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[Kala]

So there's a few things that have come up tangentially that I'd like to discuss in more depth - as well as ideas that have been rattling around my brain.  Hopefully avoiding anything too contentious or stepping upon the conversational landmine that is gamergate Can't really see the need to discuss gender, either. (though, y'know, say whatever you want to say if you think it's relevant)

(warning: I'm likely to get very nostalgic for the games of yesteryear) The main question:

What is a game?

I think this has come up in the game journalism thread (in relation to Gone Home not being a real game and/or an example of corruption in the gaming press) and the depression quest thread (ending up with the same reasons) - and it's definitely come up elsewhere with 'casual' games not being 'real' games compared to 'hardcore' games. 

So, as people who play them, how do we define them?

There's been some definitions offered so far in those threads; I think Lynn suggested something that had a win or lose state? I'll try and dig them up and copy pasta them below to springboard from. I know some of you work in the industry so definitely interested in the viewpoints of those who make them (as well as those who play them).

There are some tangentially related questions - is there a disparity between what games are and what they could be? How have they changed - how have our expectations changed? (we'll stay away from the 'who are they for' question if poss, as that ends up being controversial)


Some thoughts and definitions:

I'd have to go with TotalBiscuit's definition in that it needs to have a success and failure state. A way to win or lose, not simply completion. Everything else around it is up for grabs, within story-telling, mechanics, visuals and so forth. If you're just tapping away from point A through the alphabet to Z without the possibility to fail it's really not anything more than say a book with pretty pictures.

According to definition of a game, Dear Esther doesn't share the core of what a game is : something at which you can either win, or lose. Thus, it falls into the interactive media category I think.

I don't think that 'something at which you can either win, or lose' is by any stretch a good definition of 'game'. You can win or loose a knife- or gun-fight or even a war. These are no games, though. Interestingly enough Wittgenstein showed that there probably is no definitional 'core' to what it means to be a game.

I'm not sure how I would define it personally, other than I would want a definition as broad and all-encompassing as possible.

Even 'something you play' doesn't necessarily seem broad enough, as there are many games that seem like chores, that you continue engaging with because there's 'one more thing to do' rather than it being necessarily 'play' (MMO grind, I look at you).

Re: Depression Quest, simulation might be a better fit than game.  It's like a depression simulator.  But then, we have many simulators, flying, transport planning etc that are still considered games.  Why not have a simulation of a mental illness and the difficulties that poses?

It has some pictures and music, but there aren't really graphics to speak of.  But then again, MUDS don't have any graphics, either.

Sometimes maybe playing games, in the simplest sense, of amusement/pastime or "a competitive activity involving skill, chance, or endurance on the part of two or more persons who play according to a set of rules" doesn't seem to encompass my experience of video games.  But 'exploring and interacting with virtual worlds and spaces' sounds a wee bit more pretentious than 'playing a game.' (as 'virtual world explorer' is more wordy than 'gamer') I think it might be closer to what I'm actually doing most of the time, though.

(Obviously mine needs work, as I basically said 'I'm not sure' and then ruminated  )

[Havohej]

Pixels.

(Couldn't resist.  I have nothing of value to offer as it's 5am and I'm just not wearing my srs thnk hat).

[Elmund Egivand]

A game is an interactive media where you come up with creative ways to inconvenience the antagonist. It is also something you can upload on Youtube to show off your creative ways of inconveniencing the antagonist. In the absence of an antagonist, it must allow you to create an antagonist of your own for your inconveniencing need. Also, the antagonist must attempt to inconvenience you with the same gusto as you in inconveniencing it. Both antagonist and yourself must be able to inconvenience each other until one of you falls over and breaks a leg as a result of the inconveniencing, resulting in defeat.

[Mizhara]

I'm the one who mentioned the implied failure state and I still stand by that. It's not unique to gaming, by any measure, but it is a vital component of a game or it's just not a game anymore. You couldn't fail at Dear Esther. At best you could stop playing and not finish it. You play a game and you can succeed or you can fail. If the only possible outcomes are completion or just not finishing it, then there's no game.

