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[PATV] Wednesday, November 27, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 7, Ep. 12: What Is a Game?
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[PATV] Wednesday, November 27, 2013 - Extra Credits Season 7, Ep. 12: What Is a Game?
This week, we discuss the debate over what does and doesn't qualify as a "game".
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Personally, I have no issue with it becoming the "digital interactive experience" industry or something. Has a certain ring to it.
now for a more on topic example: Dwarf Fortress is not a game as far as i can tell. there is no goal inherently built into it. i still enjoy the program. it is still fun. i also enjoy playing borderlands 2, which very firmly falls within all of my criteria to qualify as a game.
we can have philosophical debates without using them for some sort of agenda. i dislike the idea of hiding from a debate of any kind just because others can abuse it for their own purposes. if people start twisting the ideas in the ways that were mentioned in the video, then we should call them on it, but running from a potentially enlightening subject will only sustain ignorance.
We live in a fantastic time. As Jeffrey Tucker would tell us, It's a Jetson's World. Breaking out of words like "game" and phrases like IRL is part of the growth of our society that we just have to simply take a stand for. Some people are averse to change and need the innovative insight of the true leaders to help use ease into that transition.
As an aside, is there any way for the coding of these pages to alter the highlighted text color? Currently, it's blue on blue on blue with the highlighting as dark blue on dark blue. It's rather user-unfriendly.
Of all places I would have expected EC to not dismiss the topic because of the crowd. It's like dismissing the study of multiplayer titles because of CoD/BF fanboy wars.
If you just wanted to answer the good ol' "art has no borders clear enough for definition" then just say that. Then again, that wouldn't exactly make for an interesting episode that stimulates grey matter, right?
You'll also see interactive media that poses as games, playing on pre-existing definitions to sell itself and herein lies my problem with this.
A game, by its current definition, is something you either compete in or derive joy from(be it actual fun or a learning experience), but then you have something like Dear Esther that qualifies, but isn’t exactly a game in the sense that you accomplish something or derive joy from playing it. You just experience a story with limitations, such as already seeing something specific and not being able to imagine it as you would with a book. This is the expression of a developer to experience a story the way he wants you to and is therefore more akin to art. Dying in the game is for me, not a factor in the experience, but a rule to be more “game-like probably because the idea of punishment is one of the core principles of a game. You could argue that it’s a point of immersion, but even then there must have been a better solution.
Am I detracting from the definition of “a game” when I say Dear Esther shouldn’t qualify? Or am I just helping define what a game is in order to avoid experiments like this and save myself a few bucks the next time something similar appears?
If we call everything a game, then everything is and we need sub-definitions to know what we're talking about or buying and then it's a philosophical matter, not a question of definition that we have trouble agreeing on.
I disagree that Mu applies here when you consider the people discussing it. You can tell a person who asks what the purpose of life is, "whatever you want it to be", but probably find a better answer for that individual that has more application and meaning. It's a non-answer that at best can provoke the person to come up with his own answer, but at worst leave him no closer to a useful answer. What might be good enough for you isn’t necessarily for another person. This is why we need definitions or descriptions.
This is a messy topic, because while I do consider myself a hardcore gamer, I don't think something like Bejeweled or Candy Crush is less of a game than what I prefer to play. This video made some sweeping generalizations when it assumes that I'm an elitist. I just have preferences.
Does a "game" really need to have a goal to be a "game"?
Dwarf Fortress is like the Sims, or Farmville (and other facebook/casual games based on similar mechanics), or Minecraft, or the older Grand Theft Auto games.
There are no goals other than what you set for yourself.
The Sims only "goal" is to have a big house with fancy stuff and keeping your sims happy so they can earn money to buy a bigger house with fancier stuff.
Farmville and others like it only has the goal of building a bigger farm than you had yesterday.
Same with Minecraft (and similar games like Terraria or Don't Starve). Your only goal is to do better than you did last time. In Minecraft you build a bigger and fancier project than last time. In Terraria you make better equipment and beat bigger bosses. And in Don't Starve you... Well, you don't starve. You survive longer than last time.
The first GTA had missions you could do, but they never really did anything. There was no plot and no purpose behind them. You just answered a phone that told you to, say, bring a specific car to a specified garage without crashing it. Then you get some cash and you're back on the street and can either answer another phone or just grab a gun and try to mow down a complete line of those orange dudes for bonus points.
Dwarf Fortress is the same sort of sandbox experience where you are given the tools to create your own experience, and then the game just drops you off and leaves. "Do whatever you want." it says. "It's all up to you to succeed and fail, I won't judge you."
