feels like a poem to me, and because using that word seems to be a good way to express what the creators were intending (via family-resemblances, if we're going to be all Wittgenstein).
The resemblances Dear Esther has to video games are, on the other hand, not deep resemblances, in my opinion. There's a control scheme - but of course there is, everything we interact with on a computer has a control scheme - checkpoints are used to trigger audio - but of course there are, everything we interact with on a computer uses events to trigger actions. This is all window-dressing being mistaken for deep resemblance - accidentals, to use a pretentious term just to fit with your mental image of me.
If you'd bothered to read my argument about what people would think of Dear Esther if it was a physical experience, not in a computer, then you'd understand that.

Yeah, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Dear Esther "leverages imagery, explicit and implicit, to achieve emotional states in those interacting with it." What the hell does that even mean? What a meaningless phrase! I mean, sure, many poems have imagery in them, but then, so do novels and short stories and essays, so do speeches, so do plays, so does painting, so does dance, etc., etc, ad infinitum. Not a single thing you have said corresponds, really with a poem. What are the "deep" resemblances to poetry? Honestly, I can think of none. Perhaps that the game is short? That it is somewhat abstract? I see none of these things as inherent to poetry, exclusive to it, or even having some sort of majority case that would call these things "deep resemblances." It is possible that you have specific examples in mind. Please, if you have any actual examples, this might be useful, but for now, this is more abstract and ridiculous that I can even fathom.

Let's, on the other hand, look at it as a game. The navigation of 3D spaces with a wasd (or gamepad) setup, while not EXCLUSIVE to games, is MOST OFTEN used in them. The navigation of paths in this 3D space to progress towards the end, is not exclusive to, but is most often used in games. The navigation to specific locations, which must necessarily be reached in order to continue the game and reach the win-state, again, most often used in games, etc. Compare, for instance, Dear Esther to the game it originally was a mod of: Half-Life 2. In Half Life 2, the player navigates via wasd and Mouse, investigating areas, but proceeding, if they wish to "win" the game, through set paths, which are clearly demarcated, though allowing for off-the-path exploration (which will NOT result in the player getting to the win-state), where, at certain checkpoints, will receive an audio, or audio-visual "reward" in the form of plot, and will then be ushered to the next checkpoint, etc. Throughout this, part of the game is in observing the surroundings, to get more world building plot points (ie: people in dismay at train station, newspapers of war at rebel base, etc.), part of the game is the defeating of enemies, via shooting, other parts are figuring out how to get to the next part of the path, generally via small puzzles (such as finding a wheel to turn a crank). You will notice that Dear Esther does not have shooting, and does not require the player to pick up objects and put them in obvious object-missing locations, but has literally every other element. You will notice, also, that Photoshop does not have these elements, that Maya does not have these elements (though it does have navigable 3d space, should the object be created for it), that my web browser does not have this, etc. The similarities to games--in fact to MOST games--are pretty obvious.

Not only are they obvious, they are inherent. The player may wander, they may explore on their own--and there is a set of systems in place to ALLOW this, but there is ALSO a ruleset that dictates that the player MUST complete the game according to a certain method (of finding and reaching the checkpoints) in order to win. Also, these require thought and interaction on the part of the player. The game will not do this on its own, nor is the path forward always obvious and certain.

You say that if I'd read your argument about blahblah physical experience, blahblah, but I would very MUCH call an interaction with set rules, that require I fulfill certain requirements before being allowed to proceed, etc. as a game. It would not be called a Video game, as it would not be on a computer, but it would sure as heck be called a game. Would it be a "fun" game? Possibly, though probably not, if you regard fun as challenge. Would it be a hard games? Nope. But according to most definitions of what a game is, yes.

I agree, and that's not what anyone here is doing.

Ahh, conflating value judgements with categorical distinction. You'll notice, of course, that no-one in this thread has ever made the implicit value judgement you're asserting we have.

You're right, you have no explicitly said that some games do not deserve to be called games. You have merely argued that they are an offshoot that doesn't qualify as a game. You see a necessary and important distinction between the two, I do not. You have created a ghetto of things with no names (overblown video poem is definitely not a name) and then you claim to have made no value judgments. Please.

Good job I'm not doing that then, isn't it. (Please actually read things I've written, rather than assuming that because I disagree with you about some members of a category that I'm some easy to attack strawman. This is why twmac got short shrift from me too.)

...

It isn't. Please actually read what I'm saying. [this, I should add, was in reference to me calling your example of videopoem ignorant--which I stand by entirely. You just said it isn't. Fine. See my above argument for why I find this ludicrous--dragonfliet]

You are. You did not literally bring up the example of children--I did, as an analogy to show the ridiculousness of your argument--but you are making analagous arguments. Which, you may have noticed, I address directly in the VERY NEXT SENTENCE. The use of other examples in conjunction with the main argument is not in any way a strawman argument. You are deriding one kind of play (the play that happens in Mountain and Dear Esther, etc. as opposed to the play in Solitaire, etc., because the one does not have AS MANY or AS CONCRETE of rules as the other.

The problem with your rhetorical position is that it doesn't actually allow anyone to disagree with a positive assertion.
If I say "Microsoft Windows 95 is a video game", then anyone disagreeing with me is automatically an evil, petty and foolish human who is driving only to destroy the beautiful socially constructed and fluffy world of language (and probably hates kittens). This is true even if there's no actual relevant connection I want to make, or if there are good reasons to disagree with me.