Visual novels aren't games, they're just electronic versions of a "novel" with some pictures. Dear Esther (to repeat the example) is pretty much the same except the pictures are a lot fancier and you can navigate them in 3D, with far less words involved. All this said, I loved Dear Esther. It was a great experience. I bought copies for friends just to get them to experience what I did. But I wasn't playing a game. I was "playing" a book with pretty graphics. A weird artsy fartsy movie I could navigate myself.

The thing is, I don't feel it's even remotely useful to push everything that's interactive in any way into the "games" definition. It makes the term useless, because you have no bloody idea what it's actually referring to. "Oh this is a "game". So. Do I get to do anything? Can I play this or am I just supposed to stare at a fucking mountain in space for hours on end?" It's better to have different terms for these things, because it doesn't make them any less worthwhile for those who enjoy them (like I loved Dear Esther) but it does make it much easier to differentiate between them. If I want a game, I want a game. If I want an interactive landscape, or an interactive story told, I'll look for those. It helps no one to call them all games.

You wouldn't call a movie a game if you had to hold W down to play it, or it just paused. Dear Esther (which I know I keep harping on about, but it's such a great example of these non-game games) is damn near exactly that.

I have yet to see any "required" features of a product fit gaming more than implied/direct failure states. It applies to every card game, board game, computer game etc etc that I would ever consider to be such and it's missing from every interactive media I would not call a game so TB hit the nail on the head with that one as far as I'm concerned.

[Elmund Egivand]

So. Do I get to do anything? Can I play this or am I just supposed to stare at a fucking mountain in space for hours on end?"

So, do you agree that the space rocks should be able to crash into exhumers and break them in half?

[Kala]

I think there's a lot of overlap with comics here in some respects.  Comics fundamentally are the juxtaposition of text and image on a page.  The mechanics of that obviously don't dictate the content (more suggest what sorts of things will work better; e.g irony works great, as you can play with how the text and image contradict each other) - but there is this association that they have to be stupid, less literary, for children.  The word 'comics' kind of harks back to the funny papers as an association.  So 'graphic novel' became a term to try and show this, but ends up sounding horribly forced and pretentious. Comics is more inclusive and less snooty as a term...but still has that association that it's simplistic.

I think games have a similar stigma to comics attached; playing games is something that children do, before they have to grow up and face the serious adult world. Then we stop playing and start doing. I remember there was that hoohah a few years back on Fox News, as an example, of someone complaining sex in games was like showing porn to children (despite the fact she freely admitted she hadn't played the game - was it Mass Effect?) and the dev very patiently explaining how it wasn't.  And the news people seemed genuinely shocked that games hadn't stayed in the 80s - that they weren't just pacman anymore; as if they turned away for five minutes and games had become this whole other thing.  Which is a bit surprising for an industry so huge. 

So, in a way, like comics I think games maybe isn't the right term, but 'virtual worlds' is as pretentious if not more so as 'graphic novel'; seems like trying too hard, or trying to ignore it's roots.

I wonder about games needing to have a win/lose state though - I can understand why; as in 'playing a game' much like chess  - there is a competitive element, a way of keeping score.  But then I wonder about MMOs - where it seems in the developers interests to prevent or prolong the idea of a win state, to keep the players interest in a continual loop (because to finish the game would be to lose interest and subscribers) - or games that have the ethos of 'the journey is the reward' where there is no real win state; or if there is, it doesn't seem like the key element (subjective). I'm thinking more sandbox than linear games, here.

But then again, the lose states in MMOs are there - you do die (with varying consequences).  Getting resurrected, then (or cloned) seems like the equivalent of an arcade machine 'Do you want to continue? yes/no? 10...9...'. I'm just not sure you win.  Or, perhaps, you have the ability to define your own win states; or at the very least, your own goals.

Which is also true of sandbox games.  Certainly something entirely free-form like Minecraft - when you can get yourself and all your stuffs blown up (lose state), but you can't necessarily win - the point is just to make stuff.  Playing it is winning, the journey is the reward.   I think it's also true of the Elder Scrolls games to a degree - again, yes you can die, and you can win by completing the main quest (though it doesn't roll to credits) but essentially it's the same ethos - the journey is the reward.  (and honestly, sometimes the main quest seems sort of tacked on for completionists more than The Point, but as I said, subjective).

