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[Cheeetar]

So if you removed high scores those arcade games would not longer be games?

So...DQ is like someone's poorly made art film project, but combined with some poorly made programming. What this says isn't that art games are bad, is that the art game field is so barren that virtually anyone could come around and make waves without really having to bust a gut.

I do hope you're stating an opinion here, and not trying to assert a fact.

[Cowboy Colt]

The biggest problem with defining a 'game' is that the word itself is antiquated and un-befitting of the medium (that is, if we're bundling up interactive experiences as one fenced off medium).

An ARG is as much a game as Donkey Kong, just in different ways. The more facets you add; controller, stereo sound, VR, etc. the more difficult it is to strictly define something.

A book is a book because it is words on multiple pages, bound together. A television show is so because it is displayed on TV. The word game becomes muddled because it covers everything from Tag to Steel Battalion.

In that case, do we need to define what a game is? Or rather, should we be asking why do we need to define what a game is?

[Reelya]

So if you removed high scores those arcade games would not longer be games?

Why are you asking me that? I only said it as an example of a goal in response to someone who said arcade games don't have explicit goals, because you always die. The existence of persistent high scores are direct contradition to the "there's no objective" argument. I have no need to defend a point I didn't personally make. Let me point you to a relevant post I made yesterday:

The idea of games needing an "ultimate goal" which sandbox games are lacking is not so cut and dried though.

I already said that games don't need an explicit goal to be games.

So...DQ is like someone's poorly made art film project, but combined with some poorly made programming. What this says isn't that art games are bad, is that the art game field is so barren that virtually anyone could come around and make waves without really having to bust a gut.

I do hope you're stating an opinion here, and not trying to assert a fact.

I'm saying thousands of indie films run rings around DQ in terms of portraying emotion. I've seen a lot of indie films. DQ would be on the level of some student projects I've seen, definitely not a "professional" indie release. And the coding isn't very advanced technically, but any means. I will assert these as facts. There are a ton of great indie films out there and "DQ the movie" would not come close to their level. So, if that content was in an established medium, it would not be anything special enough to get widespread media coverage.

[mattie2009]

I use a simple metric for deciding whether something is a game.
"Is it sold as a game?"

If it is sold as a game, if it's put in a video game box, put on a video game-selling platform like Steam, marketed as a game, and ultimately intended to be sold as a game to people who consider themselves 'gamers', then I'll call it a video game, and work from there as to deciding whether or not it's a shitty game.

The thing you have to remember is that everyone has different ideas of what they consider to be 'video games'. If we start trying to compile a hard list of what is and isn't a video game, then we run the risk of overlooking good games because they don't fit inside the lines. Not to mention we won't get anywhere in the first place because trying to define a subjective experience is like trying to herd cats.

As far as I'm concerned, if it's sold as a video game, I'll call it a video game, and judge it by the standards of a video game.
And if, as a video game, I consider it to be shit, I'll call it a shit video game and move on.

[Leafsnail]

"Implied success state" is in want of clearer definition, but I mainly intended it for games where you earn as many points as you can before inevitably losing- maybe I should simply say failure state rather than success state. It's certainly not about including games which I like, it's about including experiences I think constitute games. I love certain books, but they're not games, and reading them to the end doesn't constitute an implied success state because there's no failure state. I also wouldn't mind Candy Land and flipping a coin not being a game, but that's just confusing in normal conversation. Otherwise I would only include "make decisions while attempting to cause a certain outcome", I think.

You haven't made any case as to why this definition would be intuitive to the general public though.  As you point out in this paragraph, things like Candyland (that just invite you to play within a completely rigid set of rules that takes you towards a fixed outcome that cannot be changed by your actions) are regarded as games in common parlance.  If descriptions on Steam are too vague then you should argue that Steam should have more complete descriptions.

Like Neonivek says, hard definitions are important! Not so much for deciding what is on steam, but for informing consumers. A lot of the time all you have to go on is people saying that X experience is good, and the really vague descriptions sometimes given on steam, which is ostensibly a place where people buy games. I can't count how many times I've heard people say "I played Gone Home, it's a great game! I can't really describe anything about it though." I'm sure that sort of thing has caused a lot of confusion. I think we're just now coming to the language to say "It's more of an interactive exhibit than a game" and that can really inform people. Incidentally, I played GH and I think I rather liked it. It's just not a game, is all. That kind of language is also necessary to describe, say, Garry's Mod, or even Minecraft in the pre-survival-mode days- "It's more of a digital toy than a game."

Hard definitions are relatively important, but the one you're trying to push here is a) at odds with the reality of the English language and b) will not solve any of the issues you identify because no definition of "game" will ever guarantee satisfaction to players who don't bother to find out what the game is like before purchasing it.

The simple and non-confusing solution would be to just apply genre labels to these games.  For instance the term "visual novel" accurately describes what the focus will be in that kind of game.  I think GH's "Story Exploration Video Game" tag is pretty intuitive and should tell you what to expect.  The fact that you get to look at different aspects of the story at your own pace and in whatever order interests you makes it different from a novel incidentally, where there is very much only one intended way to experience it (reading from start to finish).

[BurnedToast]

In my opinion, to qualify for a game it requires:

1. Meaningful input from the player: If you're given 3 choices and they all result in the same thing, that's not meaningful input. There has to be choices to be made, and those choices must have consequences.  Note that even a pure, linear FPS with no story counts, the input being the mouse movements and such.