While, obviously, we shouldn't exclude things from categories for trivial or political reasons, the converse is also true: we shouldn't add things to categories for trivial or political reasons. Both approaches are equally bad.

(The maximalist approach that you and twmac want to use is just reducing word categorisation to a value judgements - "This is X" means "This is good", rather than "This is X".)

Of course, as you yourself argue, the meaning of words is primarily socially constructed. This means that actually, neither approach is really relevant - what's relevant is the empirically determined scope of a word (which can be different in different communities). Again, if you actually cared about this, rather than pursuing an agenda based around crypto-cultural value judgements, you'd have paid attention to Ninety-Three's empirical study of Steam reviews of Dear Esther. (It appears that the use of the word "game" to describe Dear Esther is shaky, amongst even the set of people who positively reviewed Dear Esther on Steam.)
Just as I don't get to say Dear Esther isn't a game if the World disagrees with me (at least, without stating my reasons and context), you also don't get to say it is (if the World disagrees with you).

This is where you are most mistaken. My argument is not: EVERYTHING is a game (particularly not your ludicrous example which is an expression of your anger more than even a semi-coherent argument). My argument is that your particular distinctions are 1) Wrong (videopoem my ass) 2) Reductive to the point of absurdity (how many puzzles must one have to be a game? What counts as a puzzle? etc.) 3) Harmful

I've pretty much addressed the first two, so let's touch again on the third. Do things like Dear Esther and Mountain have many conditions that games have? They Do! Is anyone in any way harmed by them being lumped into the category of video games, which ranges from shooters to simulations to cardgames to puzzles? Nope. Is anyone harmed by excluding them to a nameless ghetto? Well, yes. In a commercial sense, this would be extremely harmful to the games in question, as they would be isolated and excluded in a damaging way. From an artistic sense, it's harmful to the entire artform of video games, because it says that anything which includes most of X variables, which we associate with games, but are also different and push the boundaries, no longer count as games. It self-limits what the medium can do.

Again: the novel allows for such an incredible range that is completely and utterly beyond the initial definitional scope (I won't repeat the whole argument here, but feel free to go back to my post for the LARGE number of examples I gave), and this has greatly enriched the novel, made it fresh and new and marvelous many times over, so that even what we might see as a "traditional" "realist" novel, like Netherland, is filled with the innovations, experimentations and conversations that populated other, more experimental, less traditional ones.

Okay, now for your final point, re: the saussurian meaning of words. First, stop calling what Ninety-Three did an "empirical study" It was a random sampling that was not actually random, and it was only of negative reviews. Not empirical. Next, note that nearly all of these people, while coming to an answer (yes/no/or indifferent, more or less), they are ALL engaging, out of the blue, with the idea that this is/isn't a game. A game that "isn't a game" is still a game. What I mean is this: they are disagreeing that Dear Esther fits their personal conception of what a game SHOULD BE, even while they are privileging the fact that it is a game via the larger discourse. They also tend to have wildly varying reason's that it "isn't a game," and most of them have to do with a conception of difficulty or failure. In other words, even in a not-empirical study, there is no consensus that this is not a game--but rather that the discourse about how games "should" be fun, or hard, etc. is being brought up in games that push the boundaries.

But I'll end it with this, because it says it better than anything else:

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.

Ninety-Three · October 23, 2015

Okay, now for your final point, re: the saussurian meaning of words. First, stop calling what Ninety-Three did an "empirical study" It was a random sampling that was not actually random, and it was only of negative reviews. Not empirical. Next, note that nearly all of these people, while coming to an answer (yes/no/or indifferent, more or less), they are ALL engaging, out of the blue, with the idea that this is/isn't a game. A game that "isn't a game" is still a game. What I mean is this: they are disagreeing that Dear Esther fits their personal conception of what a game SHOULD BE, even while they are privileging the fact that it is a game via the larger discourse. They also tend to have wildly varying reason's that it "isn't a game," and most of them have to do with a conception of difficulty or failure. In other words, even in a not-empirical study, there is no consensus that this is not a game--but rather that the discourse about how games "should" be fun, or hard, etc. is being brought up in games that push the boundaries.

Emphasis added.

You didn't read my post. You're saying things that are objectively not true. The most charitable assumption I can make is that you merely skimmed it, in which case I must ask you to actually look at the content you're talking about.

My post looked at thirteen positive reviews. Only 21 of 46 negative reviews engaged (positively or negatively) with the idea that it was a game, 19 more merely referred to Dear Esther as a game in sentences such as "It's a pretty game", which is hardly engaging with the idea. One of the "not a game" reviews I linked makes any mention of challenge, and zero mention failure. When people explained why they thought it wasn't a game, they weren't wildly varying: some said "it feels more like an experience/journey/movie", and most simply said "lack of gameplay". Again, no mention is made of the idea that games should be fun or hard. I have no idea where you got those ideas, but it certainly wasn't from my post or any of the reviews it links.

This is the point at which I am inclined to make the less charitable assumption that you are willfully misrepresenting facts in an attempt to win an argument, because how could anyone acting in good faith reach your point based on my post?

