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The nature of games
TerminusReborn
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The idea of “games†covers a vast variety of activities. What do you think of when I mention that word? Is it a baseball diamond, a single game containing 2 or 3 minutes of the most intense physical and competitive activity imaginable, punctuated by hours of boringness? A football field, where armored figures arrange themselves in lines and then charge each other in an adult version of “Red Rover?†Some people might think of dimly lit billiards halls, or of poker and blackjack in the dimly lit backrooms of bars and clubs. Others might think of the brightly colored neon signs of the Vegas Strip or of slot machines and the lottery—games of chance where people play to lose. Perhaps you think of Monopoly, the real-estate game of commerce, mortgages, and construction, or of Chess, the ancient game of strategy.
Maybe you think of Halo, where college students cluster around a big-screen television, screaming obscenities as their armored avatars run around with a variety of deadly weapons, or perhaps you are reminded of Mario Bros. and Kong, those side-scrolling Nintendo classics. If you’re like me, the first thing that comes to mind might be the thrill of joy emergent from the collision of platonic solids with a table’s polished surface after the dungeon master’s fated command, “roll for initiative.â€
These games have rules—when to run, duck, hide, punt, or toss a ball, when to bet and when to fold, when to toss the dice or execute an enlightened sneak attack—and these games have goals—amass more points than the other team, checkmate your partner, kill their avatars more times than they kill yours, accumulate experience and items. These are highly organized activities: people meet at a certain time and place with certain equipment—uniforms, baseball bats and football helmets, a deck of cards or a bag of dice, beer, pizza, and game controllers. They often require high levels of skill and commitment: hours of practice on the field or in front of the screen, time immemorial spent interpreting and imitating the verbal and non-verbal cues of gambling opponents, the memorization of massive tomes of rules, skills, spells, and abilities. Games have a player pitted against some sort of cunning opposition. In Solitaire, that opposition might be random chance, while in Sudoku it will be a carefully constructed number puzzle solvable solely by logic.
Up to this point, we won’t have disagreed. These are common examples of games from a variety of disciplines, enjoyed by a potpourri of people ranging across age and social strata. I argue that other activities may also deserve the title of game, especially activities not usually considered as such. What about Facebook or MySpace, social networking applications where players create detailed facades in order to court the acceptance of as many friends as possible or to establish their status as “hip,†“geeky,†or simply “well-connected?†Do these deserve to be called games? I think they do—they have rules and goals, even if these rules and goals vary from user to user. They require skill, even if that skill is as simple as the knowledge of how to create a profile that will accomplish the player’s goals, and they pit users against opposition, although this opposition might be the apathy of the masses or might be the judgment criteria of the peer group a player wants to enter.
I’m not saying that everyone “plays†these games, mostly because some people would vehemently disagree that their time spent on Facebook, MySpace, LiveJournal, or their own private—and widely fascinating—blog is time spent playing games. But I am.
I suspect gaming is a far more pervasive phenomenon than the one seen merely in the first two paragraphs, and that a vast majority of the things we people do could be perceived as “games,†and I would love to find out if a single, generalized definition exists that could summarize all of these activities.
What do you think?
Maybe you think of Halo, where college students cluster around a big-screen television, screaming obscenities as their armored avatars run around with a variety of deadly weapons, or perhaps you are reminded of Mario Bros. and Kong, those side-scrolling Nintendo classics. If you’re like me, the first thing that comes to mind might be the thrill of joy emergent from the collision of platonic solids with a table’s polished surface after the dungeon master’s fated command, “roll for initiative.â€
These games have rules—when to run, duck, hide, punt, or toss a ball, when to bet and when to fold, when to toss the dice or execute an enlightened sneak attack—and these games have goals—amass more points than the other team, checkmate your partner, kill their avatars more times than they kill yours, accumulate experience and items. These are highly organized activities: people meet at a certain time and place with certain equipment—uniforms, baseball bats and football helmets, a deck of cards or a bag of dice, beer, pizza, and game controllers. They often require high levels of skill and commitment: hours of practice on the field or in front of the screen, time immemorial spent interpreting and imitating the verbal and non-verbal cues of gambling opponents, the memorization of massive tomes of rules, skills, spells, and abilities. Games have a player pitted against some sort of cunning opposition. In Solitaire, that opposition might be random chance, while in Sudoku it will be a carefully constructed number puzzle solvable solely by logic.
