Wow, a lot of comments on this one. Well as much as I'd like to read them all my time is short so I can't. I know, my bad.
While I agree with the concept of the title interactive experiences, I don't really agree with what I perceive it's application to be as suggested in the video, which I think was to replace the concept of video games all together.
To me a game is very easy to define. It's the application of rule/s in a construct with the overall aim of reaching an end goal/s by the refining of the application of the rule/s through feed back. Both the rule/s and end goal/s can be rigidly, loosely, or even be player defined. For example in an RPG there might not be a rule about always doing "good" and no reward involved if that restriction is placed on the player. But some people will self challenge themselves to indeed play a game with that rule and the goal of completing the game in that manner. Or decide their goal is to find out how long a Civ game can last without player direction. Both player defined rules and end goals.
I think the title interactive experiences should be more of a broadly based definition with games falling into a sub section. Kind of like how we have the overall title of literature which is then further broken down to fiction and non-fiction. So anything that doesn't fit the definition of a video game might be referred to as a video story.
I love it. I've been trying to get people to call it something similar, IEM, Interactive Entertainment Medium. It's funny that James came up with a similar name.
'Mu' does Not mean 'the question is wrong'. It was a specific 'neither yes nor no' comment given to two monks by a specific buddhist teacher.
As for the rest, to quote an email I sent to a friend of mine:
"The problem is, there's so many subcategories of 'virtual experiences' now as to make the problem manifold.
Someone suggested calling stuff like Proteus 'videodreams', which is nice, if weak.
Certainly you can't call those stories because there's no story involved.
'Interactive stories' and 'Media Installations' and 'Multimedia Art' all fetishize the format in the name, rather than really describing the experience."
i agree with this episode the game world is sooooo vast with so many types of games and gameplay that its just hard to even think what the right anwser. its the same with movies and books.
As much as I agree with the videos idea that the question as a whole is used in a way that's mostly exclusionary and designed to put down something ('X is not a game therefore X doesn't deserve attention/success/being on steam/whatever') I still think the questions worth asking.
It's useful to know, on a personal level, at least at what point something is a game and at what point it's under a broader or different umbrella. People often seem to take the platform displayed as the defining characteristic of a game 'I'm using a computer, therefore it is a game' and I feel that's too limiting. I walk and run while playing football or exploring an art gallery yet the art gallery is not a game. That doesn't make it lesser in any way, just different.
Naturally stuff like the Stanley Parable blur that line significantly (the art galleries narration tape does not change based on what I do as Stanley's will) but I feel it's useful from a critical point of view to have definitions of a game vs an interactive experience (which is a wider set of things than what constitutes a game).
I believe in games as art. I believe in all games as art. From the very worst, to the very best, every game is art. Just like my terrible portraits of D&D characters from 7th grade are every bit as much 'Art' as the Mona Lisa is. However, the Mona Lisa is, by any measure, a superior WORK of art.
But while I believe in games as art, I don't believe in games as art passively. I believe that games are art actively. They are not, yet, fully matured as an art form. What I mean by this is we only have half the story. We have art, artists, and consumers. But we lack art critics. We lack people who are willing, or, today, even CAPABLE of engaging in games as art on an intellectual level.
It's easy to laugh at the art critics who seem keen to assign meaning to every random drop of paint. But those people have done as much to advance, for lack of a better phrase... The art of making art, as the artists have.
And they have a critical language. That's one of the most vital things. They are capable of talking about art in a way that, at the moment, gamers are not capable of talking about games. I love videogames. I also love things like Loneliness. But, in all honesty, the critical language that will be necessary to discuss videogames, what I would call videogames, is different from the critical language necessary to discuss Loneliness. One can analyze the Mona Lisa and Pollock's #5 with, though not the same, SIMILAR critical language. But that language is going to be very different from the language used to analyze art photography. I think games are to loneliness what paintings are to art photography. The main similarity is the presentation.
Without art critics, art still exists. But it can't be a truly mature art form, without more serious critics.
We need to be able to develop that. And to do that, the question of "What is a game?" is one that has to be asked and answered.
That said, it must be a NEUTRAL question. "Not a Game" must be as much a condemnation of interactive art as "Not a Sandwich" is of food. When "Not a game" is used to say something is bad, then you're encountering a real problem. "What is a Game" is a good question, but once we have an answer, and apply that to a thing, that shouldn't make it worse.
I don't consider "Loneliness" a game. I do consider Ride To Hell: Retribution. But I consider one of these good, and one of these horrid. Guess which.
Extra Credits is such a wonderful series. Thank you.
Since some of this is already verging on repetition, I’ll try to be brief. I think the frequency of the question, “what is a game?” is a thoroughly positive situation on two related counts, the second of which is more interesting, but both are worth mentioning.
On the one hand, “serious” (which should just be read as code for “intense” or “engaged”) thinking about literature, film, or any other medium is almost necessarily concerned with what that medium “is,” and the work of that “is” is driven by what gets to count as literature, film, or whatever. Since the answer always depends on by whom, when, and where the judgment is made, we get a lot of different opinions, which is awesome because in the friction between those opinions we can revisit and revise our understanding of what a medium is, can, and should do.
On the other, more interesting, hand, it seems to me that we who love games have really lucked out. The last 20 years have been a time of astonishing growth and change for video games and that trend is only increasing. Much of this change (at least concerning the “what is a game” question) looks a lot like some of the transformations that have taken place in other media, though on fast-forwards. In a nutshell, it seems to me that the changes within the medium are straining against the limits of how we have grown used to thinking and talking about “games” and that we’re now starting to see that the term, game, is becoming insufficient to describe the sorts of things that are happening in the medium. I, for one, am over the moon about this. And I look forward to seeing how we come to renegotiate our relationship with the notion of games over the next few years.
So my two cents go to saying that the defination is important.
That is if you want to examine games in general by diffent standarts then you need to know what it is you examine.
Right now this quistion makes sense to ask for me because I'm trying to find out what motivates people to engage in digital games, and what "levers" you can use to make them play a game. If I don't have some understanding of what a game is then it is not possible for me to examine this problem.
I'm not saying it's good just to define it so the games you don't like are excluded, but it makes sense that we exclude the stuff that are not intended to be games. If I want to know what motivates a man to play WOW then it would not make sense for me to examine why people eat. Or rather it would not make sense to compare the two under the same signifier; that is games. The thing here is that when you reseach something it is necessary to make some limitations for what is meant by a word or the scope of the reseach is without end. If that is the case then nothing true or untrue can be said about a single thing. one could argue that if we cannot define a thing in some small way then we can't speak about it. True one could argue everything is a game, but that doesn't help us understanding a single thing about said thing.
I agree with EC in the way that it isn't a simple thing just to put a label on the many-headed awesome beautiful monster called GAME without setting a discourse for what it is. But I would say there is a difference from a operation system that a dude can play with and a game. If there isn't a difference between a game and life in general then why are we here to see the posts from EC about (for lack of better word) games. Why not read papers on wikipedia instead? How can one discuss game mechanics if we do not know one of the key words?
I don't see the defination of a game as the important contribution from a paper on games, but the defination of what games is explains part of the thought process going on in the writers mind, and helps the reader understanding what the person(s) examined.
If we are to have a reasoned conversation then we need to get our definations straight or we won't be able to determine whether we understand each other or not. How can we determine if a spoon is a game if all we have to go by is interaktive media?
or a picture of a spoon? - if you go by the defination interaktive digital media.
one need to narrow the options of what is being said down so it is possible to talk about a common subject at all.
I don't think we should consider calling some "games" not games because i want to disregard them. I want us to start calling games something else because obviously video games have moved away from strictly being about gaming.
I think more serious stories that use video games as a medium would be made and that critics would take more seriously what are presently considered video games but primarily tell a compelling narrative if we changed the entire heading video games are under and consider "games" to be a subset of the medium. Like, the only reason Gone Home is a game is because it is made using a video game. It's not a game at all, it's a mystery suspense novel using exploring an interactive world.
