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Are Games Games? What's a Game anyway?! Discuss Within
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The moment they know there isn't that whole thing would be "some software that is silly" (state B ).
They might call state A a game, but deffo not state B (unless they played state A before maybe..and then rabidly defend it).
A piece of software where I press a button to see another page of text and know nothing else is gonna happen is not a game, it's a Kindle emulation.
Edit: silly smiles and brackets..
This, for what it's worth, is pretty much my personal dividing line between "game" and "not-game". Hence most of the Twine/interactive fiction games I've played qualify as such, since they're following the Choose Your Own Adventure model.
Good contribution.
Geth, kick @GnomeTank from the thread.
I can accept that
But uh, what's the point of this thread then? This doesn't exactly leave room for discussion beyond "I disagree because here is my arbitrary definition of what a game truly is"
If it's obvious that you'd rather not argue and just want to name-call the opposition, then you're gone. I'm not giving this thread a whole lot of slack.
Again I ask, why does the creator of something get to hold the authority of what it is?
Is there no limit to what you accept as a game if the creator told you it was a game?
XBL - Foreverender | 3DS FC - 1418 6696 1012 | Steam ID | LoL
Except that the theory that the artist alone gets to define the meaning and categorization of their art is just as arbitrary, and not without flaws.
Of course, most of the issues I have with that approach to "what is art?" have occurred outside of the realm of games, but I'm still a bit leery of considering it to be the unquestionable right answer when it comes to games.
They just don't meet my criteria of "game".
Amusingly, this discussion isn't limited to interactive mediums. This pattern of discussion exists for what "is sci-fi" and "is not sci-fi", and I imagine for all sorts of other things as well.
How is Candyland not interactive? It doesn't have a "failure state", which is some how some folks arbitrarily define "game", but even though everyone reaches the same end point the journey is determined in large part due to player interaction. Not every Candyland player will always land on the same spaces, for example.
It's strictly deterministic - once the cards are shuffled and play order is determined, there are no decisions to be made: the deck is played from card 1 to card N, until each player has "won" (reached the end).
There's no choice, there's no failure - there's just one person flipping a card, moving their token, and then it's the next player's turn.
It's more like the foundation of how to play a game: there are rules, there is a turn order. Follow the rules and take your turn. It's a teaching tool for how to play cooperatively.
Also colors.
Would you? I mean, do you personally consider Myst a game or not?
Also, as for the general conversation about fail states, what defines a fail state? Is it simply gameplay death (you fell down a hole), or do "bad" endings count?
That's pretty neat. So I'd say that until you begin the puzzle, the game hasn't started. Giving up before completing the puzzle would constitute a failure state.
I'd say that any negative outcome caused by the player constitutes a "fail" state. Like in The Sims, if you don't go to work (or otherwise earn money), your belongings are repossessed. Your children are taken away if you neglect them. Your stove catches fire if you don't clean it. Your Sims die if you don't feed them.
Regardless of whether or not Gone Home is a "game", it certainly isn't what you'd expect from a GotY winner/nominee, and that seems to be why a lot of people are annoyed (that, and the vocal minority that don't find it entertaining). Maybe the awards should change their name, maybe people shouldn't care about the awards, but "is it a game" seems to be a bit of a proxy argument for "should GoTY awards go to the type of game/notgame media with limited/zero choice, limited/zero challenge to the player, and limited/zero gameplay or mechanics besides what is strictly required to bring you forward in the plot."
EDIT: Also, to cut off an argument I was somewhat wrestling with in my head: "Game of the year" doesn't and hasn't ever included all games, so the issue of "should X be included for GotY" doesn't just boil down to "is it a game." GotY awards don't include any new sports, games you can play without rules, actual paper gamebooks, tabletop RPGs, or board games. While this may be an imprecision in terminology, it certainly makes the expectation that "GotY" is awarded to specific types of games reasonable.
If not, what is?
(these are the questions I find interesting, I'm not specifically calling you out)
The ironic thing is that the bolded bit could just as easily be used to describe things that are uniformly considered "games" by the overall "gaming community", such as the average linear, theme-park FPS game.
That's your opinion. On the flipside, however, you could also give those games their own category (such as "experimental") if you wanted your overall winner to actually be the game of the year the most people would enjoy (and the backlash seems to indicate this is the case). As an example, you aren't going to see the Grammy's put an entirely experimental avant-garde album up for Best Album, because the contests are as much, if not more, to reinforce good "old" material as they are to present new material.
I also have to question whether or not "experimentation" is encouraged by giving them broad-category awards EDIT: and whether or not that is more important than broad-category awards highlighting outstanding examples of games with more broad appeal.
This is a pretty blatant and disingenuous potshot. Regardless of their success at attempting the above (which is an opinion), and how we define choice (because there's a forum thread or several worth of discussion for gameplay vs storyline choice, what counts as a choice for a storyline based on how it branches, etc.). But I feel like it should be self evident that even a linear themepark FPS attempts to provide challenge and some sort of gameplay/mechanical based interaction beyond just moving forward to see the next Michael Bay Explosion.