And while we're talking about what words mean, the reviews being sampled by nonrandom means (in this case, first N negative reviews by Steam's default sorting of "highest-rated first") does not mean what I did was not empirical. That's not remotely how that word works. I performed a reproducible observation-based experiment (reading reviews), put the results into clear categories, and counted the members of those categories to produce data. There are many things it's not, such as "particularly rigorous", but to call it not empirical is just a misuse of language.

aoanla · October 23, 2015

Dragonfliet:

Firstly, I see you're perfectly happy to attack the meaning of words in a non-standard way when it comes to attempting to "ghettoize" the work of someone who disagrees with you. But Ninety-Three has already defended themselves perfectly well, so I'll stop there.

On to the main points, though: You'll notice that I explicitly used the pretentious phrase that you start attacking as "meaningless drivel" in order to conform to your apparent image of me. I even told you that's what I was doing. Apparently you just don't care about being a reasonable human being in a discussion, or maybe you're just so terribly angry about my ghettoizing the poor creatives that you're not reading things properly.

That said: of course it's an abstract relationship, I'm trying to create a useful metaphor for the way in which Dear Esther tries to create meaning, and the kind of meaning it tries to create. Clearly Dear Esther isn't actually written in words, but people use "poetry" in senses which don't correspond to the concept of "things written in words" ("poetry in motion", "that cake is sheer poetry" etc), so your ironically very prescriptive definition of poetry doesn't seem to be complete.

Meanwhile, your definition of "game" is hilariously implementation specific. All of the properties which you've allocated to Dear Esther's gaminess are due to it being implemented as a Half-life 2 mod originally. Essentially, then, you're using the same argument that the dev of Mountain used: "This is a game because I made it in a game creation tool". I've already addressed, multiple times, why this is a shallow argument, so I'm not going to repeat myself again (other than to note that it's pretty obvious that you can make very non-game things in a game creation tool - try it!).

But the core of your argument seems to be "most things which create a realised virtual world and let you navigate it are called games". Sure, it's certainly true that the overwhelming majority of video games nowadays create a three-d virtual world and implement you in it. This is because games are the most popular thing that humans engage in (regardless of the type of game), and they need a setting though, not because that's inherently "what a game is".

Your argument is akin to someone arguing that the old WW2 war room boards with the little model planes on them to track enemy and friendly positions are "a game" because they have a board and little models on them, and so does chess. Sure, they do share implementation elements with boardgames, but their context is what makes them a game: using a board and pieces is a convenient way to represent the world (even inspired by boardgames in this case!), but it's what you do with them that counts.

Again, Second Life (and all of the other less successful attempts at virtual-world style things inspired mostly by Snow Crash) are not games, and they just do precisely what you've said is your main reason for thinking that Dear Esther is a game. Essentially, my argument is that your argument for "Gaminess" exposes your shallow reference pools and experience of computer-mediated virtualities more than it illuminates on what a game is.

This is also precisely what I mean when I've argued that your definition essentially annihilates huge swathes of other fields of work. Because you think that one of the most important thing is that Dear Esther can be commercially successful (why is this so deeply important to you? Lots of valuable things aren't, and while I'm sure Dan Pinchbeck is a lovely person, I'm not sure that anyone in particular deserves to automatically have commercial success - isn't that the whole point of Capitalism?) then we have to say that "video games" is the name for the field of work in which we make interactive virtual spaces. But there are plenty of people who have already been working in the wide field of making interactive virtual spaces who are not from the games tradition, and who don't call their work games, and your definition marginalises them. (My sarcastic use of Windows 95 wasn't drawn from anger, my emotional state was wearied at the time.)

Also, on the meaning of words, since I've gotten to the end of your discussion:

Sure, people are engaging with the use of the word "game" to describe Dear Esther - but those who engage are engaging to reject Dear Esther from that set. A "game that isn't a game" is not a game - it's a thing which I'm calling a game by default so I can reject it from the category directly in my sentence. That's what that negotiation means: a rejection of your "wider discourse" by direct means.

Dragonfliet · October 23, 2015

Emphasis added.

You didn't read my post. You're saying things that are objectively not true. The most charitable assumption I can make is that you merely skimmed it, in which case I must ask you to actually look at the content you're talking about.

My post looked at thirteen positive reviews. Only 21 of 46 negative reviews engaged (positively or negatively) with the idea that it was a game, 19 more merely referred to Dear Esther as a game in sentences such as "It's a pretty game", which is hardly engaging with the idea. One of the "not a game" reviews I linked makes any mention of challenge, and zero mention failure. When people explained why they thought it wasn't a game, they weren't wildly varying: some said "it feels more like an experience/journey/movie", and most simply said "lack of gameplay". Again, no mention is made of the idea that games should be fun or hard. I have no idea where you got those ideas, but it certainly wasn't from my post or any of the reviews it links.

This is the point at which I am inclined to make the less charitable assumption that you are willfully misrepresenting facts in an attempt to win an argument, because how could anyone acting in good faith reach your point based on my post?

And while we're talking about what words mean, the reviews being sampled by nonrandom means (in this case, first N negative reviews by Steam's default sorting of "highest-rated first") does not mean what I did was not empirical. That's not remotely how that word works. I performed a reproducible observation-based experiment (reading reviews), put the results into clear categories, and counted the members of those categories to produce data. There are many things it's not, such as "particularly rigorous", but to call it not empirical is just a misuse of language.

This is all fair. I did, admittedly, mostly skim over it, hence my mistake about the negative reviews. I steamrolled over the break where you talked about the positive comments.