This is not meant to belittle it in any way. This is not meant to disregard it. But many people judged Gone Home AS a game, and judged it harshly because of that. If what we presently call video games had some other heading like "Interactive Computer Media"(or something considerably sexier, obviously i can't think of a great new name), games would fall under that, and there would be room for other distinct genres that could be judged clearly as not needing to have awesome gameplay to be good at its point.
The thing is "free form" poetry missed the whole point of poetry, which was to use meter and other rules to make language memorable and pleasurable. There's nothing memorable or pleasurable about modern poetry and that's why the only people who read poetry these days are people who want to look intellectual and the rest of the world thinks they loathe poetry. I would say modern poetry isn't really poetry, it's words jammed together on a page by people who think they're too good for prose and are too lazy to adhere to a thoughtful structure. Asking the question "What is poetry?" might have helped us avoid this point.
Maybe "games" and "interactive experiences" are different mediums. You have to look at the core of what makes them worthwhile or you might end up marching bravely off in a fruitless, sterile, meandering direction the same way poetry has. The question is a very worthwhile one.
Games are an "open concept", meaning that you cannot state the necessary and sufficient conditions for what a game is. Another example of an open concept is art.
On the other hand, closed concepts, like say, even numbers, are a closed because you can state the necessary and sufficient conditions for what makes a number even.
Look at that! A coherent explanation of the entire issue in three sentences. Boy I'm amazing.
Wow. This got so much right, and still managed to get so much wrong. "What is a game" is a valuable question to ask, and simply "mu" is not an appropriate answer. A *better* question to ask may be "What elements enhance players game experiences?" instead of "What elements MUST be found in games?", but at the moment, I think "what is a game?" is a fine question to ask.
My answer to the question consists of the following statement:
"A game is any system in which participants make choices which affect the system to achieve a goal"
There are 4 important parts of that statement:
1-A system
2-The participants have choices
3-These choices affect the system state
3-A goal
Now, I'll admit that my views may be affect by my previous research on the topic, including reading "Chris Crawford on game design" and other works by the eponymous author and Greg Costikyan's essay "I have no words and I must design". These are good reads to get you thinking about the topic, and I'm frankly VERY disappointed that these works weren't even mentioned in EC's video. The concept of the OODA loop is also important to game play. But I digress...
First, the game is a system that consists of rules that enforce some kind of logic and provide an overarching architecture that allow players to evaluate choices
Next, players must be able to make choices that affect the game state. As is pointed out elsewhere, "Candyland" is not a game, because players never make choices. If choices are meaningless, i.e. do not affect the game state, then they aren't really choices. Also, if the game state changes only in ways that are independent of players choices, again, player's choices don't matter. It must also be clear to the players *How* their choices have affected the game state, otherwise player choices become arbitrary.
Finally, if there is no goal pursued, player's choices are similarly arbitrary because there is no way to weight the value of various choices.
Basically, games are systems in which we are presented with opportunities to make choices, and then experience the consequences of said choices.
And this is a valuable question to ask so we can look at how to improve game design. Without asking these questions, game design is going to continue to flounder around and produce massive, expensive games that nearly fail as being games. One place where merely stating "the game is an interactive experience" fails are quick time events. Pushing a button fast enough is NOT a choice, and therefore not gameplay IMO.
Lethal, by that definition, most Call of Duty or Battlefield single-player experiences could be considered "not games." It depends on if you see "fire at targets in front of you, move forward when targets are down" as choice.
In fact, few computer/console games fit your criteria if Candyland doesn't...after all, "choice" implies there are multiple possible correct answers. In something like Call of Duty your only choices are to shoot at pretty much everything that moves in front of you and go forward. This is pretty much the same as "roll dice, move X number of spaces until game ends."
Lot of games only have one real option for success but I don't think that makes them suddenly not games. I had a ton of fun with The Walking Dead, and it's a game known for "choice." The thing is, the choices you make don't really fall into your definition. Whether I choose to save one person or another has no affect on the system state as far as gameplay goes. My ability to "win" is not affected. The only choice I have for success is during the quick time events and there is only ever one right answer (usually "hit zombie with object"). But that's not really a choice, only a binary success/failure based on clicking something. So is The Walking Dead not a game? And does the fact that it lacks the choices you describe detract from the experience?
What about Minecraft? I've spent hours in creative mode with no goal, no possibility of failure, just a vague idea like "I want to make a giant skull fortress" or "I want to make a train station."
I would argue that a game is simply what they described...an "interactive experience." If the system responds to the player's actions then it's a game. Taking that broad definition and adding meaning to it is the art of game making. Unlike most other forms of art, however, games have the potential for the player to add meaning back to the art form, which is, in my opinion, what makes games so compelling.
In an effort to undermine the message of this video, I will attempt to define a 'game'. A game is a pleasurable activity, defined by a set of rules, that tests the player's skill.
The only major functional difference between this definition and the definition given by LethalDose (a few posts down) is the inclusion of the word 'pleasurable'. There is a reason we have the expression 'Make a game of it.' Many activities can be transformed into games by adding enjoyment.
Without the 'pleasure' requirement, a math exam meets all of the conditions of a game. It has a goal (assuming you care about your grade), requires choices, and your choices affect the outcome.
However, enjoyment alone does not mean a given activity is a game. I may enjoy eating a sandwich, or going scuba diving, or writing about word definitions, but these things are not games in and of themselves. For this reason I would suggest that minecraft, in the manner that HunterIV4 enjoys it (below), could better be described as a toy than a game.
A toy is something we play with, like a game, but without the rules or skill assessment. Unlike a game it has no clear goal.
In the spirit of the video above I will be careful to say that just because something is not a game does not make it less than a game. An experience like 'Dear Esther' could be just as rewarding as a game like 'Super Mario World', or more, or less.
While I agree that the argument that 'this or that is not a game' is usually designed to diminish that experience, that is indicative of a problem with the debaters themselves, not the argument. We have words for a reason, and definitions matter.
While I agree almost 100% with this video, I would point out that I often see people talking about something "not being a game" while saying that they really liked/loved it. They weren't doing it to deride the experience, but simply because it didn't fit their view of what a game is.
Re: All proposed definitions -
Yes, words and their definitions are important...but honestly sometimes the history and baggage of a word, especially in a certain context, can accumulate to the point where it's better to just let go of that word and move on. I think that time has come for "game".
"Video game", and "computer game" are already assumed to refer to any/all types of interactive entertainment. If you want to be more specific in pretty much any way at all (relationship to "skill", "fun", "choice", "goal", etc)...well, you have to just be more specific. We're passed the point, in my opinion, where "game" can be successfully defined as anything more specific in this context. Yes, even if those specifics may be integral to the origin or history of the word's meaning.
I mean even "board game" no longer necessarily implies there must be skill, luck, competition, cooperation, a "win/lose" condition, a board, or even more than one player involved.
It's time to let go of "game" as a meaningful label by itself. Just let it become generic or even fall out of use. Embrace more specific vocabulary for the specific things we all want to talk about.
Edit: Agree with the person who said game, like Art, is an "open concept".
I will not say you are wrong. I just disagree. A game and a interactive experience is not the same thing. Is a Mario game the same as the Last of Us? Is Zelda the same as GTA? I think games will branch more like comic books and graphics novels, because put it in the same basket creates uncertainty about what has more value. I don't want all the games to have a story or cinematic experiences as I don't want all the games to be pick up and play experiences.
Also in the video you cop out of the discussion because for you they're not games, they're interactive experiences. I like to consider the possibilities of doing things it'll be hard or impossible to do in real lie in games, its a way to wide horizons and have new experiences.
But like you said in your older videos, it has felt that games have lacked joy & charm as of late. Because we have to justify what can and can't be done in a game and also making them a by the numbers business, since well, games with good stories are not commercial successes.
Also funny in a kind of ironic way, is how many people from the industry from devs to journalists seem to shy away from the term game. As if not wanting to be less than other entertainment mediums. I will have agreed if EC will have stated it's not a question worth asking because its medium of experiences and mostly because many see games in different ways.
P.S. Games for me = fun. It might be limited but its what I expect from the medium and it saddens me that most relevant games of this year don't fit with that concept.
