Is debating the definition of "game" useful?

[Krispy]

Is Mario Teaches Typing a game? Mario Paint?

[torrefaction]

Originally Posted by Krispy

Is Mario Teaches Typing a game? Mario Paint?

Yes, and yes...at least to my mind. As I said, I feel like games are systems to play in. Mario paint has a ruleset, and an interaction. There's probably a meta conversation as to whether this makes art itself a game...but I'm not sure what to think about that.

And a weighted objective does HELP make something a game, I just don't think it's a fundamental criteria. I bring that up because Mario teaches typing that has a weighted objective. You're interacting with something that has a defined rule set, and you're scored on your performance. Those are the system you're playing in.n

[Krispy]

Anything could be a game then. My work is a game. Riding a bus is a game. Operating a scooter is a game. Breathing is a game. You have to be more discriminating than that.

For example: Don't we normally play games for enjoyment and rank them on how much we enjoy the experience? That would be a discriminating factor.

[TheKeck]

Photoshop is one of the best games on the Mac.

[Shieldmaiden]

Originally Posted by torrefaction

The one thing I disagree with here is weight of outcomes. I don't believe it has to be that simple. You can play a game with no "endgame". Minecraft for instance. It exists as a place to play, in a lot of ways. There isn't a necessarily better result, it just depends on what you wanted to achieve.

In the mode with monsters where you can die, Minecraft is definitely a game. One of the outcomes is that you can die and that is bad. An outcome, in this context, doesn't necessarily mean an ending. Playing tag is similar in this respect; getting tagged is the outcome that you are trying to avoid, but it doesn't end the game.

Minecraft in creative mode, on the other hand, isn't a game. It's something that you play with. We already have a word for that, it's a toy.

[Krispy]

This seems right. You could make creative mode into a game hy giving some goal or losing factor, but by itself it is more like Photoshop with an interesting skin.

[TheKeck]

My buddy suggest that conflict of some sort is inherent to a game. How do people feel about that?

(Inspired by the difference between Minecraft with monsters and creative mode, where he agrees that the former is a game and the latter is not.)

[Krispy]

Say more about the conflict. There are a lot of different kinds and I think games aren't of the kind where you are trying to figure out how to use a zoom tool. For example, do game-conflicts need to be intended? (A non-intentional conflict would appear to be a bug.)

[TheKeck]

It would seem that the conflicts in games are intentional, yes.

[torrefaction]

What about emergent behavior, or conflict that emerges between players? Couldn't minecraft in creative mode easily become a game if people start role playing? When is role playing just an act an not a game?

What about politics in digital worlds? Are these games? Or are they genuine power struggles? Does it all just depend on perspective?

And when you challenge yourself to a goal in creative mode, haven't you just invented a game? I'm not really sure of the answers to these, it's just the immediate questions the current conversation is making me think about.

[TheKeck]

Originally Posted by torrefaction

What about emergent behavior, or conflict that emerges between players? Couldn't minecraft in creative mode easily become a game if people start role playing? When is role playing just an act an not a game?

What about politics in digital worlds? Are these games? Or are they genuine power struggles? Does it all just depend on perspective?

And when you challenge yourself to a goal in creative mode, haven't you just invented a game? I'm not really sure of the answers to these, it's just the immediate questions the current conversation is making me think about.

Makes me go back to my answer of "it's all on a spectrum".

[Shieldmaiden]

The answer to a lot of those questions is quite simple: the materials we use to play games aren't games themselves. A ball isn't a game, neither are a pack of cards or set of dice. A game is the activity we take part in using those objects.

It's the same with video games, even though it's harder to see, because they're usually a complete package. When you play Skyrim, the game isn't the swords, the mountains or the dragons. It's not the music, the graphics or the code that underpins it all. The game is you engaging with all that stuff.

A really good example is Second Life. It resembles a video game, but it's not; it's just as much a tool as anything else. However, people do play games within Second Life. There are sims in SL where people have set rules for behaviour in order to create a satisfying role-playing experience. There are combat add-ons that allow you to fight other people. There are games within SL that combine both.

[Krispy]

There is no spectrum for being a concept (arguably...). Either you are a game or you are something else. That's like saying there is no real point where I stop and the air begins. It is all just a spectrum.

Of course you can make a game out of creative mode. You can make a game out of pissing if you like, but you are still defining rules that describe a win or lose case. No one thinks of steam tools as a game. Of course, you could make a game out of making games but again you are then describing win or lose cases for game making.

And the number one rule: Games cannot be your job.

Now if you can come up with a game that isn't obviously a tool of some kind and has no win or lose case defined then we have an interesting example.