What a hypocritical episode that completely misses the point.
First, it doesn't matter whether you call something a 'game' or an 'interactive experience'. It's still a label you're using to differentiate between different types of media, and 'game' is shorter so why not use that.
Second, you just -said- what makes a game a game. Volition. Any self-professed 'game' that removes that part of itself is no longer a game. It's a movie. Or a story. Or some other type of media. But not a game.
Third, saying something is not a game is not inherently bad. Sure, it conveys some sense of the basic art that the author is using to depict their messages or ideals, but it does not define the quality of the work. Take for example, The Walking Dead. This is mostly movie, with few actions the player can make actually impacting the story in any way beyond a straight failure state or preventing progress. Does this make the work bad? No. It's a pretty brilliant piece of story telling, but for most of the work it is not a game.
Fourth, asking the question itself, "Is this article a game?", has merit. It affords the viewer some idea of the experience they're heading into, and that allows the viewer to make informed choices about what they wish to spend leisure time on, and also allows the author to interact with the viewer along the already established lines and preconceptions for that medium. You mentioned the Stanley Parable. How well would it have worked if we could not ask "Is this article a videogame?". The answer? Not well. Not well at all. Why am I a man pushing buttons.
So in all:
You ignore the base question by changing the vocabulary.
You answer the question twice by saying it's wrong and has no answer whilst also providing an answer.
And you assume the differentiation to be negative whilst also ignoring a great example that you provide of why the question exists in the first place and how it enhances the way we play.
I am frankly appalled.
Seems more like you missed the point of the episode, personally.
This wasn't exactly a controversial episode as far as these things go. Being appalled by it seems more than a little hyperbolic.
It just seemed to me that instead of fostering debate and encouraging positive thinking on the issue, the episode focused on squashing discussion and reinforcing the negative attitudes that fuel the problem in the first place.
It ran contrary to what I normally expect from EC, and so I was appalled.
Answering "Who cares?" to the question "Is this a game?" is just so useless as to be harmful. All it does is force the inquirer to keep operating under the assumptions that they've already built for themselves, without helping them to discover which are true and which are false. And so they continue to struggle under their misconceptions, driving away and deriding the new.
I was in an inner rage and now I just wish he had seen this episode back then!
This feels like an overly diplomatic answer to a simple question that's been provoked by the rantings of an insecure community. It's fine to call a spade a spade and a shovel a shovel - they're still both going to dig through the dirt just fine, and people will hand you the right tool when you ask or it.
To be clear, just in case a legion of fanboys/girls feel the need to descend angrily upon me for disagreeing, there's value in having differing opinions. Keep in mind that disagreement is what fosters better understanding, so long as both parties remain civil instead of devolving to Xbox-level raging.
Instead, I argue that all artistic mediums are, at some level, an interaction, but what separates games from other media is that the latter's proper interaction can only be experienced candidly, and thereafter future audiences can only experience it passively.
For example, when you watch a movie, you're passively observing actors, directors, set designers, editors, and so on interacting with each other to create an experience. Games, on the other hand, try to create an environment where that interaction can be experienced by a vast number of people at any given point in time.
Instead of interacting with a person themselves, the creators of the game try to recreate a facsimile that represents themselves for the person to interact with, whether it be the conveying of a cohesive narrative like through an adventure game, or merely establishing/maintaining the rules like in a puzzle game.
Ultimately, I agree that the argument of "This is what a game should be" in the context of certain mechanics is entirely unhelpful to the growth of our medium, but there must nonetheless remain boundaries, ones which demand a deep understanding of.
But people -should- care.
Say I built you a house. Would you be happy with a pile of rocks? Unlikely. But houses are sometimes built of stone so why is this pile of rocks not a house?
Obviously then, we need to share a common definition of house. You look at its utility and its form and its function. These are the things that likely need to be conserved if we are going to take our idea of a house, apply it to these rocks and create something that looks like a house, can be used like a house and that acts as a house.
Now that we have an understanding of what a house should look like, we can then compare houses against the criteria and sort good houses from bad houses, and we can also see what things we can change but still keep the house a house. We might build the house from wood or brick or cement for example. But this doesn't stop the house being a house, and anyone who knows what a house is can come in and reasonably expect some basic functions from the house.
It's the same with the definition of a game. EC is getting up in arms about people who are differentiating between wood games or brick games and saying that one or the other is inherently better. Or even that those games which no longer have walls, and are less house more pagola, are somehow worse for it. Now these views are indeed backward, and these games should be judged on their individual merit, rather than just straight painting all the games of a certain breed with the one brush.