Up to this point, we won’t have disagreed. These are common examples of games from a variety of disciplines, enjoyed by a potpourri of people ranging across age and social strata. I argue that other activities may also deserve the title of game, especially activities not usually considered as such. What about Facebook or MySpace, social networking applications where players create detailed facades in order to court the acceptance of as many friends as possible or to establish their status as “hip,†“geeky,†or simply “well-connected?†Do these deserve to be called games? I think they do—they have rules and goals, even if these rules and goals vary from user to user. They require skill, even if that skill is as simple as the knowledge of how to create a profile that will accomplish the player’s goals, and they pit users against opposition, although this opposition might be the apathy of the masses or might be the judgment criteria of the peer group a player wants to enter.
I’m not saying that everyone “plays†these games, mostly because some people would vehemently disagree that their time spent on Facebook, MySpace, LiveJournal, or their own private—and widely fascinating—blog is time spent playing games. But I am.
I suspect gaming is a far more pervasive phenomenon than the one seen merely in the first two paragraphs, and that a vast majority of the things we people do could be perceived as “games,†and I would love to find out if a single, generalized definition exists that could summarize all of these activities.
What do you think?
TerminusReborn on
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Is social engineering a game? Is social interaction a game? That's basically what you're asking. And I would say that only people who see others as means rather than ends would answer "yes" to either question.
edit: Social interaction is a very complex system which we can manuever in and manipulate but that doesn't make it a game.
When I think game I immediately think D&D.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
I think most people present themselves honestly (to varying degrees), and for them it is not a game.
For some people, LIFE is a game, though. For the guys who need to be able to go to bed with any girl they set their minds on, social interaction is a game -- one they "win" every time they take a girl to bed. For the girls who need to have every man in the room fall all over them, it's a game.
but that doesn't mean that every medium for social interaction is a game
I'm reminded of highschool interactions--a flame war might break out on MySpace or LiveJournal with astounding vitriol (as every forum user has seen happen), but doesn't carry over at all to interactions in the outside world. That sort of interaction seems to me to be a game, thoroughly divorced from reality. Problems came when outside observers saw this vitriolic and distinctly non-professional behavior in a context that they could not distinguish from reality. In this sort of situation, LJ flame wars might have teeth in the real world.
What do you think?
I don't see how they would qualify as games without a competitive element.
I don't consider sandbox modes in The Sims or SimCity to be games.
See, I don't think that there has to be a score, or a competitive aspect to something in order for it to be a game. I understand where you are coming from, though.
I think a game could just be something that you enjoy. Sometimes there is an objective, but other times you play for the enjoyment that you get out of playing. I think that the most relevant parallel I can draw for this message board is Garry's Mod. Which has no objective, no score, nothing. Yet, it is extremely popular because it is just a huge sandbox. You can make movies, make music, make replica models of a Star Destroyer - basically whatever the hell you want to do. I see that as a good example of playing because you enjoy playing.
Why can't it be a self defined goal?
Most simple games that are not bound by the pre set parameters of software have improvised rules so if your goal is to one up Dubie32 on Myspace then yes, that is a game.
So all actions or pursuits related to enjoyment or increasing personal happiness are games?
Is music itself a game then? Is art? Is writing? Is reading?
I think your definition is far too broad. I'm not saying that Garry's Mod cannot be considered a game, but I think there are more criteria than what you've stated.
I didn't say that all pleasurable action is a game. I said that a game doesn't have to have an objective.