This reminds me of Wittgenstein and his characterization of "language games." In a nutshell, much philosophical (especially metaphysical) debate regarding the 'real' meaning of words we use boiled down to bickering over word choice without really disagreeing about what the thing in question is really like. I agree that "what counts as a game" is a far less interesting (and potentially misguiding) question then something like "was that experience worth conveying?" I think this is the quintessential aesthetic question. Compartmentalizing art into mediums and genres is useful insofar as it helps us construct context in which our artistic experiences can be understood, but if we allow those divisions to constrain our approaches because we're more considered on making a product to fit a label than to be effective, then we've welcomed stagnation.
i think i have defined my position as clearly as i am capable of in text in my previous posts, but i would like to throw down one last opinion (until someone argues with me then the previous statement is null and void).
i personally like the question "what is a game?". the very nature of the question shows that the gaming community is becoming self aware and asking in depth questions about the nature of what we do. some will be zealots trying to mold the answer into their "perfect" small minded view, BUT the rest will use this debate to expand the nature of what entertainment can be. i get my most interesting ideas from debating/discussing complex abstract topics.
i think our primary problem is a severe lack of terminology within the entertainment world. the word "game" has been used for thousands of years to cover a wide swath of entertainment (for lack of a better word) devices, but the entire industry has expanded and evolved many times over.
mancala, checkers, chess, pong, mario, final fantasy, borderlands <- do you see the problem here? when checkers and borderlands fit within the same category with no clearly defined subcategories your classification system has failed and needs an overhaul. we need to add more terms to our vocabulary instead of culling them out and more clearly define the ones we have like "game", so i think the question "what is a game" is an incredibly important first step.
@urknighterrant Thing is with all these personal definitions....means the official definition will likely eventually change. So, in a way I agree that they may be wrong....but in a weird way individuals may be right, if they are on the same wavelength as where the definition is going.
@urknighterrant: It has nothing to do with whether or not I like it. You didn't read my post, otherwise you wouldn't have said what you said.
The point isn't "it isn't a game, and therefore it is bad". The point is "it isn't a game, and calling it a game is wrong." It isn't a game. It is an audiobook with an unusual interface. Designing something like Dear Esther isn't LIKE designing a game; it is like writing a novel. Yeah, there's a 3D environment you're navigating - but being in a 3D environment and being a game are not the same thing. There are plenty of simulated 3D environments which have nothing to do with being games, and Dear Esther is an example of such. Other examples include various architectural programs and similar things; Google Earth is an example as well.
If someone sued you for false advertising, yeah, that's entirely valid. If I sell something as being something it isn't, that is illegal - as well it should be.
The idea that Dear Esther is a game is just wrong. It isn't one.
In a free market society, you don't have the right to market something as something that it isn't. If you claim that your pills cure cancer, and they don't, you go to jail. If you claim that your knife never gets dull, and it does, that's false marketing, and you go to jail. If you try to pass off a painting of a car as a car, that's illegal, and you go to jail.
It is not illegal to sell something like Dear Esther, and your frothing rage over my post means that you didn't read a single word of it. It isn't, nor should it be, illegal to sell things like Dear Esther. The point is, however, that it isn't a game, and marketing things like Dear Esther as though they were games is wrong - Dear Esther is not a game.
It doesn't matter if it is good or not - "goodness" is obivously subjective to some extent, and people are allowed to claim that their product is totally fun and awesome even if most people think it is awful. But if you market your product as something it isn't, then you're tricking people into buying it, and you can be sued and brought to court for -that-.
When small-minded people like yourself whine about this, what it really means is that you don't understand what words mean. Game has a meaning. Game design is something specific. You don't design Dear Esther as a game.
Now, Dear Esther is quite terrible, but even if it were good (and there are similar things which ARE at least interesting), it wouldn't matter - the point isn't "Dear Esther is bad". The point is that Dear Esther isn't a game.
If you don't understand that Dear Esther isn't a game, then you don't understand game design, and you don't understand what Dear Esther IS. Complaining about me saying it isn't a game is completely missing the point - it isn't a value judgement, it is a descriptive one.
I will also note that almost all "artsy games" are the sort of false deepness you see in a lot of modern art - most of them are, in fact, utter garbage. People like to pretend to be deep when in reality, there isn't any actual depth at all. It is a form of peacocking - "Look at me, I'm so deep and intellectual." If you point this out, it enrages people... because if their peacocking is called out as peacocking, then they just look like tools.
@Vonter: Mario and The Last of Us are both different genres of games, so there are differences between them, just as there are differences between horror movies and action movies. That being said, there are fundamental attributes which underlie Super Mario Bros. and The Last of Us; there are design principles which are shared between them which are utterly absent from a horror film or an action movie.
If you look at a novel and a movie, there are many elements they have in common. Games, on the other hand, are vastly different things. A game like Magic has more in common with Super Street Fighter 2 than it does with a book, even though neither a book nor MTG are computer programs and SSF2 is. Game design across card games, board games, tabletop roleplaying games, and computer games is all shared, and they are all more closely related to each other than they are to non-games. The underlying principles of game design are used for things like that.
If you look at Dear Esther, they aren't. It is a novel; instead of turning the pages, you walk from location to location in a 3D environment. The only interaction you have with the story is how you get to the next "page"; otherwise, you are merely looking at a landscape. You don't design something like Dear Esther like a game; you aren't looking at balance, the interactivity consists of essentially flipping pages and looking at a 3D environment, but there isn't actual back-and-forthing.
If you don't understand this, then you don't understand game design. This is a very fundamental attribute of design - understanding what it is you are making.
The real question here should have been "What is a Demo?" cause games and Demos are two different but intertwine things at the moment. Especially with "Dear Easter" having been released and Stream messing up the advertising. So everyone understands Dear easter is one of the best Demos ever released and pushes how you present them to a new level. Demos are not Games but Games can be Demos for potential games.
Dear Easter is really a Closed World Narrative, like a book only you move through the world as you would turn a page and no other interaction needed. a museum that is completely one way with a few dead end corners to mess with your head. A really good Demo of a new way to present a story, as well as a great way to distract the eyes as the story plays out. There is nothing more to it. You simply are a ghost in a vast world and nothing you do changes the fate of the character. Hows that for a spoiler free review.
Games have been around for centuries and to say there isn't a definition for what a game is an understatement. However Video Games have changed the way Games can be presented and the presentation for Video Games is starting to intertwine with Demos that have also taken similar steps at the same time. Games and Demos are and have always been mixed together Intentionally for educational purposes. However with this mass explosion in technological marvals we've had in the last two centuries The ideas of what Demos and Games, at least in the past ten years, have met at the joining point. The Point where squares and rectangles are one and the same. Really all Dear easter needs is a coffee mug that you can pick up, or a branching path the tells you something completely different, and it would be a game.
Hell I almost wonder why they did this episode cause in reality they answered this simple if misguided question almost every episode they produce. Games are user alternated experiences while Demos are engaged user experiences. In other words if the user can't change it, odds are it's a demo. It doesn't matter what anyone says if I play something and everyone else plays said something and we not have the exact same things happen it's a game even if me and few other people got the same result the next time any of us play that something we can have different results.
Comparing a book to a movie isn't very smart since in one medium you usually show and not tell in books you tell the story and its mainly the way you describe it or say it what makes it interesting.
That's what I'm saying with the Mario and TLoU they seem more different than its genres and makes me to ask the question of where will games develop, since well sounding a bit cynic TLoU is a more substantial game and it makes me cringe it'll have copycats wanting to do that for trend sake, modern AAA devs only seem to stay in the darker side of the spectrum in regards to the stories and light hearted games of quality seem to be relegated to portables. Like EC said in another episode its not about limiting but expanding the medium, however it worries me that the medium forgets the foundations of why it was build in the first place, interact, play, learn and (at least for me) have joy.
Like I said, Titanium. I'd take that case in a heartbeat, and I'd destroy you. But don't take my word for it. If what you say is true there's a VERY lucrative class action suit waiting to make some law firm extremely rich. There's a studio. Publisher. Retailers. LOT's of deep pockets to hit. Just do it.