It seems as if you are saying that certain things are not "real" gameplay or "real" challenge because you dislike them, which is a complaint that is lobbied at many of the people who claim Gone Home isn't a "real" game on the basis of little more than dislike.
This really got me thinking... is a jigsaw puzzle a game? There is only one proper end state. A failure state is not placing all the pieces into their proper spot, but the correct location is already determined. Having a 2 and 5 year old, I can say that Candyland does have a failure state: not completing the game because something kept a participant from completing the course.
Now I know some people race to complete the same jigsaw puzzle, I am just referring to one or more people completing a single jigsaw puzzle, not keeping track of who places most pieces or the last piece.
For what its worth, I say a puzzle is a game, but I am still struggling to come up with a good definition since I can't come up with something that makes consuming media (reading a standard book, watching tv/movie) not allowed by the definition, but still allows for the edge-case protogames like Candyland to be included.
How does this definition preclude Gone Home, then? It has gated progression in which you have to locate keys, sometimes based on clues, to unlock subsequent areas of the house, and has smaller puzzles contained within, like figuring out the code to the safe.
So, just to be explicit, that includes bad endings all the way at the end of the game, e.g. you made the wrong choices and you got past the boss but found out you didn't have the right gizmodads, everyone on the planet dies? Even if those are the only fail states, so there's no gameplay death?
Also, in terms of gameplay, does this still count if there's no life/continue mechanic? Say you have infinite lives, but you can still fall down a pit and start again at the beginning of the obstacle course. If so, what is the difference between falling down that pit and just landing at the bottom of the room, having to return to the last point you can access to try the jump again?
Potentially, but I'm getting the impression that you're trying to trap me into admitting something rather than having a discussion with me.
I really like stuff like Magical Diary and Long Live the Queen, though I'm not really sure I'd call LLtQ a "game" so much as a "crazy detailed choose your own adventure". MD had some elements where player failure could occur, which bumps it out of CYOA and more into game territory for me.
Long Live the Queen is the same deal. You slowly learn more about your kingdom and which skills are needed to overcome events with each playthrough, making it akin to a text-based nonrandom roguelike than anything.
I'm not trying to trap you into anything, I'm simply trying to test "failure state" as a condition for a game, which first means establishing what a failure state is. Is dying to a pit and having to restart the platforming sequence a failure state even with infinite lives? Is being unable to die, but falling off the platform and having to restart the platforming sequence from the lower position you fell to a failure state? Is a game you can't fail at at any point of gameplay but nonetheless has a failure (or "not good") ending based on your choices a failure state?
I'll lay my thoughts out so you can see I'm not trying to trick you. In the case of the platformer, it seems irrelevant whether or not you actually die so long as you can continue from a recent saved point. Either way you're forced to repeat the section to completion, but that makes failure state a pretty broad condition based at minimum on perseverance. For the second case, a game you can't fail at outside the ending—say, a super narrative mode for Mass Effect where you cannot die—it seems absurd to base whether or not it is a game on the finale, such that watching two people play the first hour of two versions of the game side-by-side, one with a variable ending and one without, you would be unable to declare either of them a game based on merely watching gameplay. You can even strip out all the conversation options and equipment/power frills—using an invincibility cheat in Doom does not abruptly turn it into a not-game, does it?
The difference between "no" and "limited" is large enough to drive a fleet of metaphorical tanks through.
I can only think of a handful of interactive works presented as "games" that I felt had zero challenge, gameplay, or ability for the player to influence the narrative. Gone Home is very much not one of them.
The thing is that the average linear FPS game can be just as "limited" in terms of challenge, gameplay, and mechanics as a game like Gone Home is, it's just that the limitations of said average FPS game are accepted as being valid "game" limitations.
Except I'm not saying that the gameplay mechanics or challenges provide by even the most linear first-person shooter aren't "real", I'm pointing out that the same folks who claim Gone Home isn't a "real" game due to the type of challenge and interactivity it offers the player never use the "it's not a real game" criticism when it comes to other games who offer a different, yet equally limited form of challenge and interactivity to the player.
I'd also say it should be self-evident that a game like Gone Home attempts to provide challenge and some sort of gameplay-based interaction beyond just linear forward progression, but apparently that's not the case.
Edit: to be clear, remember the three things I stated were a rather arbitrary list of things that may make a game/not game a better candidate for game of the year, not a definition of a game. A central tenant of what I said is that plenty of games are obviously not the type to be deserving of a broad appeal video game award (like, say, Go) and that it's clear that Gone Home is polarized on this.
My first question would be why, exactly, would first-person shooters be the only metric for deciding if Gone Home is a "real" game or not?