You're wrong about the difficulty aspect, however. From "Implicit disagreement (casual use of "game", major critique of lack of gameplay or disaparaging use of "walking simulator"): 4": link 1: "You can do nothing but walk and walk; there are no enigmas or riddles (I expected that), and basically you walk on a closed and forced path that eventually leads you to the end" which is clearly about challenge. link 2:"Not only are they actually games that require an input from a player," which doesn't go into the idea of difficulty, but I would argue IS about that--as the erroneous comment that it requires no input from the player (demonstrably false) implies an expected bit of input that belies reactions, solving a puzzle, etc. link 3: doesn't mention gameplay at all. link 4:" The two monumental issues that plague this game however, are its linearity and the speed of progression." again, linearity (and the game is very linear) is not directly about difficulty, but the idea, in combination, is that the game is dull (held out by the rest of the review.

From "Outright disagreement (either outright "not a game" or comments like "this is a work of art"): 18" Link 1: "However there is absolutely no interaction within this game, you walk, you can float up in some parts of deep water and you can fall off things. I don't know if this even counts as a game, it's a story where you get to move the camera around." link 2:"There is little story, and even less gameplay. You're mostly railroaded along a path, where you will hear and see things." link 3:"Dear Esther feels like less of a game, more of an experience.... I say experience more than explore. As much as you can walk around and think you're doing your own thing, you're really just on a set path that is highly detailed and winds through coastal beaches, caves and cliff sides." link 4: "n Dear Esther, you'll wander beautiful environments with no interaction or objective while listening to soothing ambient music..." and I'll stop there to not pull from literally every single one (which would grow tedious for everyone). I didn't make notes on each one here, obviously, but would make the same argument. What we are seeing is a coded response to: I wanted a game, as I have typically understood a game, which means challenge/difficulty/excitement. It is easy to walk in this game, it isn't particularly hard to find the right path, there is no intrinsic reward for wandering in the game (and it takes foreeeeeeever to get back to the path if you've wandered very far at atll), etc.

You are, again, 100% right that I didn't pull that from your reviews. Unfortunately, I had moved on to my own point, while still being linked to your argument. This was entirely me fucking up. Apologies. I think that your data is a strong set of information that is informal, but obviously took some work, and definitely doesn't show what I was claiming here. While I think my claim was accidental, rereading that shit, it was obviously there, and definitely not true.

I'm also willing to grant you the empirical data point. I feel that you have taken this as a disparaging remark as to your work, and that couldn't be farther from the truth. The nomenclature of the word "empirical" when referring to evidence is pretty fluid. It can simply mean: data, evidence, but it is most often used in such interactions to mean evidence which clearly supports the claim--and was being used by aoanla with regards an "empirically determined scope of a word" which simply isn't what it is. It is an informal survey of the latest reviews that disproves a specific point (that the majority of reviews consider it a game). I think your work is evidence enough for that, but not how it was being claimed. Again, fast and loose on my part (and you may still disagree with me after my explanation), but there you go. On a related point, if only 21 of 46 engaged in the idea of whether or not it was a game, wouldn't the implicit understanding, in a game review, be that the majority felt it was a game to the point that they didn't even NEED to explicate on the subject?

Your post was a minor footnote in my comments, and through the simple process of me keeping my responses as short as possible, got fucked up. That's on me, but I most certainly wasn't trying to twist all of this in my favor. I will reemphasize my point. Your data shows that more people make the argument that it isn't a game, than that it is (in that particular sample). I believe, having looked at those reviews, that those arguments are founded on an implicit (and often heavily implied) belief that a game must be more difficult. I think my favorite example from the later negative reviews claiming it isn't a game is this: Dear Esther is not a game. It is an interactive experience. It's also quite depressing and - despite some beautiful visuals - quite dull.

More of an art experiment, "Dear Esther" has you following in the footsteps of a would-be suicide as he mournfully regrets the loss of his deceased wife. It's neat how the game randomly picks parts of the narrative to play to you as you wander the moors; no run through will get exactly the same experience. Is not a game...it's neat how the game. They are having an argument about how something they inherently believe is a game (it's neat how the game) is not very interesting and has few challenging systems (is not a game), but since they have little vocabulary to describe it are reaching, mostly at random, at some "other" thing that the game is, while mostly defaulting to referring to it as a game. This, again, is NOT a point your data makes, explicitly, and again I was wrong for not more clearly separating this, but it IS the inference I drew from the data you compiled.

Anyways, I hope this clears up some of the stupid errors. They were made in good faith, though I think that we may still be in disagreement regarding the substance of my corrected viewpoint.

Dragonfliet · October 23, 2015

Dragonfliet:

Firstly, I see you're perfectly happy to attack the meaning of words in a non-standard way when it comes to attempting to "ghettoize" the work of someone who disagrees with you. But Ninety-Three has already defended themselves perfectly well, so I'll stop there.

On to the main points, though: You'll notice that I explicitly used the pretentious phrase that you start attacking as "meaningless drivel" in order to conform to your apparent image of me. I even told you that's what I was doing. Apparently you just don't care about being a reasonable human being in a discussion, or maybe you're just so terribly angry about my ghettoizing the poor creatives that you're not reading things properly.

That said: of course it's an abstract relationship, I'm trying to create a useful metaphor for the way in which Dear Esther tries to create meaning, and the kind of meaning it tries to create. Clearly Dear Esther isn't actually written in words, but people use "poetry" in senses which don't correspond to the concept of "things written in words" ("poetry in motion", "that cake is sheer poetry" etc), so your ironically very prescriptive definition of poetry doesn't seem to be complete.