But you will NEVER find a lawyer willing to take this case.
The entire premise of your argument is based on a "definition" of games that simply doesn't exist outside your own fevered imagination.
It's a mental activity. It has rules. People do it for pleasure. As far as the law is concerned that's enough. It's a game.
You can throw down as many walls of text as you want, but it's all a load of crap. You declaring something is not a game simply does not make it so. To be absolutely crystal friggin' clear... your "expert opinion" is neither binding nor recognized.
Both sides are going to be perpetually wrong in this debate: the 'h4rdc0re g4m3rz' are brutal, Neandertalic "no this isn't a game because you can't use it to pwn anything" tea-baggers drinking down their 'Dew and playing blops (or I guess Ghosts now), while the artsy elitist schmucks that say "no it's all the same thing relatively because both are interactive" are just basically engaging in a giant circle-jerk to make themselves feel superior and more important than the Neandertal tea-baggers.
They are all games, even weird things like Dear Esther where you wander around and listen to someone talk at you: you are still engaging in moving around, and you are still discovering. Some people even find that kind of thing fun and entertaining. You can change the label to 'interactive experience' to avoid the mess of this discussion all you like, but you're pretty much just dodging the issue at hand by creating a term for the elitist snobs to fap all over themselves to.
It's a game. Tetris is a game. Minecraft is a game. Mario Kart Wii is a game. Kerbal Space Program's sandbox mode is a game. Some of them have objectives, others involve exploring, or creating, or, in the case of KSP, doing a lot of math for some reason. They are interactive entertainment, yes, but that is just a fancy word for 'game'. You play it. You enjoy it (or maybe you don't, if you're playing Aliens: Colonial Marines) and you experience it.
In my experience, the "is it art" debate is almost never about caring if something is art. It's entered into when you have a strong opinion about something and therefore want to put it in some category or other. i.e. you hate it and want to deny it federal arts funding, or love it and want it to have free speech protection or whatever.
But it is fundamentally a boring debate to me. It's like debating if a creature is a mammal, but nobody bothered to define what an mammal is. Even if there was a good definition of game, the debate is still boring, you check the criteria and attach the relevant label. I find the merits of a work interesting way more than the label.
@YoungFrey
the "is it art" debate, is a debate about censorship. allowing the existence of entertainment has never been related to whether something is or isn't a "game". as far as legal protection, funding, or anything tangible different forms of entertainment neither gain nor lose anything at all by being defined as games or not. the two debates share many very fundamental differences.
as for your second point, if we stopped all discussion because someone found it boring all of science would have died long ago. defining things as being mammals alone gets us very little but as you refine your definitions you learn things about evolution and how creatures are related to each other. the physics world has been powered for the last several years by an effort to define what gravity is and how it works. the "is it a game" debate is not nearly as grandiose as other scientific endeavors, but it can still be very educational.
@Kevbob
you are assuming that there are only two sides to this debate. you are in fact worse than the two sides that you caricature and deride. you simply name EVERYTHING as a game because you don't want to participate in the discussion. in most of my experiences with this debate it is an educational exercise that allows you to learn not just that something is fun, but also the details of what makes something fun.
if ALL of those things are games then is the sandbox (the real kind full of sand) i had as a kid also a game? i had fun playing in it. does a pool qualify as a game? i have fun swimming. you are only viewing this in terms of electronic media and even there your definition is hopelessly useless. do anime also qualify as games? i have fun watching them.
since you have locked yourself in this little box let's see if you can work your way out. define "fun", since that is the core of your definition of a game. next, define how many people need to have "fun" with an entity for it to qualify as a "game". do things stop being games because you have become bored with them and are no longer interested?
@blinkinn It's not a matter of whether or not I want to participate in the discussion. It's more a matter of whether or not the discussion has any real merit at all. Like I said before, it seems to simply serve as a way to divide the community of gamers, to make one group of gamers out to be inferior in order to make another group superior. "No that's not a game" is as ridiculous as "games is the wrong term, let's make another thing that basically means game but isn't game so that we can disassociate ourselves from the Dew-drinking Halo jumpers".
Your sandbox is not a game. Your sandbox is a sandbox. Your swimming pool is not a game. Your swimming pool is a swimming pool. You don't play your pool. You swim in your pool. Don't be ridiculous. Chess is a game. You play chess. Freeze tag is a game. You play freeze tag. Anime is not a game, it is a form of cartoon. You don't play anime. You watch it.
My little 'box' has nothing to do with fun. If you had read the entirity of my post (which parodies both sides by calling each of them basically variations on the term 'ninny'), you would have noted that I brought up Aliens: Colonial Marines. I am of the very firm opinion that there is nothing fun about that game. Duke Nuk'em Forever was a more fun, enjoyable experience than A:CM. Fun has nothing to do with whether or not something is a game. Fun only determines whether the game is shitty or not.
My box says that a game is a game. Flower is a game. Flow is a game. Journey is a game. Van Gogh paintings are not a game. Shakespear is not a game. The sweet, cool sounds of Charlie Parker are not a game.
Just because something is a game doesn't mean that it can't be art, either. I almost feel like the 'interactive experience' moniker is just some way of self-justifying the belief that video games and board games are art, when in fact no such justification is necessary because the minute someone believes something is art, or a medium of art, it becomes it.
@ExtraCredits You know, I've done a lot of thinking about this too, and I'd like to share my thoughts here, since it's been burning a hole in my brain for 6 months now.
My current definition for "game" is based on trying to find the bare minimum for what is needed to qualify, and is equivalent to most definitions I've heard for "Interactive Experience" So far I've come up with only 4 required elements:
1. A space. This space has no restrictions on it. Anything that could possibly be considered a space is a space for the purposes of this definition.
2. One or more game elements. These elements are either contained in the space, or properties of the space. The player must be able to interact with these elements.
3. One or more rules for interacting with the space, it's elements, and other players.
4. One or more players.
The first 3 are absolutely required:
There must be a space. A space provides a "common ground" for the elements and players to exist and interact in. For the purposes of this definition, the space can be considered the entirety of reality for the game. Anything outside this reality is irrelevant. In most Video Games, this space is the space created inside the machine running the program, but can also (usefully) be extended to the physical and mental state of the player, as well as any other interactions the player has while playing the game.
There must be at least one element, to allow for the state of the game to change. Players are not considered elements, but properties of the players are. If we ignore the physical and mental states of the players, Pong has 7 elements: 1 Ball, 2 Paddles, which each have a position and a direction in which they are moving, and 2 scores. Each one of these elements exists inside the space. Each element can be modified by the players in accordance with the rules of the game.
There must be at least one rule. Without at least one rule, each player and each element is "frozen", because they have no inherent behaviors on their own. One could imagine a very simple, but complete, game defined by the single rule "Move forward until you hit a wall."
Note that a game termination rule ("You win","You loose", etc...) is not required.
There must be a player to interact with the elements of the game. In games with a set of rules that autonomously change elements (by timer or other device), the rules themselves can be considered a player. Such a game can be considered to be "Playing itself", but it is still a game.
Obviously, this definition is exceptionally broad. It disqualifies very few phenomena, and allows a massive amount of traditionally "Non-game" concepts, such as "The Universe" or "Painting". However, this would seem to me to be it's power. For instance, it solves the "Are Games Art" question by completely flipping it on it's head. Using the definition above, we can conclude that all fine arts are, in fact, games. It also allows us to explicitly examine how we differentiate experiences (By allowed spaces, rules, elements, and players) and how those differentiations can be twisted or broken to create new experiences (by combining traditionally disallowed spaces, elements, rules, and players).
We've already seen how this can be successful in game development, though we generally don't recognize it as such. Minecraft is a good example of this, because it (probably unwittingly) combined very basic video game rules and elements with some of those from sculpture and painting, and with some of those from as distant a field as circuit design.