But that doesn't mean that you can just ignore the question "Is this a game?". Without guidelines you can't differentiate between a game and a hole in the ground. You need shared expectations to allow people to approach the game comfortably and also judge it fairly. Without this, there is no point to good game design. You may as well produce any old tripe, call it a game, and, if it sells well, label it a success. But you and your audience cannot see where the game went right or where it wrong, and you cannot reproduce it accurately at all.
If we cannot ask "Is this a game?" we can no longer ask "What makes this game great?" because we cannot say what the game has done better that another media could not have done just as well.
Just because some people differentiate between different games poorly does not mean we should all give up.
Since when has game criticism or design ever been about outperforming other media? What are you even talking about?
There are two problems with this episode, first is that they just change the name form "game" to "interactive media" which doesn't really accomplish anything. Is it more descriptive? Sure, but people will have just as many problems with this definition as with "game". I mean, isn't a Choose Your Own Adventure book "interactive media"?
Secondly, and more importantly, they go on to define a game even after saying "what is a game" is 'mu', or the "wrong question". So on one hand they say that trying to define a game is wrong (or at the very least, something we shouldn't waste our time doing), but then they define what a game is a minute later. Huh?
Truth be told, what they are really saying is that James and company have a very broad definition of what a game is.
Actually, Extra Credits talks about this quite a bit. As in, what can a game do (due to it's interactive nature) that other mediums cannot.
It's not about outperforming other media, it's about establishing what makes games special and then focusing on making that central to the game experience.
Different media are better suited for different messages, so without understanding how they are different, we're hardly going to get the most out of any medium.
2. Replace 'game' with 'interactive media', without giving a proper definition, which kills of the discussions in (1) while of course giving rise to new fuzzy boundaries.
3. 'Game' is now replaced with a vague term no one knows what means and you're at best back to square one.
Is watching TV and occasionally changing the channel interactive media? Let's preempt discussion and find an even wider, vaguer nonsense term. I propose 'sensory experience'.
I know, it's a really tough question, but that doesn't mean you have to give up.
tl;dr I feel like I'd be doing myself a disservice if I were to limit my vocabulary, so I won't.
I'm standing next to a lake. I don't have to pick up a single rock on the shore if I don't want to. But I do. I name the rock I pick up "Toledo, Ohio." I throw the rock in the lake and exclaim, "I just sank Toledo, Ohio!" I am now playing the game "Sink." (Google it.)
The definition of "game" is therefore already ambiguous.
Saying "I would rather have played a challenge-based game than the Stanley Parable" narrows down what matters to you. It's real communication. Saying "Stanley Parable is not even a game" is either meaningless, or it's saying "people who disagree with me on this point are wrong, and should feel bad." If you want to say the latter, just say it, be called out as mean, and move on. No need to engage in Asperger's-y definition-lawyering.
Don't blame the word or definition for the flamewars going on, and don't blame the word nor definition for derision people aim at certain creations. People are jerks, and they're going to do that regardless of vocabulary.
On top of not having a problem with defining 'game', on top of insisting we put the blame where the blame is due, and on top of just being a really particular person who strides to abide by strict definitions...I'm also a CONSUMER. You can't sell me something you claim to be a car, give me a blender, and then counter my complaints with "What's a car. Mu." 'Non-game' videogames is an incredibly useful and important concept for me as a consumer, because I have zero interest in spending my time nor money on products like Dear Esther or The Stanley Parable. Or that flash game Loneliness.
But I am reasonable enough and adult enough not to knock those creations just because I wouldn't care for them. They aren't the type of experience I'm looking for, so I shouldn't judge them at all.
Sure, sometimes I do. Sometimes I get on my arrogant high-horse and call something stupid or a failure or a complete waste of time, when really the product wasn't going for what I was looking for. But that's comparing apples and oranges, and I should be called on it.
What a game is is vitally important to define.
Something either falls under the label of a game, or it does not. If it doesn't fall under the label of a game, that doesn't make it bad, but if it isn't a game, it shouldn't be called a game. How does saying that something isn't a game limit their creativity? It doesn't. In fact, it helps them.
Designing a game is fundamentally different from writing a story, or painting a painting. When you design something, you need to know what it is you are making; if I'm designing a game, that isn't the same thing as if I'm writing a story, or if I'm building a bridge, or if I'm laying out an art gallery.
If you don't even know what you're making, how do you know you're making it properly? What defines how you should go about creating or judging your end product?