Meanwhile, your definition of "game" is hilariously implementation specific. All of the properties which you've allocated to Dear Esther's gaminess are due to it being implemented as a Half-life 2 mod originally. Essentially, then, you're using the same argument that the dev of Mountain used: "This is a game because I made it in a game creation tool". I've already addressed, multiple times, why this is a shallow argument, so I'm not going to repeat myself again (other than to note that it's pretty obvious that you can make very non-game things in a game creation tool - try it!).

But the core of your argument seems to be "most things which create a realised virtual world and let you navigate it are called games". Sure, it's certainly true that the overwhelming majority of video games nowadays create a three-d virtual world and implement you in it. This is because games are the most popular thing that humans engage in (regardless of the type of game), and they need a setting though, not because that's inherently "what a game is".

Your argument is akin to someone arguing that the old WW2 war room boards with the little model planes on them to track enemy and friendly positions are "a game" because they have a board and little models on them, and so does chess. Sure, they do share implementation elements with boardgames, but their context is what makes them a game: using a board and pieces is a convenient way to represent the world (even inspired by boardgames in this case!), but it's what you do with them that counts.

Again, Second Life (and all of the other less successful attempts at virtual-world style things inspired mostly by Snow Crash) are not games, and they just do precisely what you've said is your main reason for thinking that Dear Esther is a game. Essentially, my argument is that your argument for "Gaminess" exposes your shallow reference pools and experience of computer-mediated virtualities more than it illuminates on what a game is.

This is also precisely what I mean when I've argued that your definition essentially annihilates huge swathes of other fields of work. Because you think that one of the most important thing is that Dear Esther can be commercially successful (why is this so deeply important to you? Lots of valuable things aren't, and while I'm sure Dan Pinchbeck is a lovely person, I'm not sure that anyone in particular deserves to automatically have commercial success - isn't that the whole point of Capitalism?) then we have to say that "video games" is the name for the field of work in which we make interactive virtual spaces. But there are plenty of people who have already been working in the wide field of making interactive virtual spaces who are not from the games tradition, and who don't call their work games, and your definition marginalises them. (My sarcastic use of Windows 95 wasn't drawn from anger, my emotional state was wearied at the time.)

Also, on the meaning of words, since I've gotten to the end of your discussion:

Sure, people are engaging with the use of the word "game" to describe Dear Esther - but those who engage are engaging to reject Dear Esther from that set. A "game that isn't a game" is not a game - it's a thing which I'm calling a game by default so I can reject it from the category directly in my sentence. That's what that negotiation means: a rejection of your "wider discourse" by direct means.

Look, you say that it doesn't matter that a game like Dear Esther, or whatever, isn't a game, no matter what the creator thinks about it, because it doesn't meet enough criteria and that it doesn't matter what a creator thinks, and then you argue that it's actually a video poem because "it feels like a poem to me, and because using that word seems to be a good way to express what the creators were intending " Which, you know, was even more ridiculous, so I decided to engage in your point that for x reasons, y example isn't a game, and ask you why it was what you were claiming. Because this is what this thread is attempting to do: to delineate what is and is not a game, and to reclassify some of the things that snuck in.

You'll also notice that my argument is NOT "most things which create a realised virtual world and let you navigate it are called games" but rather that when a piece of software fulfills all of these similarities AND it claims to be a game, then it makes sense to CALL it a game. I am not trying to classify the raw files of the next Pixar film a game because there is 3D space, a method for controlling it, etc., etc. and I would call out someone who tried to insist that it WAS a game as being a bit off. You keep (deliberately) missing context. My cry is NOT that everything is a game, but rather that: should someone call it a game, it is more interesting and useful to consider WHY it is a game and what that does for us than to come out with an abstract set of rules for the purpose of disqualifying something.

Am I arguing that since a novel is a textual work that is generally above 50k words and is a unique premise with unique characters, told in prose, that an extended prose poem is automatically a novel? Nope. Nor am I arguing that a war map is a game because of resemblance, etc., etc. None of this impinges on the work of others at all, because even though the definitions are fuzzy, should one try and get at them in an abstract, context-less manner while SIMULTANEOUSLY ignoring the author of the works--well, that's an insane way to look at things. We have fuzzy definitions that must be taken in context and with the input of the creators.

Your notions of what a game is are shallow and ill defined, your definitions of what a video game is are even less defined and even more flawed, yet you, already, are excluding titles. And the sum total of this thread is...what? To quibble over details?

Here is a simplistic, but useful definition of game (from wikipedia):

A game is structured form of play, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool.^[1] Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements. However, the distinction is not clear-cut, and many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or games) or art (such as jigsaw puzzles or games involving an artistic layout such as Mahjong, solitaire, or some video games).

So what is a Video game? It is, very simply, the electronic version of a game. Sometimes this means that it is competitive, but other times not. It is a structured form of play. What do we gain from inventing other definitions? None. Does this steamroll virtual worlds? Nope. Does it overrule practical simulations? Nope. It is a wide definition, anthropologically supported (I'm thinking of Thomas Malalaby and the like), and honestly the most useful. A person must be expected to use common sense, but is that so much to ask in such a discussion?