Another example would be something like "Pictionary" which takes the basic elements, rules, and space of sketching and expands on them to allow for competitive play. One can very easily imagine a game which, instead of modifying the rules for competitive play, modifies them for cooperative play instead. One could also imagine a game where instead of sketching, the players used paint, or clay, or any other medium instead.
Because the theory is so broad, it allows us to look at other, traditionally separate, interactive experiences, and examine how they differ in a rigorous fashion, and then apply those findings to help progress in our own medium. We can take the move from traditional painting to digital painting as an example. The rules of digital painting allow very quick "undo" steps (a increase in retry rate) and basically uninhibited variety of brushes, colors, and brush effects (an increase in creative choice). We can then see how these kinds of changes work in games, by say, lowering respawn time (an increase in retry rate) and increasing weapon variety (an increase in creative choice) if we're making a shooter.
Coming up with a definition of a "game" becomes necessary for certain activities or institutions. If the U.S. Congress were to pass a law creating a government funded institution that provides subsidies for game-making companies, and the intent of that institution is to "improve the quality of American games for the betterment of the public", the institution must set a definition of a "game", or else it will have to provide funding to things the vast majority of people would not call a game.
Using "real life = game" example: should the above institution pay for the scholarship of a college student, if that college student openly intends to use that scholarship to study business and openly states his intention to never pursue a career directly related to games? College certainly can be thought of as a game, if we replace the term "game" with "interactive experiences". Therefore, should the institution use money (a limited resource) to fund something that, by most other definitions, is not a game? This becomes especially problematic if/when another interactive experience that better fits traditional definitions is deprived of the funding it desperately could have used. What's that? You're trying to make an awesome space sim? Sorry, the kid who wants to become a businessman that has nothing to do with games took your money already.
On the other hand, as mentioned before college is certainly an interactive experience that you could many, many things from. If the above college kid were to try and acquire funding from the government institution and was rejected due to his project (get through college) not being an interactive experience, what would be the reasoning for this? If college is an interactive experience, then it is a legitimate candidate for getting funding, even if it ultimately ends up having nothing to do with the gaming (video or otherwise) industry.
While elitists and puritans certainly can limit the developmental progress of an art form by setting unchangeable definitions defining it, on at least a pragmatic scale setting definitions is necessary--otherwise, communication begins to break down as definitions become broader to the point where they stop meaning anything at all.
@Titanium_Dragon
I think you missed the last point I made in my post: it isn't the interactive part that's the defining aspect, but how our minds react TO the interactivity.
Dan used Loneliness to point out dozens of ways individuals acted differently despite the same core rules. In the same way, how the player interacts with Dear Ester can change how they experience it.
Your example about jigsaw puzzles being games confused me until I squinted at it really hard and turned my head sideways. For one thing, there aren't ANY discrete rules, is your goal to make the intended picture? To put them together in a three dimensional structure? To leave them be and declare it is finished?
Much like Legos you can MAKE a game out of the jigsaw puzzle, but by itself it certainly isn't one.
Posts
While I agree with the concept of the title interactive experiences, I don't really agree with what I perceive it's application to be as suggested in the video, which I think was to replace the concept of video games all together.
To me a game is very easy to define. It's the application of rule/s in a construct with the overall aim of reaching an end goal/s by the refining of the application of the rule/s through feed back. Both the rule/s and end goal/s can be rigidly, loosely, or even be player defined. For example in an RPG there might not be a rule about always doing "good" and no reward involved if that restriction is placed on the player. But some people will self challenge themselves to indeed play a game with that rule and the goal of completing the game in that manner. Or decide their goal is to find out how long a Civ game can last without player direction. Both player defined rules and end goals.
I think the title interactive experiences should be more of a broadly based definition with games falling into a sub section. Kind of like how we have the overall title of literature which is then further broken down to fiction and non-fiction. So anything that doesn't fit the definition of a video game might be referred to as a video story.
As for the rest, to quote an email I sent to a friend of mine:
"The problem is, there's so many subcategories of 'virtual experiences' now as to make the problem manifold.
Someone suggested calling stuff like Proteus 'videodreams', which is nice, if weak.
Certainly you can't call those stories because there's no story involved.
'Interactive stories' and 'Media Installations' and 'Multimedia Art' all fetishize the format in the name, rather than really describing the experience."
It's useful to know, on a personal level, at least at what point something is a game and at what point it's under a broader or different umbrella. People often seem to take the platform displayed as the defining characteristic of a game 'I'm using a computer, therefore it is a game' and I feel that's too limiting. I walk and run while playing football or exploring an art gallery yet the art gallery is not a game. That doesn't make it lesser in any way, just different.
Naturally stuff like the Stanley Parable blur that line significantly (the art galleries narration tape does not change based on what I do as Stanley's will) but I feel it's useful from a critical point of view to have definitions of a game vs an interactive experience (which is a wider set of things than what constitutes a game).
I believe in games as art. I believe in all games as art. From the very worst, to the very best, every game is art. Just like my terrible portraits of D&D characters from 7th grade are every bit as much 'Art' as the Mona Lisa is. However, the Mona Lisa is, by any measure, a superior WORK of art.
But while I believe in games as art, I don't believe in games as art passively. I believe that games are art actively. They are not, yet, fully matured as an art form. What I mean by this is we only have half the story. We have art, artists, and consumers. But we lack art critics. We lack people who are willing, or, today, even CAPABLE of engaging in games as art on an intellectual level.
It's easy to laugh at the art critics who seem keen to assign meaning to every random drop of paint. But those people have done as much to advance, for lack of a better phrase... The art of making art, as the artists have.
And they have a critical language. That's one of the most vital things. They are capable of talking about art in a way that, at the moment, gamers are not capable of talking about games. I love videogames. I also love things like Loneliness. But, in all honesty, the critical language that will be necessary to discuss videogames, what I would call videogames, is different from the critical language necessary to discuss Loneliness. One can analyze the Mona Lisa and Pollock's #5 with, though not the same, SIMILAR critical language. But that language is going to be very different from the language used to analyze art photography. I think games are to loneliness what paintings are to art photography. The main similarity is the presentation.
Without art critics, art still exists. But it can't be a truly mature art form, without more serious critics.
We need to be able to develop that. And to do that, the question of "What is a game?" is one that has to be asked and answered.
That said, it must be a NEUTRAL question. "Not a Game" must be as much a condemnation of interactive art as "Not a Sandwich" is of food. When "Not a game" is used to say something is bad, then you're encountering a real problem. "What is a Game" is a good question, but once we have an answer, and apply that to a thing, that shouldn't make it worse.
I don't consider "Loneliness" a game. I do consider Ride To Hell: Retribution. But I consider one of these good, and one of these horrid. Guess which.
Then they told me a game could be anything, so I became art.
When they told me art could be anything, I punched in the face and went after some burritos.
Since some of this is already verging on repetition, I’ll try to be brief. I think the frequency of the question, “what is a game?” is a thoroughly positive situation on two related counts, the second of which is more interesting, but both are worth mentioning.
On the one hand, “serious” (which should just be read as code for “intense” or “engaged”) thinking about literature, film, or any other medium is almost necessarily concerned with what that medium “is,” and the work of that “is” is driven by what gets to count as literature, film, or whatever. Since the answer always depends on by whom, when, and where the judgment is made, we get a lot of different opinions, which is awesome because in the friction between those opinions we can revisit and revise our understanding of what a medium is, can, and should do.
On the other, more interesting, hand, it seems to me that we who love games have really lucked out. The last 20 years have been a time of astonishing growth and change for video games and that trend is only increasing. Much of this change (at least concerning the “what is a game” question) looks a lot like some of the transformations that have taken place in other media, though on fast-forwards. In a nutshell, it seems to me that the changes within the medium are straining against the limits of how we have grown used to thinking and talking about “games” and that we’re now starting to see that the term, game, is becoming insufficient to describe the sorts of things that are happening in the medium. I, for one, am over the moon about this. And I look forward to seeing how we come to renegotiate our relationship with the notion of games over the next few years.
That is if you want to examine games in general by diffent standarts then you need to know what it is you examine.
