Sunday Symposium: What Is A Game?

[Dog Pants]

Yeah, I know it's Monday. Back to a game related question this week, brought to us by Berk but rephrased from me so as to not start with something like "Why do fucking retards...?". What constitutes a game? Once upon a time a videogame was a videogame. You jump on a mushroom, headbutt a box, go down a pipe and rescue a princess from a crocoturtle. Simple. These days though we have other things. Less interactive maybe, or not particularly challenging.

Gone Home is one which I've played myself (I use the word 'played' for simplicity's sake). You wander around an empty house, looking at things, sometimes picking things up, and wondering where everyone is. Eventually you find out, but not before you've had lots of snippets of information about what's happened to your family since you left a year ago. Some of the details are blatant, some are incidental and can be inferred. It isn't difficult. In fact, to say it isn't difficult implies that there's a difficulty level and there isn't. There are no puzzles to speak of, you just, for want of a better word, experience it.

Is that a game? Some people call it a 'walking simulator,' but is that fair or accurate? Add an instakill monster to that and you have Penumbra, so is it the challenge that makes a game? What about those room puzzle games? They're challenging but barely interactive. What about simulators? They're games when we play them but what about when a pilot is in a training simulator. Is that a game?

What do you bummers think?

[Dr. kitteny berk]

brought to us by Berk but rephrased from me so as to not start with something like "Why do fucking retards...?". ?

That wasn't quite how I phrased it. I'm pretty sure there were 2 fuckings.

[Mr. Johnson]

It's a pretty though question since there are no two ways of looking at it but the dictionary describes a video game as "any of various interactive games played using a specialized electronic gaming device or a computer or mobile device and a television or other display screen, along with a means to control graphic images" so anything you experience in a virtual environment, even if it's one where you do nothing but look at and listen to things like Dear Esther or Gone Home is a video game in my book because it's in a digitally created environment. Whether it's a game proper is different question for which I do not have a ready answer.

[Shada]

I'm not too concerned with what is or isn't a game. Much like what is or isn't an "art game", it's simply what the creators call it. They put out something they called a game, on a gaming platform, and people played it, so surely it's a game.

Although, I do think there's something to the challenge thing. Even really easy games, like games where you just have to move forward and not walk into a block, can be called a game - but if you remove the block so all you have to do is walk forward until you hit the end, surely that's not a game? That's just some visual piece of turd that has you holding W until you don't have to hold W anymore.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

But If you don't press W, you can choose not to walk, which just makes it a really shitty game. brb greenlight submission.

[Shada]

call it DON'T WALK. the entire game is a street crossing, the little green man appears to indicate you can walk... but do you? the choice is yours. IGN rates it 9.5/10 etc

[Dr. kitteny berk]

You could legitimately kickstarter that, get £5000, play some proto-indie-jazz in the background and make a killing.

[Dog Pants]

Is that not basically the same principle as The Stanley Parable?

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Nah, completely different, I'm actually offended that you'd compare DON'T WALK to the stanley parable, it's completely different. I mean. DOORS? what the fuck sort of metaphor are they trying to paint with such clumsy strokes. People should demand more from a digital existentialist experience.

[Joose]

I think the obvious problem with the question here is that you are trying to apply a binary description (Is it a game or not) to something that isn't binary. Some things are clearly games (CoD), some things are slightly less clearly games (Minecraft Creative mode), some things are arguably not games but could be described as games (Gone Home) and other things that are totally not games (a film at the cinema). Its a sliding scale of gameyness, not a yes/no question.

As such, I regard any argument about whether something is or isnt a game in the same way I regard statements like "but is it art?" Its a fucking stupid question that ultimately doesn't really matter in any meaningful way to anything.

[buzzmong]

I've played DON'T WALK and it is a masterpiece. It just resonates with me, it makes me confront my crippling lack of self confidence and my overwhelming indecisiveness in a safe graphical medium. The question is not "To be, or not to be", but rather "To Walk, or not to Walk". A metaphor for life. 4.2/5.

To me, a game is normally codified by the existance of win or loss states and the mechanics around them, with the explicit aim of reaching the former while avoiding the latter. This perhaps differs from a gaming experience, which puts its focus on what happens between the states, or on the mechanics themselves. It can be a fine line though.

Perhaps it's more of an emphasis away from how the player affects the game towards how the game (and its mechanics) affect the player that makes the difference between a game and an experience.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Right, we have the name, a shitty promo and reviews, now all we need is a game.

[Dog Pants]

Its a fucking stupid question

Are you trying to make up for agreeing with Berk too many times? Are Games Art was going to be next week.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Sadly, I kinda agree, a game is easily definable, but it's rather variable how gamey it is in the medium between say, DON'T WALK. and Call of Warfare - Space Pangya.

[Joose]

To me, a game is normally codified by the existance of win or loss states and the mechanics around them

By this definition, The Sims is not a game. Even the death of a sim isnt a "loss state" as the game itself continues around it (indeed, depending on what version of the Sims you are running, it might not even mean the end of that sims story). Similarly, there is no "win state", as every sim inevitably dies regardless of what their life was like.