The word "game" doesn't have to have an objective. The word game in the sense of a "contest" and not "passtime" most certainly should, or it's simply against it definition.
Oh I missed that you were responding to what BubbaT said about sandbox games, and I agree that those are games.
If you're not competing against something, then what separates a game from a puzzle?
Solitaire and putting together a jigsaw puzzle are both done in pursuit of a goal according to a set of rules. The difference is in Solitaire you're competing against the deck and/or clock, while putting together a puzzle you compete against nothing.
Now if you were introduce a competitive element - finish the puzzle in 10 minutes, finish before someone else, etc - then you have a game. But without that element there is only a puzzle, which can be part of a game but is not a game in and of itself. In a game like Tetris puzzling is the major gameplay element, but not the whole game. Competition is still there, as you compete against the rate of falling pieces. If you cannot outpace the falling pieces, they reach the top and you lose. Compare that to a pure puzzle, which has no competitive element. You can never "lose" at a jigsaw puzzle.
Similarly, I agree that sandbox modes taken alone can be used for play and can be major game elements, but they don't comprise a game in and of themselves. I would equate Garry's Mod to a toy more than a game. Toys are enjoyable and you can play with them, but simply playing with them does not equal a game absent the factors of a goal and competition.
The sandbox modes of The Sims and SimCity, where you are also free to play around and do whatever you want, would fall into the same category as Garry's Mod - no goals or competitive element.
The normal modes of both games would qualify as games, as they possess both goals and competition. That doesn't mean you can't ignore the suggested goals and pursue your own, but in that case you're just substituting one type of goal for another.
Also, I should retract my questioning of the OP's example, because it clearly specifies the competitive aspect of profile faking.
So profile faking, done with the self-defined parameters of competition as described in the OP, would fit under what I consider to be a game.
It can be a self-defined goal. The manner of competition can also be self-defined. To borrow from Principal Skinner, seeing how many times you can dribble a basketball in an hour is a game, as is trying to beat that record. But just dribbling a basketball by itself is not. The dribbling is a game element, but not the game itself.
We can broaden the definition of "game" to include anything we want it to include, but what do we gain from doing so?
Ok, then what are we using as the definition of game?
[SIZE=-1]a contest with rules to determine a winner? - check
[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]an amusement or pastime? - check
[/SIZE][SIZE=-1]A game is a structured or semi-structured , usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes also used as an educational tool. (The term "game" is also used to describe simulation of various activities e.g., for the purposes of training, analysis or prediction, etc.? - check
Life just seems to fit into the vast majority of definitions of a game that i've seen.
[/SIZE]
In turn, can someone be playing a game without realizing that they are playing a game? If so, what makes it a game?
Fine: it depends. Are you using the technical term, found in Game Theory, or the more colloquial term, found in everyday English?
Problem solved.
yet, when asked, if offered two examples, even though they might be able to fit the definition, people may distinguish them as not games.
I wouldn't say that a social interaction is a game, even though it may fit the definition.
World of Warcraft on the other hand, IS a game, but it fits the definition as well as a given social interaction does.
So how do we instinctively know, or are instinctively able to differentiate?
If your aim in social interaction is to "win" somehow, then you are a gigantic failure, in my eyes, as a person. If you think of social interaction in terms of a game in the colloquial sense (which I think most people are really using here), I would say you're pretty antisocial because the point of socialization isn't to be the best, or win, or dominate, or anything else that's associated with what we've colloquially come to understand a "game" to be. There are many people who treat other humans as pawns or obstacles and these people are pretty awful.
well hell, lets have a shot at a definition. A game must at minimum conform to three out of four of the following:
a) requires physical action, strenuous or not
b) contains repetitive behaviours, due to neccessity or external rules
c) enjoyable
d) unpaid or paid-for
and people have always played games, they're one of the myriad ways we stop ourselves going nuts. Its only the nature of them changing that makes it look all new and fancy.