Right now this quistion makes sense to ask for me because I'm trying to find out what motivates people to engage in digital games, and what "levers" you can use to make them play a game. If I don't have some understanding of what a game is then it is not possible for me to examine this problem.
I'm not saying it's good just to define it so the games you don't like are excluded, but it makes sense that we exclude the stuff that are not intended to be games. If I want to know what motivates a man to play WOW then it would not make sense for me to examine why people eat. Or rather it would not make sense to compare the two under the same signifier; that is games. The thing here is that when you reseach something it is necessary to make some limitations for what is meant by a word or the scope of the reseach is without end. If that is the case then nothing true or untrue can be said about a single thing. one could argue that if we cannot define a thing in some small way then we can't speak about it. True one could argue everything is a game, but that doesn't help us understanding a single thing about said thing.
I agree with EC in the way that it isn't a simple thing just to put a label on the many-headed awesome beautiful monster called GAME without setting a discourse for what it is. But I would say there is a difference from a operation system that a dude can play with and a game. If there isn't a difference between a game and life in general then why are we here to see the posts from EC about (for lack of better word) games. Why not read papers on wikipedia instead? How can one discuss game mechanics if we do not know one of the key words?
I don't see the defination of a game as the important contribution from a paper on games, but the defination of what games is explains part of the thought process going on in the writers mind, and helps the reader understanding what the person(s) examined.
If we are to have a reasoned conversation then we need to get our definations straight or we won't be able to determine whether we understand each other or not. How can we determine if a spoon is a game if all we have to go by is interaktive media?
or a picture of a spoon? - if you go by the defination interaktive digital media.
one need to narrow the options of what is being said down so it is possible to talk about a common subject at all.
I think more serious stories that use video games as a medium would be made and that critics would take more seriously what are presently considered video games but primarily tell a compelling narrative if we changed the entire heading video games are under and consider "games" to be a subset of the medium. Like, the only reason Gone Home is a game is because it is made using a video game. It's not a game at all, it's a mystery suspense novel using exploring an interactive world.
This is not meant to belittle it in any way. This is not meant to disregard it. But many people judged Gone Home AS a game, and judged it harshly because of that. If what we presently call video games had some other heading like "Interactive Computer Media"(or something considerably sexier, obviously i can't think of a great new name), games would fall under that, and there would be room for other distinct genres that could be judged clearly as not needing to have awesome gameplay to be good at its point.
Maybe "games" and "interactive experiences" are different mediums. You have to look at the core of what makes them worthwhile or you might end up marching bravely off in a fruitless, sterile, meandering direction the same way poetry has. The question is a very worthwhile one.
On the other hand, closed concepts, like say, even numbers, are a closed because you can state the necessary and sufficient conditions for what makes a number even.
Look at that! A coherent explanation of the entire issue in three sentences. Boy I'm amazing.
My answer to the question consists of the following statement:
"A game is any system in which participants make choices which affect the system to achieve a goal"
There are 4 important parts of that statement:
1-A system
2-The participants have choices
3-These choices affect the system state
3-A goal
Now, I'll admit that my views may be affect by my previous research on the topic, including reading "Chris Crawford on game design" and other works by the eponymous author and Greg Costikyan's essay "I have no words and I must design". These are good reads to get you thinking about the topic, and I'm frankly VERY disappointed that these works weren't even mentioned in EC's video. The concept of the OODA loop is also important to game play. But I digress...
First, the game is a system that consists of rules that enforce some kind of logic and provide an overarching architecture that allow players to evaluate choices
Next, players must be able to make choices that affect the game state. As is pointed out elsewhere, "Candyland" is not a game, because players never make choices. If choices are meaningless, i.e. do not affect the game state, then they aren't really choices. Also, if the game state changes only in ways that are independent of players choices, again, player's choices don't matter. It must also be clear to the players *How* their choices have affected the game state, otherwise player choices become arbitrary.
Finally, if there is no goal pursued, player's choices are similarly arbitrary because there is no way to weight the value of various choices.
Basically, games are systems in which we are presented with opportunities to make choices, and then experience the consequences of said choices.
And this is a valuable question to ask so we can look at how to improve game design. Without asking these questions, game design is going to continue to flounder around and produce massive, expensive games that nearly fail as being games. One place where merely stating "the game is an interactive experience" fails are quick time events. Pushing a button fast enough is NOT a choice, and therefore not gameplay IMO.
In fact, few computer/console games fit your criteria if Candyland doesn't...after all, "choice" implies there are multiple possible correct answers. In something like Call of Duty your only choices are to shoot at pretty much everything that moves in front of you and go forward. This is pretty much the same as "roll dice, move X number of spaces until game ends."
Lot of games only have one real option for success but I don't think that makes them suddenly not games. I had a ton of fun with The Walking Dead, and it's a game known for "choice." The thing is, the choices you make don't really fall into your definition. Whether I choose to save one person or another has no affect on the system state as far as gameplay goes. My ability to "win" is not affected. The only choice I have for success is during the quick time events and there is only ever one right answer (usually "hit zombie with object"). But that's not really a choice, only a binary success/failure based on clicking something. So is The Walking Dead not a game? And does the fact that it lacks the choices you describe detract from the experience?
What about Minecraft? I've spent hours in creative mode with no goal, no possibility of failure, just a vague idea like "I want to make a giant skull fortress" or "I want to make a train station."
I would argue that a game is simply what they described...an "interactive experience." If the system responds to the player's actions then it's a game. Taking that broad definition and adding meaning to it is the art of game making. Unlike most other forms of art, however, games have the potential for the player to add meaning back to the art form, which is, in my opinion, what makes games so compelling.
The only major functional difference between this definition and the definition given by LethalDose (a few posts down) is the inclusion of the word 'pleasurable'. There is a reason we have the expression 'Make a game of it.' Many activities can be transformed into games by adding enjoyment.
Without the 'pleasure' requirement, a math exam meets all of the conditions of a game. It has a goal (assuming you care about your grade), requires choices, and your choices affect the outcome.
However, enjoyment alone does not mean a given activity is a game. I may enjoy eating a sandwich, or going scuba diving, or writing about word definitions, but these things are not games in and of themselves. For this reason I would suggest that minecraft, in the manner that HunterIV4 enjoys it (below), could better be described as a toy than a game.
A toy is something we play with, like a game, but without the rules or skill assessment. Unlike a game it has no clear goal.
In the spirit of the video above I will be careful to say that just because something is not a game does not make it less than a game. An experience like 'Dear Esther' could be just as rewarding as a game like 'Super Mario World', or more, or less.
While I agree that the argument that 'this or that is not a game' is usually designed to diminish that experience, that is indicative of a problem with the debaters themselves, not the argument. We have words for a reason, and definitions matter.
Yes, words and their definitions are important...but honestly sometimes the history and baggage of a word, especially in a certain context, can accumulate to the point where it's better to just let go of that word and move on. I think that time has come for "game".
"Video game", and "computer game" are already assumed to refer to any/all types of interactive entertainment. If you want to be more specific in pretty much any way at all (relationship to "skill", "fun", "choice", "goal", etc)...well, you have to just be more specific. We're passed the point, in my opinion, where "game" can be successfully defined as anything more specific in this context. Yes, even if those specifics may be integral to the origin or history of the word's meaning.
I mean even "board game" no longer necessarily implies there must be skill, luck, competition, cooperation, a "win/lose" condition, a board, or even more than one player involved.
It's time to let go of "game" as a meaningful label by itself. Just let it become generic or even fall out of use. Embrace more specific vocabulary for the specific things we all want to talk about.
Edit: Agree with the person who said game, like Art, is an "open concept".
Also in the video you cop out of the discussion because for you they're not games, they're interactive experiences. I like to consider the possibilities of doing things it'll be hard or impossible to do in real lie in games, its a way to wide horizons and have new experiences.
But like you said in your older videos, it has felt that games have lacked joy & charm as of late. Because we have to justify what can and can't be done in a game and also making them a by the numbers business, since well, games with good stories are not commercial successes.
P.S. Games for me = fun. It might be limited but its what I expect from the medium and it saddens me that most relevant games of this year don't fit with that concept.