So I think there are games where you have a win state, but it's self-defined.  I also think, then, that perhaps you do have lose or win states; just that they are not overtly stated or have any...framework?

Back to Gone Home - Jim Sterling:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/jimquisition/9765-Its-Not-a-Video-Game

Where he talks about Gone Home (he doesn't actually seem to like it, "not something I would ever fall over myself to play again") and severely dislikes Dear Esther; but still thinks they should be termed video games.

He offers:

the modern definition of a video game is simply an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device; basically, you make it do things.  If your interaction is compelling it to act and unfold, it's a video game.

(Which ends up being a fairly impassioned rant for broad definitions).

Just look at those who defend the likes of Dear Esther by saying 'you just don't get it, man' - they have failure states apparently, not dying in game, but apparently 'failing to comprehend their brilliance', I for one am ok with that being a failure state, one I don't think I'll ever fucking beat.

And he said that to point to people evidently being pretentious and elitist...but...
It perhaps depends on what the game is doing - i.e the point of it?
I'll admit that sort of was my (inner) response to seeing someone say this about Gone Home:

The game she has promoted the most is Gone Home, a game you can barely call a game because everything but interacting with objects is taken away from it. And all in all, it's just about runaway lovers having a homosexual twist to it - nothing really original about that.

Because what was the 'objective'- if you like, to Gone Home? You are the eldest daughter, coming back to a new house after a gap year.  Your family are missing.  There's a note that sounds worrying from your younger sister.  It's pissing down with rain and the new house is creepy as shit.  Your objective is to find out what's going on, find out what's happened to your family - as that character.  I'd also suggest, as the player playing that character, a further objective might be to find out who you are and who they are.

Which is not overtly stated, really, at any point.  But I think if you came away from Gone Home thinking it was 'just about runaway lovers having a homosexual twist', then you didn't fulfil most of those objectives.  You played through the content, but you didn't really 'win' the game.  You kind of failed it. 

...And of course the same nebulous definitions of states not overtly stated could easily be applied to books (you failed Shakespeare because you didn't get it, man). But then again - these are fairly simple objectives; to find out stuff.  It's not heavy or weighty literary material to be snobby about understanding or not. You just need to establish what happened, and what drove your disparate family members to do whatever it is they've done that mean they are not here.

And if you don't...is it the games fault? (should it have held your hand more, stated it's objectives more clearly, made things more obvious?) is it your fault? (for 'not getting it' - which, really, is a bit silly as people like what they like and that's all fine) or is it more down to expectation...?  We expect certain things, so we proceed a certain way, whether they actually are or not?


(I'll carry on later on the point of changing expectations and how that may effect how we see games, as this is getting enormous  But there's some points I want to make about how my personal expectations have changed over time; things bother me now that I used to see as normal e.g trying to figure out how to leave a room, or background scenery combining with foreground or it being difficult to tell what's interactable with... and also how, I think, certain ideas go out of fashion or because we have better technology to produce alternatives, for example, hand crafting things instead of procedurally generating them, and the effects - some unintended - that has on titles in the past compared to current ones; e.g elder scrolls, e.g x-com)

[Mizhara]

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say. Let me just touch upon a few minor points though.

MMOs have implied failure states. You die. You fail at a task. You perform worse than your competitor/team-mate, whatever. You win when you attempt something and succeed. If you do better than someone else, etc etc. There are implied and direct failure/win states in games and in MMOs it's generally implied wins and direct failure states.

It also doesn't have to be the key element. It will very rarely be the key element in a game. Be it the story, the visuals, the crafting, the exploration, the precision platforming, the scorepoints, the stats going up once in a while, whatever... games usually have other elements we focus on as the key element we're enjoying, and in many cases you'll find two different people focusing on two different elements in the game as their own "key" element. However, if there is no implied or direct failure state involved, it still ceases to be a game. It's not key to the experience (like Dear Esther again is an example of. The experience is great.) but it's key to the definition.