[TheKeck]

Originally Posted by Krispy

There is no spectrum for being a concept (arguably...). Either you are a game or you are something else. That's like saying there is no real point where I stop and the air begins. It is all just a spectrum.

I strongly disagree. You and air have nothing in common.

Where does blue stop and green begin? Where does a small collection of grains of sand stop and a heap of sand begin? Where does boredom stop and fun begin? Where does warm stop and hot begin?

Several have said that minecraft in creative mode is not a game. What if material degraded over time? Then would it be a game? What if you had to find materials? What if once an hour a dialog popped up telling you that monsters are coming and you have to click "ok" to "fight them off". What if you had to click ok within a certain time limit or the game ended? What if that happened every fifteen minutes? Everything thirty seconds? What if the button showed up in a random spot every time? What if the button was labeled "attack"? What if a picture of a monster showed up on screen with the button. What if monsters just showed up and you had to click on them to kill them?

[Krispy]

I should warn you, I wrote the slides for a class on Sorite's paradox. I was going to go on a big tangent about vagueness, but maybe we should open another topic about that instead? A really interesting question to me is whether vagueness is only linguistic or if vague objects are possible.

About creative mode, I don't know if a lot of those restrictions would make it more of a game or just a really frustrating tool. Imagine trying to use Photoshop, but you had to play little minigames every time you wanted to do something.

[Shieldmaiden]

How about we look at some stuff that's already out there? Here are a couple of definitions that I came across at uni. The first is from the '50s, so computer games aren't really a consideration, the second was written by a computer game designer.

Roger Caillois
French sociologist Roger Caillois, in his book Les jeux et les hommes (Games and Men), defined a game as an activity that must have the following characteristics:

• fun: the activity is chosen for its light-hearted character
• separate: it is circumscribed in time and place
• uncertain: the outcome of the activity is unforeseeable
• non-productive: participation does not accomplish anything useful
• governed by rules: the activity has rules that are different from everyday life
• fictitious: it is accompanied by the awareness of a different reality

Chris Crawford
Computer game designer Chris Crawford attempted to define the term game using a series of dichotomies:

1. Creative expression is art if made for its own beauty, and entertainment if made for money.
2. A piece of entertainment is a plaything if it is interactive. Movies and books are cited as examples of non-interactive entertainment.
3. If no goals are associated with a plaything, it is a toy. (Crawford notes that by his definition, (a) a toy can become a game element if the player makes up rules, and (b) The Sims and SimCity are toys, not games.) If it has goals, a plaything is a challenge.
4. If a challenge has no "active agent against whom you compete," it is a puzzle; if there is one, it is a conflict. (Crawford admits that this is a subjective test. Video games with noticeably algorithmic artificial intelligence can be played as puzzles; these include the patterns used to evade ghosts in Pac-Man.)
5. Finally, if the player can only outperform the opponent, but not attack them to interfere with their performance, the conflict is a competition. (Competitions include racing and figure skating.) However, if attacks are allowed, then the conflict qualifies as a game.

Crawford's definition may thus be rendered as: an interactive, goal-oriented activity, with active agents to play against, in which players (including active agents) can interfere with each other.

Throw a few different games at each list, see if they fit. You'll find they're both pretty good at sorting out what is a game and what isn't, even if you don't agree with all of it (I don't necessarily agree with Crawford's first point, as an example.) The third point on Crawford's list addresses the Minecraft creative mode examples.

[TheKeck]

Originally Posted by Krispy

I should warn you, I wrote the slides for a class on Sorite's paradox.

I purposely tried to pick some things you would obviously be quite familiar with.

I was going to go on a big tangent about vagueness, but maybe we should open another topic about that instead? A really interesting question to me is whether vagueness is only linguistic or if vague objects are possible.

It seems to me that things are exactly what they are. A collection of sand has an exact number of grains in it each with a particular mass and volume, etc. A computer program has an exact set of lines of code which build up to a particular set of behaviors, interactions, etc.

When we start applying labels to categorize huge swaths of these clearly non-identical things like "heap" or "game", we introduce vagueness.

About creative mode, I don't know if a lot of those restrictions would make it more of a game or just a really frustrating tool. Imagine trying to use Photoshop, but you had to play little minigames every time you wanted to do something.

I thought of incorporating this exact example. I shied away from it because the fact that you were including something that is a game by definition (minigame) seemed to muddy the waters even further.

So, then, my question is, is Minecraft in non-creative-mode "just a really frustrating tool"? Is anything that is really frustrating not a game? Where does "frustration" stop and "gameplay" begin? My last scenario in the chain I proposed seems pretty reasonably gamelike to me. (Click on monsters to attack and kill them to progress.) Many traditional jrpgs have menu based combat (which is sort of what I was trying to play around with in several of my examples.)