"My definition of game is..." a load of hogwash, THAT's what it is.
The word is already defined. You may not LIKE that definition, but that doesn't matter one jot.
Candyland IS a game. So is Yahtzee. So is Chutes and Ladders.
You may not like it, but there it is.
According to ANY accepted legal, academic, or social standard choice is NOT an element of that definition. To claim otherwise is just stupid.
i personally like the question "what is a game?". the very nature of the question shows that the gaming community is becoming self aware and asking in depth questions about the nature of what we do. some will be zealots trying to mold the answer into their "perfect" small minded view, BUT the rest will use this debate to expand the nature of what entertainment can be. i get my most interesting ideas from debating/discussing complex abstract topics.
i think our primary problem is a severe lack of terminology within the entertainment world. the word "game" has been used for thousands of years to cover a wide swath of entertainment (for lack of a better word) devices, but the entire industry has expanded and evolved many times over.
mancala, checkers, chess, pong, mario, final fantasy, borderlands <- do you see the problem here? when checkers and borderlands fit within the same category with no clearly defined subcategories your classification system has failed and needs an overhaul. we need to add more terms to our vocabulary instead of culling them out and more clearly define the ones we have like "game", so i think the question "what is a game" is an incredibly important first step.
The point isn't "it isn't a game, and therefore it is bad". The point is "it isn't a game, and calling it a game is wrong." It isn't a game. It is an audiobook with an unusual interface. Designing something like Dear Esther isn't LIKE designing a game; it is like writing a novel. Yeah, there's a 3D environment you're navigating - but being in a 3D environment and being a game are not the same thing. There are plenty of simulated 3D environments which have nothing to do with being games, and Dear Esther is an example of such. Other examples include various architectural programs and similar things; Google Earth is an example as well.
If someone sued you for false advertising, yeah, that's entirely valid. If I sell something as being something it isn't, that is illegal - as well it should be.
The idea that Dear Esther is a game is just wrong. It isn't one.
In a free market society, you don't have the right to market something as something that it isn't. If you claim that your pills cure cancer, and they don't, you go to jail. If you claim that your knife never gets dull, and it does, that's false marketing, and you go to jail. If you try to pass off a painting of a car as a car, that's illegal, and you go to jail.
It is not illegal to sell something like Dear Esther, and your frothing rage over my post means that you didn't read a single word of it. It isn't, nor should it be, illegal to sell things like Dear Esther. The point is, however, that it isn't a game, and marketing things like Dear Esther as though they were games is wrong - Dear Esther is not a game.
It doesn't matter if it is good or not - "goodness" is obivously subjective to some extent, and people are allowed to claim that their product is totally fun and awesome even if most people think it is awful. But if you market your product as something it isn't, then you're tricking people into buying it, and you can be sued and brought to court for -that-.
When small-minded people like yourself whine about this, what it really means is that you don't understand what words mean. Game has a meaning. Game design is something specific. You don't design Dear Esther as a game.
Now, Dear Esther is quite terrible, but even if it were good (and there are similar things which ARE at least interesting), it wouldn't matter - the point isn't "Dear Esther is bad". The point is that Dear Esther isn't a game.
If you don't understand that Dear Esther isn't a game, then you don't understand game design, and you don't understand what Dear Esther IS. Complaining about me saying it isn't a game is completely missing the point - it isn't a value judgement, it is a descriptive one.
I will also note that almost all "artsy games" are the sort of false deepness you see in a lot of modern art - most of them are, in fact, utter garbage. People like to pretend to be deep when in reality, there isn't any actual depth at all. It is a form of peacocking - "Look at me, I'm so deep and intellectual." If you point this out, it enrages people... because if their peacocking is called out as peacocking, then they just look like tools.
@Vonter: Mario and The Last of Us are both different genres of games, so there are differences between them, just as there are differences between horror movies and action movies. That being said, there are fundamental attributes which underlie Super Mario Bros. and The Last of Us; there are design principles which are shared between them which are utterly absent from a horror film or an action movie.
If you look at a novel and a movie, there are many elements they have in common. Games, on the other hand, are vastly different things. A game like Magic has more in common with Super Street Fighter 2 than it does with a book, even though neither a book nor MTG are computer programs and SSF2 is. Game design across card games, board games, tabletop roleplaying games, and computer games is all shared, and they are all more closely related to each other than they are to non-games. The underlying principles of game design are used for things like that.
If you look at Dear Esther, they aren't. It is a novel; instead of turning the pages, you walk from location to location in a 3D environment. The only interaction you have with the story is how you get to the next "page"; otherwise, you are merely looking at a landscape. You don't design something like Dear Esther like a game; you aren't looking at balance, the interactivity consists of essentially flipping pages and looking at a 3D environment, but there isn't actual back-and-forthing.
If you don't understand this, then you don't understand game design. This is a very fundamental attribute of design - understanding what it is you are making.
Dear Easter is really a Closed World Narrative, like a book only you move through the world as you would turn a page and no other interaction needed. a museum that is completely one way with a few dead end corners to mess with your head. A really good Demo of a new way to present a story, as well as a great way to distract the eyes as the story plays out. There is nothing more to it. You simply are a ghost in a vast world and nothing you do changes the fate of the character. Hows that for a spoiler free review.
Games have been around for centuries and to say there isn't a definition for what a game is an understatement. However Video Games have changed the way Games can be presented and the presentation for Video Games is starting to intertwine with Demos that have also taken similar steps at the same time. Games and Demos are and have always been mixed together Intentionally for educational purposes. However with this mass explosion in technological marvals we've had in the last two centuries The ideas of what Demos and Games, at least in the past ten years, have met at the joining point. The Point where squares and rectangles are one and the same. Really all Dear easter needs is a coffee mug that you can pick up, or a branching path the tells you something completely different, and it would be a game.
Hell I almost wonder why they did this episode cause in reality they answered this simple if misguided question almost every episode they produce. Games are user alternated experiences while Demos are engaged user experiences. In other words if the user can't change it, odds are it's a demo. It doesn't matter what anyone says if I play something and everyone else plays said something and we not have the exact same things happen it's a game even if me and few other people got the same result the next time any of us play that something we can have different results.
Comparing a book to a movie isn't very smart since in one medium you usually show and not tell in books you tell the story and its mainly the way you describe it or say it what makes it interesting.
That's what I'm saying with the Mario and TLoU they seem more different than its genres and makes me to ask the question of where will games develop, since well sounding a bit cynic TLoU is a more substantial game and it makes me cringe it'll have copycats wanting to do that for trend sake, modern AAA devs only seem to stay in the darker side of the spectrum in regards to the stories and light hearted games of quality seem to be relegated to portables. Like EC said in another episode its not about limiting but expanding the medium, however it worries me that the medium forgets the foundations of why it was build in the first place, interact, play, learn and (at least for me) have joy.
I love games. When I say that, I want it to mean something.
But you will NEVER find a lawyer willing to take this case.
The entire premise of your argument is based on a "definition" of games that simply doesn't exist outside your own fevered imagination.
It's a mental activity. It has rules. People do it for pleasure. As far as the law is concerned that's enough. It's a game.
You can throw down as many walls of text as you want, but it's all a load of crap. You declaring something is not a game simply does not make it so. To be absolutely crystal friggin' clear... your "expert opinion" is neither binding nor recognized.
They are all games, even weird things like Dear Esther where you wander around and listen to someone talk at you: you are still engaging in moving around, and you are still discovering. Some people even find that kind of thing fun and entertaining. You can change the label to 'interactive experience' to avoid the mess of this discussion all you like, but you're pretty much just dodging the issue at hand by creating a term for the elitist snobs to fap all over themselves to.
It's a game. Tetris is a game. Minecraft is a game. Mario Kart Wii is a game. Kerbal Space Program's sandbox mode is a game. Some of them have objectives, others involve exploring, or creating, or, in the case of KSP, doing a lot of math for some reason. They are interactive entertainment, yes, but that is just a fancy word for 'game'. You play it. You enjoy it (or maybe you don't, if you're playing Aliens: Colonial Marines) and you experience it.
