What's in a game?

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

The game, though, the game! It just is not there. The gameplay consists of walking, hitting obvious buttons, and running from monsters maybe four times.

 

 

I don't think you played Dear Esther. This is more of a "game" than Dear Esther if you want to use that archaic way of thinking.

 

 

Furthermore, the environments are repetitive and ugly. What a missed opportunity for environmental storytelling!

 

 

Well that definitely sucks because they excelled at this with Dear Esther.

[Mr. GOH!]

Please explain to me how my way of thinking is archaic.

[toxicitizen]

I kind of get where he's coming from, to be honest. To say that something isn't a game simply because it lacks mechanics you'd normally expect from one is doing the medium a disservice, I think. Video games have evolved beyond being merely "games" in the strictest sense of the word. Titles like Dear Esther or Proteus don't present a challenge so much as an experience but why draw an arbitrary line there? I guess the bigger issue here is that the name "video games" is starting to be outdated and it colors the way people look at the medium.

[deanb]

Please explain to me how my way of thinking is archaic.

Because video games aren't video games anymore. They're "experiences" and you're archaic if you expecting a fun interactive game with challenges and objectives and not just a digital walk about.

[Mr. GOH!]

Video art experiences, maybe. "Game" implies more than the limited and facile interactivity you find in the vast majority of Machine for Pigs. The real problem with MfP is that is fails as an interesting video art experience, too. 

 

Here's great video game for you, FDS. http://www.pippinbarr.com/games/theartistispresent/TheArtistIsPresent.html

[TheMightyEthan]

Interactive Experience is a better term for stuff like that, or even Gone Home (though it has a few things that maybe look like puzzles if you squint real hard).

[toxicitizen]

The problem with that is how exactly is Gone Home an "interactive experience" yet standard games aren't? It's way too vague. Why can't there be room for different types of experiences in video games? I mean, documentaries don't tell you a story in the same narrative sense but we still think of them as movies.

[Mr. GOH!]

All video games are interactive experiences. Not all interactive experiences are video games.

 

*waits patiently for a mod to remove all these off-topic posts and put them in a separate thread*

Edited September 13, 2013 by Mr. GOH!

[TheMightyEthan]

I don't think of documentaries as movies...

 

Anyway, I would say that the term "interactive experience" encompasses games, but not everything that qualifies as an interactive experience is a game.  All squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares kind of thing.

 

*Edit* - Ninja'd by Goh.

Edited September 13, 2013 by TheMightyEthan

[toxicitizen]

I don't think of documentaries as movies...

Umm... okay? What the hell are they then? They're directed by a filmmaker and present a "narrative" albeit in a different form. People who like them watch them for entertainment. Uh, actually, you know what? Nevermind. I don't really want to turn this into parallel discussions...

 

 

Anyway, I would say that the term "interactive experience" encompasses games, but not everything that qualifies as an interactive experience is a game.  All squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares kind of thing.

I feel like interactive experience is even vaguer than that. More akin to saying quadrilaterals, which is about as unspecific and broad as you could possibly get. Using an ATM is an "interactive experience".

 

All video games are interactive experiences. Not all interactive experiences are video games.

Yeah, like I said, I think the bigger issue is with how the term "video game" can paint our view of the medium. I obviously take the "game" part of the name less literally than some. I mean, it's not like I don't get where you're coming from. I just think there shouldn't be such an arbitrary line as to say "this isn't a video game anymore", especially when it comes to lack of mechanics or content.

Edited September 13, 2013 by FLD

[Mr. GOH!]

I didn't say MAchine for Pigs isn't a video game; just that it is barely a video game.

[toxicitizen]

Isn't the line of thinking basically the same, though? If it becomes less of a game the more mechanics you remove, then surely at some point it won't be a game anymore?

Edited September 13, 2013 by FLD

[TheMightyEthan]

But surely everyone can agree with that in principle.  Eventually, the more mechanics you remove, it would just become a movie rendered in realtime.

[toxicitizen]

If you bring the amount of interaction literally all the way down to zero, then yeah, of course. Now all you have is an animated movie. But even these so-called interactive experiences retain some basic form of interaction, movement and/or exploration. Zero interaction is no longer arbitrary.

 

I think a better way to make that divide would be "what is the purpose of the experience?". Dear Esther is all about atmosphere, story and experiencing the environment. It's a beautiful walking simulator but there's a bit more to it than that. On the other hand, the only thing I can think of that I might be inclined to agree isn't a game was that interactive trailer they did in the Source engine for Super 8. It was a commercial, plain and simple. A very short level, no more than a few minutes long, with no other purpose than to hype you for the movie. It was kinda cool but yeah, I wouldn't argue that it's a game or even an experience. It was just a fucking ad.

Edited September 13, 2013 by FLD

[Thursday Next]

Since we seem determined to get Dean to split this off... I think there is a subjective line where something stops being a game to the observer. Is a "choose your own adventure" novel a game? If so, does that mean that technically films with deleted scenes or alternative endings are also games? Many fitness apps have gamified elements. But I wouldn't consider them games.

 

There was a demoscene thing called Linger In Shadows on PSN. Not very gamey at all. Play through a video and click on items that you could see I think was about as far as interaction went.

[TheMightyEthan]

 

I don't think of documentaries as movies...

Umm... okay? What the hell are they then? They're directed by a filmmaker and present a "narrative" albeit in a different form. People who like them watch them for entertainment. Uh, actually, you know what? Nevermind. I don't really want to turn this into parallel discussions...

 

I'll respond to this because my response is really brief: they're documentaries. Just their own thing. Like how movie series and tv series are separate things.