I'll go into one of your last claims. I think one of the most useful things for definitions is that they be as useful as possible. It is NOT useful to break out certain games as not-games and put them into an undefined category. I think it IS useful to categorize them as games, and then create a sub-category that best explains them. I mentioned the commercial aspect because, quite frankly, the commercial aspect is HUGELY IMPORTANT for games. There is very little arts funding for games and the vast majority of interesting games are not coming from major or semi-major studios. These games are reaching to the same audiences that play other games, and include the same design languages, the same inputs and the same hardware for, largely, the same purposes (to entertain and inspire, etc.). This does not in any way, shape or form mean that they " automatically have commercial success" (really? You think that being allowed to classify your game as a game means automatic commercial success?), but rather, it simply avoids the marginalization of the form. I have no idea how people who make VR projects that do not claim to be games are somehow marginalized by me letting in people that WANT to be called games?

I think that this matters because these ARE games, they are from the tradition of games, use the mechanics of games, etc. (I did more examples in the paragraphs above), and move games forward. I think that it is important that gaming embrace innovation rather than hiding from it, and I think that literally saying: THIS IS NOT GAMING, GAMING IS X Y AND Z AND NOTHING ELSE is literally avoiding the innovative. You think it's important to preserve a definition. I mean, apparently at least. Not really sure why. I am arguing with you because I think the whole project that you (and others way before you and way after you) are embarking on is deluded. It has no real end in mind, but will wreak havoc nonetheless. Why not have a novel that includes Don Quixote and V. and The Puttermesser Papers and Ava and The Penelopiad and The Hours, and The Book of Ruth etc.etc. etc. instead of one that is stifled and samey? Why not have video games that include The Path and Endless Forest and Dear Esther and Grand Theft Auto and Solitaire and Kinect Party instead of one which only includes a smattering of the choice? I get your argument that there isn't necessarily, no matter what, a value judgment in whatever term whatever a thing is called, but you are wrong to think that it isn't meaningful, and that, frankly, there is no market or subculture for games that are not games.

But I guess I'll leave you to your crusade without a real point. Just, you know, more exact definitions (well, except for what a video poem is. That doesn't get a definition. Just, you know, NOT a Video game).

twmac · October 23, 2015

Deleted this post.

I was annoyed at being treated like I am some kind of cannon fodder in a Beat-em up.

Sorry about that.

aoanla · October 24, 2015

Before I get started, I should apologise to twmac: I misremembered the author of a comment earlier in this thread and didn't double-check it, and thus implied something about him that is not true. As far as I can tell I did not (nor did I ever feel tempted or the need to) give twmac short-shift in this thread (in fact, his debating style was pretty good).

Look, you say that it doesn't matter that a game like Dear Esther, or whatever, isn't a game, no matter what the creator thinks about it, because it doesn't meet enough criteria and that it doesn't matter what a creator thinks, and then you argue that it's actually a video poem because "it feels like a poem to me, and because using that word seems to be a good way to express what the creators were intending " Which, you know, was even more ridiculous, so I decided to engage in your point that for x reasons, y example isn't a game, and ask you why it was what you were claiming. Because this is what this thread is attempting to do: to delineate what is and is not a game, and to reclassify some of the things that snuck in.

Well, no: this thread is mostly you guys trying to tell me that I have to think Dear Esther is a game, as far as I can tell.

If you actually wanted to know why I think Dear Esther isn't a game, you could actually have read my comments at the multiple times I've said why I think Dear Esther isn't a game in response to various people at various points in this thread.

Instead, you decided to attack my use of the phrase video poem because it doesn't meet your particularly strict (and incomplete) definitions of the use of the word "poem" or "poetry". (Since we're apparently citing definitions from third-parties at in this discussion now, I might note that both Wiktionary (definition 4) and the Oxford English Dictionary (definition 6) support the sense in which I'm using "poetry" here:

Wiktionary: 4. A 'poetical' quality, artistic and/or artfull, which appeals or stirs the imagination, in any medium

OED: 6. a. fig. Something comparable to poetry in its beauty or emotional impact; a poetic quality of beauty and intensity of emotion; the poetic quality of something.

It's pretty obvious that I must be using the figurative meaning for the OED in particular, as clearly Dear Esther isn't an actual work of literature. )

You'll also notice that my argument is NOT "most things which create a realised virtual world and let you navigate it are called games" but rather that when a piece of software fulfills all of these similarities AND it claims to be a game, then it makes sense to CALL it a game. I am not trying to classify the raw files of the next Pixar film a game because there is 3D space, a method for controlling it, etc., etc. and I would call out someone who tried to insist that it WAS a game as being a bit off. You keep (deliberately) missing context. My cry is NOT that everything is a game, but rather that: should someone call it a game, it is more interesting and useful to consider WHY it is a game and what that does for us than to come out with an abstract set of rules for the purpose of disqualifying something.

Am I arguing that since a novel is a textual work that is generally above 50k words and is a unique premise with unique characters, told in prose, that an extended prose poem is automatically a novel? Nope. Nor am I arguing that a war map is a game because of resemblance, etc., etc. None of this impinges on the work of others at all, because even though the definitions are fuzzy, should one try and get at them in an abstract, context-less manner while SIMULTANEOUSLY ignoring the author of the works--well, that's an insane way to look at things. We have fuzzy definitions that must be taken in context and with the input of the creators.

Your notions of what a game is are shallow and ill defined, your definitions of what a video game is are even less defined and even more flawed, yet you, already, are excluding titles. And the sum total of this thread is...what? To quibble over details?