I've never played Gone Home so can't comment on that, but I don't consider "not getting it" to be an implied failure state. That's just shit storytelling and a failure on the developer's part or the player. The failure state is not a part of the game as such. Again, Dear Esther did the same as a lot of people "didn't get it" but that's not a failure of the customer, and even if it were it wouldn't be a failure state of the game but of the player. You can "not get" a book but that doesn't make it a game. It makes it either a poorly written book or a dimwitted reader.

I don't quite see what you're trying to get at though.

[Kala]

Thanks for the replies so far, before I got out my, ahem, large one.  Apart from Hav, your one sucked    It's about 11am here, but I'm not well, so you get ALL MY THOUGHTS. 



PIXELS: NOT A GAME 

A game is an interactive media where you come up with creative ways to inconvenience the antagonist. It is also something you can upload on Youtube to show off your creative ways of inconveniencing the antagonist. In the absence of an antagonist, it must allow you to create an antagonist of your own for your inconveniencing need. Also, the antagonist must attempt to inconvenience you with the same gusto as you in inconveniencing it. Both antagonist and yourself must be able to inconvenience each other until one of you falls over and breaks a leg as a result of the inconveniencing, resulting in defeat.

Heh 
Re: being antagonised and inconvenienced, though, can the level or game world itself produce that, or do you require an npc?
And different game modes where you can't create an antagonist? (I'm thinking like, Minecraft on creation mode).  I think in MMOs the other players are always antagonists, even if they can't have any direct way of hurting you.  Pick up groups are almost entirely a massive pain the arse resulting in inconvenience and defeat 

I'm the one who mentioned the implied failure state and I still stand by that. It's not unique to gaming, by any measure, but it is a vital component of a game or it's just not a game anymore. You couldn't fail at Dear Esther. At best you could stop playing and not finish it. You play a game and you can succeed or you can fail. If the only possible outcomes are completion or just not finishing it, then there's no game.

You both did    I think I quoted you first in the OP, but I didn't put who the quotes were from in the quote heading as I'm...not very good at that >.>

The Jimquisition thing mentions Dear Esther (he hates it) but he also comments by that criteria Animal Crossing isn't a video game either (yet is normally considered one) as there's no way you can fail or die at it.

Visual novels aren't games, they're just electronic versions of a "novel" with some pictures. Dear Esther (to repeat the example) is pretty much the same except the pictures are a lot fancier and you can navigate them in 3D, with far less words involved. All this said, I loved Dear Esther. It was a great experience. I bought copies for friends just to get them to experience what I did. But I wasn't playing a game. I was "playing" a book with pretty graphics. A weird artsy fartsy movie I could navigate myself.

Hm.  Novels don't generally have pictures, though    Comics do, but not interactable, and films could produce 3D worlds, but again, not ones you navigate yourself.  I guess an electronic choose-your-own adventure picture book would be closest to some of them? (as I think someone said in the previous thread). But then again, while that covers some of the...choice making mechanisms, you still do not actually have the ability to physically explore the world you inhabit in those books.

(as you don't in a lot of things that could be termed electronic novels...like games made in twine where you're fundamentally selecting words on a background, but you do in Dear Esther)

Re: your last point - so aside from win or lose states, the 'playing' as an action is a criteria for being a game?  Also I think "A weird artsy fartsy movie I could navigate myself." sums it up really nicely, but I'm unsure of any other medium, besides games, where you could navigate yourself...?  Also, can games not be artsy fartsy?

The thing is, I don't feel it's even remotely useful to push everything that's interactive in any way into the "games" definition. It makes the term useless, because you have no bloody idea what it's actually referring to. "Oh this is a "game". So. Do I get to do anything? Can I play this or am I just supposed to stare at a fucking mountain in space for hours on end?" It's better to have different terms for these things, because it doesn't make them any less worthwhile for those who enjoy them (like I loved Dear Esther) but it does make it much easier to differentiate between them. If I want a game, I want a game. If I want an interactive landscape, or an interactive story told, I'll look for those. It helps no one to call them all games.

No, I do see what you're saying when you want clarity.  That's perfectly valid.  It's just the question then becomes, if they aren't games (and aren't comics, films, movies, books) then what are they?