Quit circle-jerking and call it a game.
But it is fundamentally a boring debate to me. It's like debating if a creature is a mammal, but nobody bothered to define what an mammal is. Even if there was a good definition of game, the debate is still boring, you check the criteria and attach the relevant label. I find the merits of a work interesting way more than the label.
the "is it art" debate, is a debate about censorship. allowing the existence of entertainment has never been related to whether something is or isn't a "game". as far as legal protection, funding, or anything tangible different forms of entertainment neither gain nor lose anything at all by being defined as games or not. the two debates share many very fundamental differences.
as for your second point, if we stopped all discussion because someone found it boring all of science would have died long ago. defining things as being mammals alone gets us very little but as you refine your definitions you learn things about evolution and how creatures are related to each other. the physics world has been powered for the last several years by an effort to define what gravity is and how it works. the "is it a game" debate is not nearly as grandiose as other scientific endeavors, but it can still be very educational.
@Kevbob
you are assuming that there are only two sides to this debate. you are in fact worse than the two sides that you caricature and deride. you simply name EVERYTHING as a game because you don't want to participate in the discussion. in most of my experiences with this debate it is an educational exercise that allows you to learn not just that something is fun, but also the details of what makes something fun.
if ALL of those things are games then is the sandbox (the real kind full of sand) i had as a kid also a game? i had fun playing in it. does a pool qualify as a game? i have fun swimming. you are only viewing this in terms of electronic media and even there your definition is hopelessly useless. do anime also qualify as games? i have fun watching them.
since you have locked yourself in this little box let's see if you can work your way out. define "fun", since that is the core of your definition of a game. next, define how many people need to have "fun" with an entity for it to qualify as a "game". do things stop being games because you have become bored with them and are no longer interested?
Your sandbox is not a game. Your sandbox is a sandbox. Your swimming pool is not a game. Your swimming pool is a swimming pool. You don't play your pool. You swim in your pool. Don't be ridiculous. Chess is a game. You play chess. Freeze tag is a game. You play freeze tag. Anime is not a game, it is a form of cartoon. You don't play anime. You watch it.
My little 'box' has nothing to do with fun. If you had read the entirity of my post (which parodies both sides by calling each of them basically variations on the term 'ninny'), you would have noted that I brought up Aliens: Colonial Marines. I am of the very firm opinion that there is nothing fun about that game. Duke Nuk'em Forever was a more fun, enjoyable experience than A:CM. Fun has nothing to do with whether or not something is a game. Fun only determines whether the game is shitty or not.
My box says that a game is a game. Flower is a game. Flow is a game. Journey is a game. Van Gogh paintings are not a game. Shakespear is not a game. The sweet, cool sounds of Charlie Parker are not a game.
Just because something is a game doesn't mean that it can't be art, either. I almost feel like the 'interactive experience' moniker is just some way of self-justifying the belief that video games and board games are art, when in fact no such justification is necessary because the minute someone believes something is art, or a medium of art, it becomes it.
Real games v. Art games are just this fight in a medium that does not predate the conflict.
My current definition for "game" is based on trying to find the bare minimum for what is needed to qualify, and is equivalent to most definitions I've heard for "Interactive Experience" So far I've come up with only 4 required elements:
1. A space. This space has no restrictions on it. Anything that could possibly be considered a space is a space for the purposes of this definition.
2. One or more game elements. These elements are either contained in the space, or properties of the space. The player must be able to interact with these elements.
3. One or more rules for interacting with the space, it's elements, and other players.
4. One or more players.
The first 3 are absolutely required:
There must be a space. A space provides a "common ground" for the elements and players to exist and interact in. For the purposes of this definition, the space can be considered the entirety of reality for the game. Anything outside this reality is irrelevant. In most Video Games, this space is the space created inside the machine running the program, but can also (usefully) be extended to the physical and mental state of the player, as well as any other interactions the player has while playing the game.
There must be at least one element, to allow for the state of the game to change. Players are not considered elements, but properties of the players are. If we ignore the physical and mental states of the players, Pong has 7 elements: 1 Ball, 2 Paddles, which each have a position and a direction in which they are moving, and 2 scores. Each one of these elements exists inside the space. Each element can be modified by the players in accordance with the rules of the game.
There must be at least one rule. Without at least one rule, each player and each element is "frozen", because they have no inherent behaviors on their own. One could imagine a very simple, but complete, game defined by the single rule "Move forward until you hit a wall."
Note that a game termination rule ("You win","You loose", etc...) is not required.
There must be a player to interact with the elements of the game. In games with a set of rules that autonomously change elements (by timer or other device), the rules themselves can be considered a player. Such a game can be considered to be "Playing itself", but it is still a game.
Obviously, this definition is exceptionally broad. It disqualifies very few phenomena, and allows a massive amount of traditionally "Non-game" concepts, such as "The Universe" or "Painting". However, this would seem to me to be it's power. For instance, it solves the "Are Games Art" question by completely flipping it on it's head. Using the definition above, we can conclude that all fine arts are, in fact, games. It also allows us to explicitly examine how we differentiate experiences (By allowed spaces, rules, elements, and players) and how those differentiations can be twisted or broken to create new experiences (by combining traditionally disallowed spaces, elements, rules, and players).
We've already seen how this can be successful in game development, though we generally don't recognize it as such. Minecraft is a good example of this, because it (probably unwittingly) combined very basic video game rules and elements with some of those from sculpture and painting, and with some of those from as distant a field as circuit design.
Another example would be something like "Pictionary" which takes the basic elements, rules, and space of sketching and expands on them to allow for competitive play. One can very easily imagine a game which, instead of modifying the rules for competitive play, modifies them for cooperative play instead. One could also imagine a game where instead of sketching, the players used paint, or clay, or any other medium instead.
Because the theory is so broad, it allows us to look at other, traditionally separate, interactive experiences, and examine how they differ in a rigorous fashion, and then apply those findings to help progress in our own medium. We can take the move from traditional painting to digital painting as an example. The rules of digital painting allow very quick "undo" steps (a increase in retry rate) and basically uninhibited variety of brushes, colors, and brush effects (an increase in creative choice). We can then see how these kinds of changes work in games, by say, lowering respawn time (an increase in retry rate) and increasing weapon variety (an increase in creative choice) if we're making a shooter.
Using "real life = game" example: should the above institution pay for the scholarship of a college student, if that college student openly intends to use that scholarship to study business and openly states his intention to never pursue a career directly related to games? College certainly can be thought of as a game, if we replace the term "game" with "interactive experiences". Therefore, should the institution use money (a limited resource) to fund something that, by most other definitions, is not a game? This becomes especially problematic if/when another interactive experience that better fits traditional definitions is deprived of the funding it desperately could have used. What's that? You're trying to make an awesome space sim? Sorry, the kid who wants to become a businessman that has nothing to do with games took your money already.
On the other hand, as mentioned before college is certainly an interactive experience that you could many, many things from. If the above college kid were to try and acquire funding from the government institution and was rejected due to his project (get through college) not being an interactive experience, what would be the reasoning for this? If college is an interactive experience, then it is a legitimate candidate for getting funding, even if it ultimately ends up having nothing to do with the gaming (video or otherwise) industry.
While elitists and puritans certainly can limit the developmental progress of an art form by setting unchangeable definitions defining it, on at least a pragmatic scale setting definitions is necessary--otherwise, communication begins to break down as definitions become broader to the point where they stop meaning anything at all.
I think you missed the last point I made in my post: it isn't the interactive part that's the defining aspect, but how our minds react TO the interactivity.
Dan used Loneliness to point out dozens of ways individuals acted differently despite the same core rules. In the same way, how the player interacts with Dear Ester can change how they experience it.
Your example about jigsaw puzzles being games confused me until I squinted at it really hard and turned my head sideways. For one thing, there aren't ANY discrete rules, is your goal to make the intended picture? To put them together in a three dimensional structure? To leave them be and declare it is finished?
Much like Legos you can MAKE a game out of the jigsaw puzzle, but by itself it certainly isn't one.