Also by this definition, Minecraft is not a game. Even in survival mode death is not a loss. At worst it is an inconvenience. There are no "win states" at all. Creative mode is certainly not a game.

EVE is not a game. Although you can lose individual fights, you could play the game indefinitely without actually getting involved in any fights. There are no win states outside of individual fights either.

Bejewelled 2 in Endless mode is not a game, because you can neither win nor lose.

I think your reasoning may be flawed.

[buzzmong]

Probably, but that was a reason I wrote that

If it's not the presence of win/loss states then it is the mechanics that make it a game? Is that the seperation between something like Minecraft/Sims/etc and a walking simulator?

[shot2bits]

For me its the interactivity that makes a game plain and simple, if the recent telltale games didn't have any interaction they would just be movies or TV programs. This line is blurred mostly with simulation games as you can have no interaction with it and for the most part they will do there own thing and you can just watch, and for the person viewing it would be like watching a film made without a script with the actors just going about there day. That is a very loose analogy and Ive been at work for 14 hours today so sorry if that doesn't make sense.

[FatherJack]

I've called Telltale's games interactive stories (with game elements) before, but I'd still say that I "play" them. When I was pretty young, in the arcades they had this game where you had a steering wheel and basically watched a through-windscreen video (actually a film projection) of a car driving down a road. Various thing would jump out in front of you and if you didn't jerk the wheel in the "correct" direction to avoid them, it was game over. That was only just a game, but young as I was I was amazed by it since it was so much better graphically than other games of the time. Dragon's Lair, some years later raised similar concerns.

I guess you could say that it has to be for entertainment purposes, to exclude flight-simulator training, or the military flying a drone - even though the software can be virtually identical. If you're training or working, it's not supposed to be playing, but that doesn't stop it being enjoyable.

What about a BluRay disc, which has a single interactive option to change the ending of a film? Perhaps the interactivity should outweigh the cinematic - but if that's true then the first few hours of some games like Metal Gear Solid and assorted JRPGs would struggle to count as games. Also, other games might allow you move freely through the world, but not directly influence it, just experience it.

I guess that's the difference for me. I like to be the hero and make a difference in games, but actually the games I play the most and spend the longest in are the ones which are interesting to explore. You can move around, look where you want, and just be in the world in the game universe for as long as you want. You can't do that in a film, even your Groundhog Day/Run Lola Run type films where they explore every iteration and possibility - they run out of time eventually.

Games are more than videogames though, and as a general rule I contrive to make every single thing I do in life into a game. It's more fun that way.

[Joose]

If it's not the presence of win/loss states then it is the mechanics that make it a game? Is that the seperation between something like Minecraft/Sims/etc and a walking simulator?

I think you might be missing my point here: There is no separation. The reason its hard to clearly delineate between game and not game is because its not physically possible to do. win/loss states makes a thing *more* gamey, and the more interactive a thing is the more gamey it can seem, but there is no way of saying "without X it is not a game" because there is no one thing, and gameyness is a gradual scale.

Its like flavouring in food. A pile of salt is definitely salty. Pure water is definitely not salty. If you add salt to the water slowly, it will gradually become more and more salty tasting. There isnt a clear point on that scale where you can say "Right, there is now enough salt in this water to say that it is salty water", because absolutely everybody who tries it will disagree. Hell, if you got the same person to try it on two separate occasions they would probably mark the Salty point at two different amounts of salt.

Its the same with games. Some things are definitely not games because they include no game like components. Some things are definitely games because they include shitloads of game like components. But lots of things contain just a few game like components, and arguing over whether they are games or not is like arguing over at what point the water has become noticeably salty.

I think the more interesting question is "Why do we care if something is a game or not?" Why do people think it matters? Even if we could all agree on some kind of requirement list that would separate games from not games, what would that help us do? Would I have enjoyed Gone Home any more or less if I knew whether it was officially a game or not? The only possible advantage I can think of for that is so that people can sneer at something and dismiss it is "not really a game". Doesn't seem a particularly positive achievement to work towards to me.

[Dog Pants]

I think the more interesting question is "Why do we care if something is a game or not?" Why do people think it matters? Even if we could all agree on some kind of requirement list that would separate games from not games, what would that help us do? Would I have enjoyed Gone Home any more or less if I knew whether it was officially a game or not? The only possible advantage I can think of for that is so that people can sneer at something and dismiss it is "not really a game". Doesn't seem a particularly positive achievement to work towards to me.

I wanted to reply to this two days ago but I've been limited to my phone because of dodgy intercocks and it's a right fucking faff trying to delete large amounts of text from comments.

Anyway. This is the conclusion I came to while pondering in posting the question. Nobody ever accused a game they liked of not being a game, they only ever used the question as a veiled accusation to insinuate that the object of their dislike wasn't worthy of the attentions of gaming blogs.