And is it a question of pushing everything interactive into a games definition, or wanting to separate interactivity into a definition outside of games? Again, in the Jimquisition thing, he talks about how some of the makers of these...products? don't actually want to classify themselves as games, they want to hold themselves to some kind of higher standard.  To be something separate in order to be 'artsy fartsy'. Which very much reminds me of the 'comics' vs 'graphic novels' thing.

You wouldn't call a movie a game if you had to hold W down to play it, or it just paused. Dear Esther (which I know I keep harping on about, but it's such a great example of these non-game games) is damn near exactly that.

Is it?  I'll admit I've only seen it played, rather than played it myself.  But I'm pretty sure you direct where the character goes in Dear Esther, he is the avatar through which you explore your surroundings and decide the order in which you do things and what you interact with.  Which is more than holding down a button while a movie runs.

I actually suspect that might be a criteria for my definition of games... something where you have some form of agency in the world and it's surroundings that other mediums do not allow. An element which is not passive.

(It's also the key reason why Wan hated Final Fantasy - too many cut scenes you just click through, I think he certainly considered that...if not 'not a game' then not in the spirit with which he views games - or how games should be.  Though it's certainly how a certain type of game used to be - to quote someone else, "Remember when 'lots of FMV cutscenes' was a reason to buy a game? 'Skippable cutscenes' weren't a thing, because who in the world would want to skip, like, the best parts?" My FF7 case boasts 'over 120 minutes of mind-blowing cinematic sequences').

[Havohej]

I wish there was an application for "das raciss" here, but sadly there isn't.

However, I concede that pixels: not a game.  Pixels: srs bsns.

[Kala]

@ Miz again

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to say. Let me just touch upon a few minor points though.

No worries, neither am I a lot of the time.  That's why it tends to get a bit rambley.

MMOs have implied failure states. You die. You fail at a task. You perform worse than your competitor/team-mate, whatever. You win when you attempt something and succeed. If you do better than someone else, etc etc. There are implied and direct failure/win states in games and in MMOs it's generally implied wins and direct failure states.

Sure, but the key word you are using there is implied.  There are no overt game overs (though, as you say, and as I said, there are the equivalents).  Likewise, there is no overt completion of the game - you can win when you attempt things and succeed, but that seems to come in two flavours; direct goals such as quest completions (which are more overt) to complete, or goals you set yourself.

So to extend a bit from that - if the win/fail states can just be implied (and not directly stated) - how obvious or subtle do they need to be to qualify? Same sort of thing when you set the goals yourself (as in EVE - or well, before agent missions became a thing anyone cared about anyways). 

Which is a bit what I'm getting at with the 'not getting it' bit.  And yes, you're quite right in that 'not getting it' is either a failure of the developers (as your example, shit storytelling) or a failure of the player (as your example, dimwitted player) - but can you not have an implied but not stated win/lose criteria on a narrative basis? For example, the implied win objective to discover something - and if you reach the end of the content without discovering it as a player, it's an implied lose state.

...Which does have the elitist pitfall that there is only one correct way of seeing or doing something, mind.

[Kala]

...If I'm honest, not on a technical level or any kind of working definition that's useful, but I kind of see (some) games as akin to lucid dreaming.

By which I mean having direct control in an imaginary world that behaves as if it were real (by whichever internal logic, including dream logic).

I don't think anything else can really offer that, not that I can think of off-hand anyways.  And some games are more on-the-rails than others, obvs.  But you still direct things, can move freely within that space, etc?

But I'm aware that's a bit of an esoteric slant on things 

[Mizhara]

I'm the one who mentioned the implied failure state and I still stand by that. It's not unique to gaming, by any measure, but it is a vital component of a game or it's just not a game anymore. You couldn't fail at Dear Esther. At best you could stop playing and not finish it. You play a game and you can succeed or you can fail. If the only possible outcomes are completion or just not finishing it, then there's no game.

You both did    I think I quoted you first in the OP, but I didn't put who the quotes were from in the quote heading as I'm...not very good at that >.>

The Jimquisition thing mentions Dear Esther (he hates it) but he also comments by that criteria Animal Crossing isn't a video game either (yet is normally considered one) as there's no way you can fail or die at it.

