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[Mizhara]

Which is an implied failure state. I don't really think you need an antagonist though. It'd broaden the antagonist definition too much. Just because something's frustrating it's not necessarily antagonistic. There's no antagonist in Animal Crossing for instance. There's inconvenience, there's tedium etc but calling them antagonists sort of makes the antagonist definition too broad and useless just like using "game" as the overall definition for all these interactive experiences broadens that to the point of uselessness.

[Elmund Egivand]

Which is an implied failure state. I don't really think you need an antagonist though. It'd broaden the antagonist definition too much. Just because something's frustrating it's not necessarily antagonistic. There's no antagonist in Animal Crossing for instance. There's inconvenience, there's tedium etc but calling them antagonists sort of makes the antagonist definition too broad and useless just like using "game" as the overall definition for all these interactive experiences broadens that to the point of uselessness.

Eh, in Animal Crossing every NPC ever is an antagonist. In Harvest Moon the weather system and the field is your antagonist. So long as there is something giving you problems and potentially making you fail, that thing is your antagonist. It can even be the game itself. It's always the game itself.

Yes, I play a game so I can stick it to the game.

[Lyn Farel]

And all in all, it's just about runaway lovers having a homosexual twist to it - nothing really original about that.

And all in all, Mass Effect is just about a testosterone terran hero saving the galaxy - nothing really original about that.

And all in all, Zelda is just about a male teenage hero saving the princess that got kidnapped by a bad guy - nothing really original about that.

etc. etc.

Just crawling out of my hole to say that I find that commentary you quoted ludicrously stupid in itself, because tastes and all that. 

So yes, I agree anyway.

[Nissui]

I guess I define it similar to TB or Lyn, in that I feel that a game has a definite end that the player works toward achieving. The software (or ruleset in a board game) determines the mechanism for achieving that end, while also providing obstacles and variables which provide a challenge that enhances the sense of accomplishment when the end is achieved. It is also possible to fail to achieve that end, a possibility which further reinforces the value of the achievement, driving the desire to repeat play.

This is why I see KSP as a game, but EVE as a tool, in the same way that I see CandyLand as a game, but Mage: the Ascension as a tool. EVE and Mage provide a mechanism by which actions may be taken in an imaginary environment, but the uncertainty introduced by the 'troupe' and the ambiguity of any achievable end create a distinct division from the binary nature of a game.

[Kala]

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.

Well, it's not just comparisons for like-for-like, it's more for the distinctions.  We can say 'this is x because it contains y' and we can say 'this is not x because it contains z (or doesn't have y)'  There are things each medium can do that another can't, which dictates (to some degree) which medium to use or what content would be more suited.

Books (novels, scripts, short stories) are words on a page, you read the pages to produce the image in your minds eye.

Radio is sound, and can utilize music, sound effects and dialogue, but the 'action' (e.g from a radio play) is produced in your head.  It's a bit like a cross between television and a novel in this regard.

Television and film are moving pictures (and now we don't have silent movies, with sound) that produce the images for you.

Comics are the juxtaposition of pictures and words arranged in panels to direct how you read it.  It's a bit like a cross between books and film in this regard (you have words, and pictures are depicted in a similar way film uses camera angles, so it's a bit like a film reel, but it doesn't move for you).

Games...? Games can produce images, and words, and sound but we direct those things - to a degree, or interact or move through them in a unique way that no other medium shares.  We are not passive, we are not simply receiving information, we are an active participant.

So that becomes a key feature for me, with games, because it's the thing it does that the others can't. It's the unique feature of it, in terms of a narrative form anyways.

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.

But games take place in interactive landscapes, and their stories are told in interactive ways; to me that is the key feature that games have an other mediums don't.  I take your point that without an implied failure or win state they would not be games, but an implied fail or a goals you set yourself that you could either achieve or not, are also broad enough to encompass almost anything.  As is Elmund Egivand's suggestion that something must inconvenience or annoy you, when the very level design itself can do that.

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.

...Are they?    I think they're mostly interchangeable terms.

I mostly saw it as a marketing gimmick to make comics more sound literary.  F.ex Sandman had collective volumes bound together and then called 'a graphic novel'.  But before then, they were released in a monthly issues.  (and, initially, in terms of genre, more of a horror comic and later turned into something else).

If you talked to Gaiman, though (who I'm referencing again >.>) he would say he wrote comics. I seem to recollect Alan Moore being a bit snooty about the 'graphic novel' term as well. Wiki describes it as "an American comic book series written by Neil Gaiman and published by DC Comics," whereas Norman Mailer described Sandman as a "comic strip for intellectuals".