[toxicitizen]

Since we seem determined to get Dean to split this off... I think there is a subjective line where something stops being a game to the observer. Is a "choose your own adventure" novel a game? If so, does that mean that technically films with deleted scenes or alternative endings are also games? Many fitness apps have gamified elements. But I wouldn't consider them games.

 

There was a demoscene thing called Linger In Shadows on PSN. Not very gamey at all. Play through a video and click on items that you could see I think was about as far as interaction went.

Nah, gamification is manipulative bullshit. Nothing to do with actual games.

 

Linger in Shadows is an interesting example, though. That was basically an animated painting. It played and all you could do was rewind and maybe move the camera a little bit to find hidden symbols or some shit. It only did the barest of minimum to even try to qualify as a "game". I feel like it supports my point that the purpose or intention behind it makes for a better distinction. I think that one was more about being an art thing than providing you with an interactive experience.

 

 

I'll respond to this because my response is really brief: they're documentaries. Just their own thing. Like how movie series and tv series are separate things.

Ah, but that's just the format then. At their core, TV and movies are really the same thing. They're made through very similar processes and generally provide the same experience, just on a different scale.

 

And, yeah, normally it kind of annoys when when just two or three posts get chopped off and sent off elsewhere, especially when they're mostly jokes. But in this case I'm starting to think this probably warrants its own thread. edit: uh, looks like it happened while I was typing this somehow.

 

Anyway, I'm off to class for now.

Edited September 13, 2013 by FLD

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Linger in Shadows was the worst video game purchase I've ever made. And I bought two copies of Brink.

 

Not even one pair of boobs.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Saturnine Tenshi

[Mr. GOH!]

There is very, very little player agency in Machine for Pigs. It's barely interactive. And the interactivity does not really matter. Hence, it is barely a video game and barely an interactive art project.

[TheMightyEthan]

I think that in order for something to qualify as a game it has to have some kind of aspect of competition, whether that's with other players, the AI, or just yourself.  Generally speaking that involves having some kind of goal and the possibility of either failure or at least penalty of some kind, though I'm willing to concede the possibility that things without those qualities could meet my definition.  If so though, I can't think of anything.

 

Without that aspect of competition though, it's not a game.  Doing time trials in a racing game to improve your time is a game, because you're competing against yourself, but that Super 8 thing isn't a game (even if it hadn't been an ad) because you're just supposed to experience it like you would a movie, but with interaction.

 

This isn't to say that non-game interactive whatever-you-want-to-call-thems are inferior to games, just that game isn't an accurate term to describe them.  It'd be like calling a concert a sporting event.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Honestly, I could not care less either way. Label it as a game, don't label it as a game. Interactive art could be a game to some folks, I suppose. Which is another conversation entirely: the whole "games as art" argument. If that can even be made in a form that isn't simply someone playing devil's advocate.

 

Visual novels, as another example, tend to really push the boundaries of a video game to a what basically amounts to a choose your own adventure book, only digitally and with more photos than prose.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Saturnine Tenshi

[deanb]

Firstly Ethan split it off. He does do Mod things now and then, and well this all blew up while I was at work.

 

Video Games are quite easy to define what is an what isn't purely down to the fact it's a video game. It comes from adding the word "video", as in "visual-audio" to the word "game", as in board game, table top game, outdoor games, etc. Not the other way around. A large part of the issue comes down the fact people forget that at the end of the day it's all software, video games have more in common with Excel than they do with other "artforms". Which at the end of the day leads to big huge muddy waters as people try and bridge the gap between pong and Mona Lisa. It's a bit like whales, tuna and llamas. Whales have more in relation to llamas than they do with Tuna, but whales hang out with tuna more often than llamas so people tend to forget of that underlying link.

 

In general definitions games have rules and objectives, usually with some form of competitive element. Be it video games or board games. It's not necessarily about the interaction. Many things are interactive. It's about the goals and rules. I think everyone can agree Pong is a video game. As is Tetris. Generally if it shares many elements with those two you're golden for the "is it a video game". The more you're lacking in common with these then the shakier ground you're on. I think folks just call stuff like Dear Esther and Proteus "video games" out of laziness to create a new taxonomy. When they reach a certain volume you'll see a new definition crop up for them. Kinda like MOBAs/Dota-likes.

 

---

Linger in the Shadows is demoscene. It's about as much a video game as everything on Nvidias page, or the PSX T-Rex demo and such. It's related to video games, but generally it isn't built as a game.

 

There's also simulations, which are generally also related to, but not actually video games. Kinda sometimes spills into "toys", which (well because it's what he likes to call them) includes stuff like Sims. Not quite a simulation, but overly lacking in clear direction yet still playful, much like a dollhouse in real life. (As opposed to say..a weather simulator).

---

 

End of the day it's a bit like defining life. There's always going to be outliers like viruses.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3294413/video-game-is-a-bad-name-for-the-medium-also-inside-rpgs?login=1347301369#add-comment

[Mr. GOH!]

Yup. Machine for Pigs is barely interactive.

[Alex Heat]

I think that in order for something to qualify as a game it has to have some kind of aspect of competition, whether that's with other players, the AI, or just yourself.  Generally speaking that involves having some kind of goal and the possibility of either failure or at least penalty of some kind, though I'm willing to concede the possibility that things without those qualities could meet my definition.  If so though, I can't think of anything.

 

I had this conversation with a buddy of mine the other day when I posited that there must be some level of challenge (or competition) and goal to a game for it to actually be qualified as such.  Maybe it's because I grew up in the NES era long before the games as art or the big casual game boom.