You can't die, but you can certainly fail. You can aim for a goal (enough this to pay for that or get a particular fish or bug or whatever the hell) and not reach it. Don't get me wrong, it's a horrendously shitty game, but it's a game nonetheless.

Visual novels aren't games, they're just electronic versions of a "novel" with some pictures. Dear Esther (to repeat the example) is pretty much the same except the pictures are a lot fancier and you can navigate them in 3D, with far less words involved. All this said, I loved Dear Esther. It was a great experience. I bought copies for friends just to get them to experience what I did. But I wasn't playing a game. I was "playing" a book with pretty graphics. A weird artsy fartsy movie I could navigate myself.

Hm.  Novels don't generally have pictures, though    Comics do, but not interactable, and films could produce 3D worlds, but again, not ones you navigate yourself.  I guess an electronic choose-your-own adventure picture book would be closest to some of them? (as I think someone said in the previous thread). But then again, while that covers some of the...choice making mechanisms, you still do not actually have the ability to physically explore the world you inhabit in those books.

(as you don't in a lot of things that could be termed electronic novels...like games made in twine where you're fundamentally selecting words on a background, but you do in Dear Esther)

Well it is a "new" medium so we just have approximate comparisons. TV is just like radio, except with pictures! It's really nothing like radio, but it's what we have to compare it to. Same with virtual experiences and books, etc. I won't define Dear Esther as a book, but that doesn't mean it falls into the games category either.

Re: your last point - so aside from win or lose states, the 'playing' as an action is a criteria for being a game?  Also I think "A weird artsy fartsy movie I could navigate myself." sums it up really nicely, but I'm unsure of any other medium, besides games, where you could navigate yourself...?  Also, can games not be artsy fartsy?

Of course games can be artsy fartsy, but they still need the implied failure state to qualify as games. Being artsy fartsy does not a game make. I would be careful adding "playing" as a criteria without some modifiers though, because you play a movie or a soundtrack too. Interaction is a better word. It doesn't make it a game to interact with it, but if you don't it's not a game. So, so far we have two criteria: Interaction and implied or direct failure and/or win states.

The thing is, I don't feel it's even remotely useful to push everything that's interactive in any way into the "games" definition. It makes the term useless, because you have no bloody idea what it's actually referring to. "Oh this is a "game". So. Do I get to do anything? Can I play this or am I just supposed to stare at a fucking mountain in space for hours on end?" It's better to have different terms for these things, because it doesn't make them any less worthwhile for those who enjoy them (like I loved Dear Esther) but it does make it much easier to differentiate between them. If I want a game, I want a game. If I want an interactive landscape, or an interactive story told, I'll look for those. It helps no one to call them all games.

No, I do see what you're saying when you want clarity.  That's perfectly valid.  It's just the question then becomes, if they aren't games (and aren't comics, films, movies, books) then what are they?

A new genre of media. Interactive Experience, Virtual Experience, whatever. We haven't come up with a good name for it yet, but that doesn't mean lumping them in with games is a good idea.

And is it a question of pushing everything interactive into a games definition, or wanting to separate interactivity into a definition outside of games? Again, in the Jimquisition thing, he talks about how some of the makers of these...products? don't actually want to classify themselves as games, they want to hold themselves to some kind of higher standard.  To be something separate in order to be 'artsy fartsy'. Which very much reminds me of the 'comics' vs 'graphic novels' thing.

I don't necessarily see it as being about a higher standard as much as about a different standard. It's not quite the same as with graphic novels and comics though, as both of those are the same medium but different genres. Interactive Experiences as I prefer calling them are different media than games, as far as I'm concerned.

You wouldn't call a movie a game if you had to hold W down to play it, or it just paused. Dear Esther (which I know I keep harping on about, but it's such a great example of these non-game games) is damn near exactly that.

Is it?  I'll admit I've only seen it played, rather than played it myself.  But I'm pretty sure you direct where the character goes in Dear Esther, he is the avatar through which you explore your surroundings and decide the order in which you do things and what you interact with.  Which is more than holding down a button while a movie runs.

I actually suspect that might be a criteria for my definition of games... something where you have some form of agency in the world and it's surroundings that other mediums do not allow. An element which is not passive.