So there is, really nothing different about a graphic novel than a comic - in that it can be any genre really, and is still the same medium, other than one is defined for the riff raff and the other one is for 'intellectuals'.

Which, I think, is also what would happen in a similar way if you had a clear cut distinction between 'game' (comics) and 'artsy fartsy movie where you interact' (graphic novel).  I think you'd end up saying less about how the medium works, and more about who the game is deemed to be for.   

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

  Well,  subjective (though I wouldn't disagree).
I'll bring up how much games, and our expectations of them, have changed over time later though, as I think that's a really important factor for how we view what a game is now (or what a game should be, in order to qualify).

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.

We'll have purple!
And yes, also I think fuzzy borders are where the interesting things can happen.
But yes, I think we can define different mediums (well, my definitions are somewhere at the top of the page there in bold) though there's overlap in both form and content.  It's just when we're defining games based on implied win or lose states, and unable to draw the line of where those are, it could get a bit...hair splitty? as to what is deemed a game and what isn't. When we already know it's not anything pre-existing (an old medium), and then have to create a new term.  (though your suggestion is a really interesting one).

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.

...Isn't it?  If you couldn't progress either due to difficulty or lack of interest it sounds like an implied fail to me? (just not an overt one where the game says it is).   I mean, I can understand winning or losing because the game signifies it overtly in some way - by completing the game, or game over, for example.  I can also understand overt goals the game has set in place - completing a quest, defeating a boss, or failing those things.

But if we're moving outside of what the game specifically says are wins or fails, and going with both goals you set yourself (which could be anything) or implied wins or losses (which is extremely broad).  Such as an implied but not overtly stated or mandatory objective (find out this) and getting to the end of the game and not having found that out.

In your Animal Crossing example (which I haven't played) you said:

 

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.

Is that not the same?

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.

Oh yes, clearly.  I admitted that does not work as any kind of a definition   

That part was more exploring how I felt about games, and their uniqueness, compared to other mediums.  How they behave, what they allow you to do.  To articulate that, lucid dreaming was the comparison I used.

Because regular dreaming, you're on rails - however absurd things are, you rationalize them away, and you watch yourself doing whatever your doing with no control over it. (In that way, dreams are like films).

But when you realize you're dreaming, and don't wake up, you can grasp control and agency of your dream.  Which is when it becomes like a game; as you can explore your dream world, change it, interact with it, create within it.

Basically, yes, I do want to define what make a game 'a game' to different people - but it doesn't have to be purely functional working definitions, people are free to discuss how games make them feel, how they are special to them, etc and explore ideas.  That was one of mine    (quite possibly because lucid dreaming was something I did as a kid, and never got back).

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.
[...]
 Interactive Experiences as I prefer calling them are different media than games, as far as I'm concerned.
[...]
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 your pyramid idea is an interesting one - where instead of 'types of games' we would say 'types of interactive media' and form larger groupings.  Because one of the things I find difficult when people say "this isn't a game, it's an interactive experience" is that games are interactive experiences!  So the pyramid idea still acknowledges that aspect of games and doesn't try and make that artificial distinction.

Also, many of the things I've read lately, say 'this is not a game!' as an equivalent of saying 'this is not what I'm used to, and I don't like it'.  What they are essentially saying is, this isn't good enough to be a game. As you say, therefore it seems they would like 'proper' games to be at the top of the pyramid, and more 'experimental artsy games' to be far on the fringes by comparison. Your concept avoids this by having 'Interactive media' as a catch-all term that games that fit a criteria are included within.

The only thing is, the criteria of interactivity and implied win/fail states as 'a game'  does still seem very broad.  But I'm quite happy with broad definitions and fuzzy lines, really.

What could trouble me is the connotation, as with graphic novels and comics, that one is for intellectuals and one not when there's so much potential overlap between 'game' and 'interactive experience', though.  (Though honestly, it's not like we don't already have that social divide to some degree, either from people being deliberately pretentious about their 'interactive experience' and not wanting to call it a game, or others saying games cannot or should not be art either due to limitations of the medium or because they aren't interested in that.  It's whether or not the labelling of that distinction would make it more pronounced).

[Kala]

This is why I see KSP as a game, but EVE as a tool, in the same way that I see CandyLand as a game, but Mage: the Ascension as a tool. EVE and Mage provide a mechanism by which actions may be taken in an imaginary environment, but the uncertainty introduced by the 'troupe' and the ambiguity of any achievable end create a distinct division from the binary nature of a game.