No, the object of this thread is to get you guys who want me to call Dear Esther a game to admit that I'm allowed, for valid reasons which actually reflect a common and widespread usage of the word "game", to decide that it might not be. This thread started within the "Recently Completed Video Games" thread as the result of my completely incidental note, when talking about Gone Home, that I thought that Dear Esther wasn't quite a game. Most of the argumentation since has been the result of people who are insistent that I must call Gone Home a game telling me that I'm wrong, and I'm harming society/culture/Dan Pinchbeck by not using the word "game" the way they are. (If anyone is on a crusade here, it's you guys, not me. If you read the first few replies I make, I try to disengage twice from people trying to get me to fall into this argument with them. Would a Crusader do that?)

Here is a simplistic, but useful definition of game (from wikipedia):

So what is a video game? It is, very simply, the electronic version of a game. Sometimes this means that it is competitive, but other times not. It is a structured form of play. What do we gain from inventing other definitions? None. Does this steamroll virtual worlds? Nope. Does it overrule practical simulations? Nope. It is a wide definition, anthropologically supported (I'm thinking of Thomas Malalaby and the like), and honestly the most useful. A person must be expected to use common sense, but is that so much to ask in such a discussion?

It's ironic that you choose that definition, since I agree with it, and explicitly note that I don't think Dear Esther is a game by essentially that definition earlier in this thread. (You might read back a bit and note that I do say that Dear Esther is interesting in using systems to try to prevent the interactor from actually playing games - that the interaction, in other words, is not structured play. I actually use this argument more than once in multiple ways in this thread, so it doesn't seem that my definition of "games" can be that shallow if it agrees with a definition you're happy to use!)

Further, I think it would be edifying for you to look at those quotes you pulled out of Ninety-Three's little study in this context:

"You can do nothing but walk and walk; there are no enigmas or riddles (I expected that), and basically you walk on a closed and forced path that eventually leads you to the end"

"Not only are they actually games that require an input from a player,"

" The two monumental issues that plague this game however, are its linearity and the speed of progression."

"However there is absolutely no interaction within this game, you walk, you can float up in some parts of deep water and you can fall off things. I don't know if this even counts as a game, it's a story where you get to move the camera around."

"There is little story, and even less gameplay. You're mostly railroaded along a path, where you will hear and see things."

"Dear Esther feels like less of a game, more of an experience.... I say experience more than explore. As much as you can walk around and think you're doing your own thing, you're really just on a set path that is highly detailed and winds through coastal beaches, caves and cliff sides."

"In Dear Esther, you'll wander beautiful environments with no interaction or objective while listening to soothing ambient music..."

You apparently claim that all of these are to do with "difficulty" or "challenge" (although you admit that some of them really don't actually talk about difficulty at all). I would argue that each and every one of them is saying that "there is no structured play".

I'll go into one of your last claims. I think one of the most useful things for definitions is that they be as useful as possible. It is NOT useful to break out certain games as not-games and put them into an undefined category. I think it IS useful to categorize them as games, and then create a sub-category that best explains them. I mentioned the commercial aspect because, quite frankly, the commercial aspect is HUGELY IMPORTANT for games. There is very little arts funding for games and the vast majority of interesting games are not coming from major or semi-major studios. These games are reaching to the same audiences that play other games, and include the same design languages, the same inputs and the same hardware for, largely, the same purposes (to entertain and inspire, etc.). This does not in any way, shape or form mean that they " automatically have commercial success" (really? You think that being allowed to classify your game as a game means automatic commercial success?), but rather, it simply avoids the marginalization of the form. I have no idea how people who make VR projects that do not claim to be games are somehow marginalized by me letting in people that WANT to be called games?

Right: so you think that we should call things games because that if we call them games they'll be able to get more money than if we don't call them games? (I note that what I said was that it was important to you that Dear Esther can be Commercially Successful, not that it will be, since you seem to repeatedly claim that calling things like this games is important to that possibility.)

(You actually really don't describe what you mean by "useful", in this sense - unless you just mean that we should choose definitions that allow experiences you like to be classed as things which are not marginalised.)

In any case: sure, it's hard to get arts funding. I agree.

I think that this matters because these ARE games, they are from the tradition of games, use the mechanics of games, etc. (I did more examples in the paragraphs above), and move games forward. I think that it is important that gaming embrace innovation rather than hiding from it, and I think that literally saying: THIS IS NOT GAMING, GAMING IS X Y AND Z AND NOTHING ELSE is literally avoiding the innovative. You think it's important to preserve a definition. I mean, apparently at least. Not really sure why. I am arguing with you because I think the whole project that you (and others way before you and way after you) are embarking on is deluded. It has no real end in mind, but will wreak havoc nonetheless. Why not have a novel that includes Don Quixote and V. and The Puttermesser Papers and Ava and The Penelopiad and The Hours, and The Book of Ruth etc.etc. etc. instead of one that is stifled and samey? Why not have video games that include The Path and Endless Forest and Dear Esther and Grand Theft Auto and Solitaire and Kinect Party instead of one which only includes a smattering of the choice? I get your argument that there isn't necessarily, no matter what, a value judgment in whatever term whatever a thing is called, but you are wrong to think that it isn't meaningful, and that, frankly, there is no market or subculture for games that are not games.

This is essentially rhetoric: "I assert that these things are games, thus, because I say they are games, they are innovative games as they are not like other games". You've already admitted in an earlier comment that almost the entirety of the "mechanics" of Dear Esther are those of virtual worlds in general, not video games, so that's a very weak argument to return to (it's even worse for Mountain, incidentally). And, again, by the definition you yourself say is useful above, Dear Esther is not a game, so it's really a bit odd that you're so insistent here.