Again we run into the problems of comparing a new medium with older ones. You can't be entirely accurate about it. Yes, there is more to it than just holding down W but you're not actually having an effect on anything. You're just moving along preset paths hearing preset triggers. You can't fail, you can't win, you can just complete it. A through Z.

(It's also the key reason why Wan hated Final Fantasy - too many cut scenes you just click through, I think he certainly considered that...if not 'not a game' then not in the spirit with which he views games - or how games should be).

No comment, really. Final Fantasy certainly qualifies as a game, but the latest iterations are certainly shit games.

Sure, but the key word you are using there is implied.  There are no overt game overs (though, as you say, and as I said, there are the equivalents).  Likewise, there is no overt completion of the game - you can win when you attempt things and succeed, but that seems to come in two flavours; direct goals such as quest completions (which are more overt) to complete, or goals you set yourself.

So to extend a bit from that - if the win/fail states can just be implied (and not directly stated) - how obvious or subtle do they need to be to qualify? Same sort of thing when you set the goals yourself (as in EVE - or well, before agent missions became a thing anyone cared about anyways).

Which is a bit what I'm getting at with the 'not getting it' bit.  And yes, you're quite right in that 'not getting it' is either a failure of the developers (as your example, shit storytelling) or a failure of the player (as your example, dimwitted player) - but can you not have an implied but not stated win/lose criteria on a narrative basis? For example, the implied win objective to discover something - and if you reach the end of the content without discovering it as a player, it's an implied lose state.

I can't really point at a certain threshold and say "This is where it goes from implied failure state to not a game", but that's a problem with damn near all definitions. I can link you an image where there's text going from red to blue but pointing out which letter is the exact transition between red and blue is pretty much impossible. (The point of the image is actually demonstrating gradual evolution, but hey) But we certainly can define red and we can define blue. We'll have fuzzy borders between a lot of things in any media, be it music, video, writing etc but we still use the various media definitions because they're really useful.

Setting the goals yourself is all well and good, but if you can't fail but instead just stop moving towards the goal, it's no longer a win/lose state, implied or not.

The lucid dreaming bit gets so vague and all-encompassing that I feel it becomes completely useless as a definition of anything to be honest. That would simply be "Interactive Media". Under that you have "Games" (implied failure states, interaction) and "Interactive Experience" (no implied failure states, just completion. Interaction.) and more esoteric stuff like those websites where you create music videos by drawing a frame or three and it's slotted in with the drawings from other people on the websites, all coming together in a music video etc.

I think one of the main things here is that many are trying to make Games the top of the definition pyramid and then just set out genres underneath it, like Music is the top of the definition pyramid with genres (metal, classical, pop)  underneath and subgenres (death metal, viking metal as examples) underneath that again. This isn't the right way of thinking about it, I think. Games fall under the Interactive Media bit of the definition pyramid, which itself falls under just Media. Next to it we get the Interactive Experience, with its own subgenres (Staring at mountains sim. 3D audiobook exploration with graphics, etc).

[Elmund Egivand]

Heh 
Re: being antagonised and inconvenienced, though, can the level or game world itself produce that, or do you require an npc?
And different game modes where you can't create an antagonist? (I'm thinking like, Minecraft on creation mode).  I think in MMOs the other players are always antagonists, even if they can't have any direct way of hurting you.  Pick up groups are almost entirely a massive pain the arse resulting in inconvenience and defeat 

In Minecraft survival mode, the antagonist is the game itself. It's rigged to ensure your ultimate inconvenience and defeat. The objective thus is to delay defeat and frustrate the game's attempt to defeat you.

In Minecraft creation mode, well, it's not a game. It's just playing around.

[Mizhara]

Minecraft creation mode does have the implied failure state of trying and failing to create/build what you want. Fucking redstone, man.

[Elmund Egivand]

Minecraft creation mode does have the implied failure state of trying and failing to create/build what you want. Fucking redstone, man.

Therefore the game has inconvenienced you, making the game the antagonist, proving once and for all that it's a game.

Also, despite all the enemies, I have always considered the real antagonist of all platforming games to be the games themselves. The game's level is designed to have you fall into a death trap or several.