That's really interesting.

Would you mind elaborating a bit on the distinction between game and tool there?

So it's that EVE and Mage give you the tools to construct an experience for yourself (hence the ambiguity), whereas games already provide it in a binary nature (which has a closed ending to the narrative)?

Would that also make any sandbox game (rather than linear games) in general tools?

[Jace]

EVE is a game, we play it. I really do not understand people that try to define games as something else.

Chess is a game, but there are people that take it incredibly seriously. As it is with many other games. Game ≠ Frivolous.

[Arista Shahni]

I define a game as something very simple.

A game is something the connects with the mental concept of play.

Play is in and of itself a "tool" -- practice for RL actions without having to deal with the RL consequences.  But it is that distinction -- that in general play does not have strong life changing impacts within the context of the game (ex. playing House doesn't make you a "mommy" or "daddy" forever, only for as long as you are playing the game, playing army doesn't mean you're literally killing people or being killed), but can train you on some level for those activities.

In a more poetic sense, a game is a "life practice" dream while awake.  One the 'dream sequence' is over, the game is over.

As serious as one takes their play or not, it does not change the definition of play or the games we play.

[Kala]

Yeah, I quite like the 'games as playing' - as in trying on imaginary roles and experiencing things through that.
Some are arguably more 'play' than others, but yeah, however seriously it's taken (or presents itself) that is what you're doing in the imaginative sense in every game I can think of.

Which shifts the definition from what the game might contain mechanically, to how you use it.

[Kala]

...So the other thing that's been rumbling around my head is how our understanding and expectations of games may have changed over time.

Because I've heard people saying 'Gone Home' either is not, or barely qualifies as a game, due to the lack of action.  I.e in terms of the mechanics of how you play, you are essentially moving around a house and clicking on objects.

But this makes me wonder - have they not heard of point-and-click adventure games? Discworld, return to zork, day of the tentacle, monkey island, broken sword...etc? Because I think there's a nod to that bygone era there.  Maybe they missed that era entirely and that's simply their first exposure to a game like that - which is entirely missing whole elements they have come to associate with (modern) games.  Therefore barely a game due to the comparative lack.


I think things come in and out of fashion, as well.  I was reading this article http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/10/10/labyrinths-deep-in-the-dungeons-of-daggerfall/ comparing dungeons in dark souls and daggerfall.   I quite liked this:

The entrance to each is like the door to a Lewisian wardrobe leading to a delirious new world.
Daggerfall’s incidental dungeons are chaotic, preconfigured as part of the game’s data but assembled pseudo-randomly from a cluster of components.

and this:

The layouts can be frustrating, particularly when a quest object is in a distant corner, separated from the entrance by flooded passages and spaghetti junctions, but there has been nothing quite like those ominous charnel labryinths before or since. I find it a shame that their unnerving perplexity is caught up in a fantasy RPG – albeit one that is itself unusual and superb – rather than a Lovecraftian property akin to Eldritch, where the confusion and anguish that the dead-ends and dead spaces create would be thematically appropriate.

I think randomly generated stuff was more of a feature in old games - perhaps because it was just too hard to design everything from scratch in them days (?). Certainly in Daggerfall, with the 'faceless crowd' NPCs, it would've been too intensive to hand craft them all, give them their own dialogue etc - they were too vast.

So with later iterations - Morrowind, Oblivion, Skyrim - we got handcrafted dungeons (well, caves in Morrowind mostly) on a much smaller scale and NPCs that had their own unique names, lives, identity and dialogue.

Which in some ways makes the world more, and in some ways makes it less. 

I think the thing ultimately, with the randomly generated stuff (and mobs not scaled to you in terms of difficulty) is the risk and the fear of the unknown - you don't actually know what you're going to get. Same with the remake of X-Com, which I very much enjoyed, mind.  But in making it more handcrafted and linear rather than random - as we'd expect these days I think, removing the randomness of it somehow makes it seem less...threatening? difficult?

So aside from Minecraft, I think maybe procedurally generating content is a fairly dated thing that we do less of now?  Or, in the mainstream, anyways? And I wonder if we have the expectation now that if we can hand craft things individually, we should, to make the world more realistic, static, concrete...embedded?  I dunno, I'm struggling a bit with concepts here.

I talked a bit about FF7 earlier, and how sitting through FMV cut scenes were actually like a reward; they were a selling point.  Because it allowed you to get a better idea of what the world you were in would actually look like if it were real (rather than shitty polygons).  Now, of course, most things look real all the time anyways and cut scenes are chores to be skipped; an enforced pause that pulls you out of the action, rather than rewarding you for an action. 