Again: you repeatedly make two claims here which are "things which are declared as not games are not capable of being commercially successful" and "things which are declared as not games are not capable of being treated 'seriously'". You would like things which you would like to be treated seriously, and be commercially successful to be declared as games. I suspect that this is actually the main reason why you want them to be treated as games, and not because you actually have a deep concept of "what a game is". It's really for you to demonstrate that this is not the case here.

(By contrast, I note that I've treated Dear Esther with a certain amount of respect, and tried to analyse it within the terms of the interaction it appears to me to use. I'm not exactly saying that Dan Pinchbeck is a talentless hack here, am I?)

Dragonfliet · October 25, 2015

Great, you don't think that it is structured play. I guess we can quit there. That's pretty hilarious. Either it isn't play (what then is it? work? Something else? Play is, simply, an activity you do for entertainment of pleasure) or else it isn't structured (which I can't even get into). I honestly have no idea what you think a game is, and honestly? I find your trying to be exclusionary at best. You disagree with mine. Okay.

And to be quite blunt: I don't like Dear Esther at all. I think that Pinchbeck is a terrible writer and the game's mechanics to a terrible job of integrating the narrative into the gameplay--though let me be blunt: I think the linear nature and ABILITY to wander off of the path, but the disheartening nature of doing so (it's a waste of time) to be essential to the game, and a big part of the gameplay. I think it's a bad game that is at least interesting in being bad. I find A Machine for Pigs to be even less interesting, though the mechanics are more engaging (because they're just Amnesia, for the most part), though I haven't played his latest one for the PS4. I just think that things like names are important, and that as soon as someone rallies around throwing something OUT, they better have a good reason why. I think you have terrible, half-baked reasons.

I'm sorry you feel like you're being attacked in this thread. I think, however, your thread is an attack, and people are simply responding to it. I think the problem isn't so much that we want you to call everything else a game as it is that people object to you calling things not a game. I minor distinction, but important.

Oh well.

aoanla · October 25, 2015

Dragonfliet, I'm going to explain the context and origin of this thread again, just to eliminate the misapprehension you seem to be working under.

The first few pages of this thread were originally posts in the "Recently Completed Video Games" thread. The very first post in this thread was my post, in the "Recently Completed Video Games" thread, commenting on Gone Home, which I had indeed, recently completed. As an aside, I compared it to my experience of Dear Esther.

Immediately subsequently to this, people started trying to attack my, incidental, categorisation of Dear Esther (off topic to the "Recently Completed Video Games" thread). I tried to disengage from this twice.

Eventually, that topic of conversation became a large enough part of the "Recently Completed Video Games" thread that people who actually wanted to talk about... Recently Completed Video Games... were getting annoyed. A moderator (not me!) split the related posts into a separate thread, this thread.

This thread cannot, therefore, be an attack by me, as I didn't create it, and had no intention of it being created when I made that single solitary post in the "Recently Completed Video Games" thread about a game I'd recently completed.

Since its origin was people taking the original host thread off topic to attack my use of the word "game", I think it's quite justifiable to categorise this thread as an attack on me.

----------------------------------

(Back on topic: your definition of structured play also seems to encompass activities like "going hiking", "reading a book" and "socialising". Sure, if you want to use a definition that wide for "play" in particular, then Dear Esther is a game. But I don't think that's what most people expect when using those words.

Have you considered that maybe you disliked Dear Esther so much because you were categorising it as a game (which it is certainly bad at being), and you might have enjoyed it more casting your interaction with it in a different sense and context?

Edit: also, as a data point, because I'm interested: would you consider Kinetic Novels to be games or not? Dear Esther also feels like one of them, too, from my exceptionally limited experience of the genre.)

Dragonfliet · October 25, 2015

The reason I don't really like Dear Esther is that it relies mostly on the writing and I don't think the writing is very good, and I find that gameplay to be, while a necessary part of the game, to be not particularly well thought-out either. Calling it a videopoem doesn't fix the bad writing, nor does calling it an experience or whatever change how the interactive systems feed into the narrative whole. I think it's just not very good--period. I think it's a petty and simplistic thing who only likes something if it is called something else.

Again, for me, the most important thing about if something is a game or not is whether or not it is called a game. That's it. Pinchbeck wants to call Dear Esther a game? Well, it has many qualities thereof, so, yeah. I suppose if someone released a novel and called it a game I wouldn't call it a game--though I would be interested in WHY they said that. As for Kinetic Novels, I literally have never engaged with them, but aren't they literally just videos?My understanding is that there are no systems, just words, pictures and sounds, and that the people that put them out don't call them games. So, no, if it has no systems and no one calls it a game, then I would not consider it a game. I'll go further. Do I think that most interactive fiction, or choose your own adventure stories are games? Nope. Do I, however, think that things like Depression Quest are games? Yep. How do I justify that? You guessed it. In one, people are saying this is a game, and the game has systems to play. In the other, people are saying: this is just a story/novel that you are able to make choices in. Because who the fuck cares if I think it's a game or not? I have my own opinions, but so what? I'd rather spend my time thinking about how something that is called a game is succeeding or not in its own way than getting into a pedantic argument with the creator over their genre conventions.

Let's discuss what a video game is

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