Even though Gone Home plays out from a first-person perspective, the gameplay is much closer to a point-and-click adventure game, not Call Of Duty. "Explore this environment at your own pace without any guidance, discover hidden objects and solve puzzles, unlock more of the environment and construct multiple narratives from found objects and texts" still doesn't strike me as more "limited" than "Shoot a bunch of dudes and unlock a cutscene, then shoot a bunch more dudes".
(Edit: And to re-iterate, I don't think one option is better than the other, as I enjoy big, dumb, linear shooter games like Bulletstorm, too.)
It does seem that a lot of the criticism of Gone Home boils down to it not hewing to the presumptions most folks have about first-person perspective games (i.e. it's not a shooter, nor a horror game like Amnesia), which is fine, but that's a really shaky foundation to lay claims of "it's not a real game" on.
Considering that Gone Home received a substantial number of votes in the G&T GOTY poll, I'm not sure why specifically it's obviously not deserving of a "broad appeal video game award". I'm also very hesitant about the idea that games that are polarizing, controversial, or unpopular should not be considered for critical acclaim.
There also isn't really anything to be gained by saying Gone Home and Depression Quest aren't video games. Is there some kind of fear that the definition of "video game" will be so diluted that...I don't even know? I'm not sure what horrible fate awaits video games if we include twine under that umbrella. Based on the thread that spawned this discussion, it seems more like people just annoyed that their pet game didn't get the top spot in a Best Of list.
I have no idea what you mean by this.
"Broad appeal" doesn't need to be presupposed since the voting process answers that question for us, and in terms of the most expansive definitions it's absurd to fret that pottery might steal the 2014 title from <$10 million videogame du jour>.
What I mean is that there are many things that are clearly games that won't win Goty, even being excellent (e.g. Go). Since people are mad about GotY, I think "what type of game should get goty" is a lot more interesting and more the heart of the matter than a semantic debate. Edit: Specifically, critic/publication awards, not mass participation ones.
Random aside, my friends actually have a game with just an apple...
I don't have a horse in this race. Twines aren't for me, but I honestly don't give a hoot what they are called.
However, I'm curious.
You keep asking why people want to define them as not games. Why do you want to define them as games so badly?
If you mean a digital version of Go released on iOS or Android or similar, then there's no reason it shouldn't win game of the year in its eligible year if enough people think it was better than any other title and it doesn't fall under the "no ports" limitation.
You say you're not concerned with arguing what constitutes a game but whether something deserves a "broad-appeal award," but I'm telling you I honestly can't figure out what you're talking about. Whether it "deserves" the award is determined by whether it appeals broadly enough to win the vote. The only other question is whether it should be included on the list at all, which is to say whether it constitutes a game or not (which for the purposes of our resident poll refers to videogames, broader philosophical examples herein aside), which I think is what you seem to be arguing about on the basis of things like challenge and mechanics, which is exactly what Lawndart is replying to.
It's not like we're in any danger of the poll becoming: rank your favorite things: (A) Juggling (B) Sex (C) Chocolate (D) Hugging your child (E) Bioshock
If you want a better example, take any board game released this year. It's not gonna win GotY, but it's a game. My entire point is that "Game of the Year," does not, in fact, encompass all games, and that clearly people have some issues with critics/publications (again: I don't care about public opinion polls) choosing certain games. The far more interesting discussion is why certain game/notgames are considered by some to be unfit for consideration as "game of the year," which I personally see the "it's not a game" argument as a sub/side argument.
The "challenge and mechanics" part was, as I said, a throwaway. Many critically well received games talk about the three things listed, among others, as being positive points. I was simply saying that, judging by what I've seen of this argument, a lot of it boiled down to talking about those things, and whether or not a game/notgame "deserved" to be game of the year if it was considered to be limited in those aspects. That had absolutely nothing to do with whether or not it is a game or not, which, as I've said, is something I don't care about because all semantic debates are awful, much like the ensuing "I don't think it's limited" or "X game is limited as well" heap-paradox type argument is awful and boring.
As for "broad appeal" award: That was in response to somebody saying that experimental games like that should be up there in the overall awards until there were enough games to subcategorize them. I responded saying that an alternative was to put games that do not fit in a major category into an experimental (or alternatively, misc.) category. For critical/publication awards, a lot of it is about reinforcement and not bringing up totally new things. The Golden Globes aren't going to award a random cult hit movie of the year. The Grammy's aren't going to nominate an avante-garde experimental album for album of the year. Likewise, it's clear by the discussion many are having, at least some people don't think that a critical darling with *very* polarizing audience reviews should get picked as game of the year by critics/publications. Why that is? I dunno. Do I care about the end result? Not that much. I just think the crux of the issue is far more focused on people who don't think it should get GotY from critics for whatever reason ("not a game", very polarizing audience reviews, not particularly well selling, etc.), and I think that is a far more interesting discussion, if only because it's more multifaceted and isn't an argument over the definition of a word that winds up containing multiple sub-arguments about the definition of other words or terms.