I've been replaying FF7 and I've noticed things are bugging me now that never bugged me before.  Sure, I've gotten older (and more crabby) but I think my expectations of games have changed as they've developed, too.  All sorts of little things have annoyed me that never posed a problem.  Like, well, figuring out how to leave a room. Distinguishing between background and foreground. And largely those sorts of minor irritations have gone away now, particularly as graphics have improved to the point where things are less symbolic depictions and more photo-realistic ones. We tend not to encounter them so much.

Which makes me remember the old spectrum and atari games, where part of the point, straight out of the box, was to figure out what the game actually was and how to play it.  Because you often couldn't tell just from looking. And it wasn't annoying at the time - that things were so obtuse or unintuitive was completely normal and even part of the joy of discovery. The central and immediate puzzle was the game itself.

I read recently someone's comments on 'A Vanishing of Ethan Carter' - by all accounts a very pretty game. And this passage struck me particularly:

There’s actually a fair amount of gameplay here - puzzles, light stealth, the aforementioned narrative-building - but it’s unclear how to play most of it. There’s a difference between not holding players’ hands and just being unintuitive, and Ethan Carter falls too often on the wrong side of that line. When gameplay mechanics go unexplained, or vital clues hidden away invisibly, it’s more frustrating than liberating. I’m all for games that allow self-directed play, but if you don’t know something is even playable, it’s hard to enjoy.

Because I thought...is it? 

I would agree with him now, of course, but once upon a time this was not the case in my most early gaming experiences.  I didn't know things were playable and had to struggle to understand how the game worked and what its (often contradictory) rules were. And finding that out was part of the fun!

But I think my expectation of games has changed, as games themselves have.  My expectation of modern games is that this will not be a problem, that it will be inherently and immediately obvious how it works, what it's rules are, with little effort on my part to grasp the fundamentals or understand what it is the game wants from me.

I only really realised how much my expectations and attitudes had changed over time by my own impatience playing FF7 from a retrospective position - navigating rooms often seems awkward, clunky and unintuitive, trying to figure out things that should just be obvious (WHY am I able to walk on this particular green bit when all the others look the same and are completely inaccessible?!). 

I think we are hand held a lot more now...  We expect to be able to immediately figure out what's going on, and there'll be things to help smooth that along, tutorials, quest markers, checkpoints, etc. We expect a certain level of immediacy and - fluidity?

But I definitely think there are...accepted or preferred ways of doing things.  Ideas that are fashionable now, maybe, and others that went out of fashion. I think some of those attitudes and expectations can colour how we see games, anyways.

[Jace]

Sure, there is the 'gamer' (whatever that term means these days) mindset that there has to be a certain level of action and/or competition for something to be a game. But that's just the attitude of a specific group of people, it has nothing to do with the broad concept of a 'game'.

[Kala]

Well, my view of games has changed over time (as games themselves have changed); there's things that used to seem normal that I wouldn't tolerate or expect now, so I'm more theorizing that what people are used to seeing in games may effect how they define them.

(I.e I'm used to games containing these elements, so if something doesn't, it's not a proper game)

So it's more it affects their concept of 'a game' rather than the concept of 'a game'.

It's more addressing the tangentially related bit of the OP:

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)

Actually, I've seen this a lot with MMOs.

There's a set of vocabulary with MMOs that people use - levels, raids, epics, end game content etc.  And people are bemused (I've seen this a few times in EVE) if an MMO doesn't contain these things, because it's become so engrained in the very concept. To the extent that if a game apparently doesn't have those things, how can it be an MMO?

And I'm thinking...Were they not aware of Ultima Online?

(and I do understand that the massive success of WoW made MMOs more accessible and popularized that template, and this informs an expectation, but still.  Not only are other templates possible, but alternatives predated it).

[Jace]

And I'm thinking...Were they not aware of Ultima Online?

No, they weren't. For very reason you mentioned right after this sentence. MMOs were not a 'mainstream' gaming outlet for a very long time. A significant amount of the players were/are literally unaware of UO and that era.

[Kala]

Yeah, but knowing that doesn't make me any less grumpy at the idea that's all MMOs can or should be when they've already been other things 

But yes, I think that awareness/context/era informs our expectations of what games are or should be, then.

[Jace]

That and the business model for MMOs is different now. Large amounts of players that they can hopefully keep playing for a year, and a barely large enough amount they can keep after that. That's the current business model. No MMO is released now expecting to keep a high player base for years and years. It's just not how the genre works anymore.