Thus, it is incredibly, glaringly obvious that what a game is is important to define. This is aside from the other obvious issue that, as far as the consumer is concerned, they want to know whether what they are buying is a game or not, because a game promises a certain kind of experience. If they end up buying something which is advertised as a game which isn't, in fact, a game, then they have been decieved, and the person who advertised it as a game is guilty of false advertisement.
So, what defines a game?
I think wikipedia has an entirely reasonable definition:
"A game is structured playing. Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction."
A game of skill is a game where the outcome is determined primarily by mental and/or physical skill, rather than by chance.
A game of chance is a game where the outcome is determined primarily by chance, and not mental and/or physical skill.
Thus, something without a goal, rules, challenge, and interaction is not, in fact, a game.
"But what about Minecraft or Terraria! Those don't have goals!"
Terraria certainly has goals (defeating the bosses). Whether or not Minecraft is, in fact, a game, I don't really know; I haven't played it enough to tell you yea or nay.
Dear Esther, conversely, certainly is not a game. It lacks challenge or rules, being more like wandering around an art gallery or reading a book. Google maps certainly is not a game, even though it is interactive.
Does it limit your creativity to say that Dear Esther isn't a game? No, of course it doesn't. There's nothing that prevents you from making Dear Esther by understanding that it isn't a game. But it is inappropriate and indeed illegal to advertise Dear Esther as a game when it isn't a game, and when you design something LIKE Dear Esther, you aren't designing a game - you're presenting a story.
Consumer protection laws aren't a joke.
(2) EC is not saying we can't define or distinguish some things as games verses not games.
(3) EC is saying that the discussion of "what is a game" is not profitable because it's merely used as a way to dismiss things you don't see as valuable experiences.
(4) This forum is proving their point because almost everybody has come in, not to contribute or to compliment, not to enrich our ability to create and appreciate games, but to dismiss things they don't see as worthy of the title (already criticized in this thread--The Walking Dead, Dwarf Fortress, The Stanley Parable, Dear Esther).
Don't let definitions get in the way of designing the product you wish to design!! The creators of Dear Esther should be no less proud of their work just because it isn't a game!
How does defining X as a game or not a game affect (a) your decision to acquire X if it already looked interesting? (a) your enjoyment once you engaged in X?
Honestly, I hadn't even been aware that this discussion was going on, so my reaction was naive, at best. But it sounds like you agree with that point of view so I GUESS I'll throw my two cents in anyway:
People don't always KNOW what they are making. Oh, sure, they know what tools they are using, so they can GUESS what they are making based on the tools in front of them. But sometimes what an individual INTENDS to make comes out as something completely different.
BUT. Does that diminish how a given audience interacts with the final product?
I see lots of people bringing up Dear Ester, and still claiming it isn't a game DESPITE it being interactive, JUST BECAUSE the interactivity is minimal at best. So then by their definition we exclude hundreds - maybe thousands - of visual novels, just because we have minimal interactive input.
Though, they may not be ENTIRELY wrong. Dan even said so, where all questions can be summed up to be "yes, no, mu". Every medium for artistic expression has usually had multiple TYPES of art associated with it. Written word has Epics, Novels, Poems, Short Stories. Paint has Canvas and Murals. Sound has Rhyme, Music, and Verbal Stories. And as you can see, sometimes these art forms blend together to cover multiple mediums.
So I guess the way I think about it is as such: If "the observers mind" is the medium we are using for "games", "interactive story telling", "interactive experiences" - whatever you want to call it - then couldn't there be multiple overlapping art types in this medium?
(Yes, I'm calling the "observers mind" as the medium for games, because most games can be recreated using different tools, but still have the same fundamental effect: Dungeons and Dragons can be played with nothing more than two people talking to each other, but the "gameness" cannot be disputed. Mass effect could be remade into a highly complex visual novel. Monopoly a JRPG)
At the end of the day there are core parts to everything that make them what they are. They're often flexible, ambiguous and much more basic than you'd first think they are, but they do exist. If a game can be anything, then a tv series would qualify. It would be like saying that a dog can be a bird, because you don't think it matters whether it is or isn't, saying that the question of what makes a bird is mu.
Of course, comparing dogs to birds is silly, as is television series to a game. There are fundamental aspects that make something a game. One of these base aspects is exactly that interactivity that James likes to talk about in his interactive experiences.
To say the question is mu feels to me that you didn't get the value of the true question, one that is not biased to prove that something is or isn't a game. The issue I have with this video is that they knocked this as a mu question for the sake of promoting their own ideas. It's as twisted as those people claiming that a game is "everything game X isn't".