2. The ability to lose. A "game over" screen after your avatar dies horribly is not required, there just has to be some sort poor conclusion, bad ending, or something else that you must work to avoid. You can't automatically win.

3. The ability to win. I'm sure this will be the most controversial thing here, but if there's no victory, and nothing to strive for it's not a game. I'm not automatically disqualifying endless games here, by the way - if it constantly gets harder the implied victory condition is surviving longer then you did previously, or collecting more points then you did previously.

And... yes, technically this means I don't think DF is a game at all. You can play a game inside DF (I win by collecting 5000 socks before the goblins kill me!) but the program it's self is not a game, it's a software toy.

Another interesting thing is I'm not sure I consider "prey" to be a game either. If you don't remember, it was an FPS where when you died you just teleported to a different area and shot some ghost things (afaik you couldn't lose this part at all, you just shot till you got them all) and then you teleported back with your health restored. It was impossible to lose, so I think maybe it was more of a highly interactive, extremely detailed visual novel.

The biggest problem with defining a 'game' is that the word itself is antiquated and un-befitting of the medium (that is, if we're bundling up interactive experiences as one fenced off medium).

I agree with this. Dayz or minecraft for example are not games at all, they are software toys and they should be sold as such. Similarly visual novels are not games, they are... well, visual novels which is it's own sort of thing. There needs to be more categories, rather then bunching everything together.

The problem is marketing, of course. Anything that loses the "game" label will automatically be considered inferior. It's too bad though, more categories would be useful.

[Leafsnail]

You can create categories without redefining what a game is.

[Shadowlord]

Perhaps you can elucidate just why you think Gone Home isn't a game? From the description on the store page, it sounds like it would be in the adventure game genre, except not as awful as what I would have expected from one*. "Interrogate every detail of a seemingly normal house to discover the story of the people who live there. Open any drawer and door. Pick up objects and examine them to discover clues. Uncover the events of one family's lives by investigating what they've left behind."

* The adventure games I've played were mostly pixel-hunting every screen for the things which you could use or pick up, and you'd pick them up because if you could pick them up you would obviously need them in the future for some puzzle which was built using insane troll logic. (As you might imagine, I'm biased against the genre because of past expectations. I tried a few games I hadn't played before in the past couple years when GoG gave them away for free, but they were just as insane, so I went back to ignoring the genre.)

[Levi]

I'd say Dear Esther is a game because I couldn't beat it.  It tests your ability to defeat your frustration at marching around at a snails pace trying to find where the next bit of dialog is.  I made it as far as a cave before I starting looking for speed-cheats.  Not finding any, I gave up.

[BurnedToast]

You can create categories without redefining what a game is.

Very few people would consider a box of lego, on it's own, to be a game.

Minecraft is basically a fancy digital box of lego. Why is it redefining what a game is to suggest that minecraft is also not a game?

[Cheeetar]

So if you removed high scores those arcade games would not longer be games?

Why are you asking me that? I only said it as an example of a goal in response to someone who said arcade games don't have explicit goals, because you always die. The existence of persistent high scores are direct contradition to the "there's no objective" argument. I have no need to defend a point I didn't personally make. Let me point you to a relevant post I made yesterday:

The idea of games needing an "ultimate goal" which sandbox games are lacking is not so cut and dried though.

I already said that games don't need an explicit goal to be games.

You pointed it out as reason to believe that arcade games are games. It then follows that by removing that feature which makes it a game, it would not longer be a game, or?

So...DQ is like someone's poorly made art film project, but combined with some poorly made programming. What this says isn't that art games are bad, is that the art game field is so barren that virtually anyone could come around and make waves without really having to bust a gut.

I do hope you're stating an opinion here, and not trying to assert a fact.

I'm saying thousands of indie films run rings around DQ in terms of portraying emotion. I've seen a lot of indie films. DQ would be on the level of some student projects I've seen, definitely not a "professional" indie release. And the coding isn't very advanced technically, but any means. I will assert these as facts. There are a ton of great indie films out there and "DQ the movie" would not come close to their level. So, if that content was in an established medium, it would not be anything special enough to get widespread media coverage.

Right. So you're stating your own opinion, and trying to assert it as fact. Duly noted. ("I, the objective judge of what is best at portraying emotion, do say that there are literally thousands of films that I have seen that are better at portraying emotion than this video game I heard of and also don't think is a proper game anyway guys.")

[Leafsnail]

Very few people would consider a box of lego, on it's own, to be a game.

Minecraft is basically a fancy digital box of lego. Why is it redefining what a game is to suggest that minecraft is also not a game?

If I gave you a set of rules governing how to play with your lego set that would be regarded as a game (perhaps it could be like Mouse Trap or there could be a point-buy system or something).  Minecraft essentially has those rules built directly into the game engine (you need these things to create this object, you can jump up to this height and get higher by using these methods, you can do this much damage to enemies using this item etc), so it has the rules framework required to qualify as a game.

[BurnedToast]

Very few people would consider a box of lego, on it's own, to be a game.

Minecraft is basically a fancy digital box of lego. Why is it redefining what a game is to suggest that minecraft is also not a game?

If I gave you a set of rules governing how to play with your lego set that would be regarded as a game (perhaps it could be like Mouse Trap or there could be a point-buy system or something).  Minecraft essentially has those rules built directly into the game engine (you need these things to create this object, you can jump up to this height and get higher by using these methods, you can do this much damage to enemies using this item etc), so it has the rules framework required to qualify as a game.

And a box of lego has to obey the laws of physics, the blocks are designed to connect a certain way, and many of them are even sold as sets designed to be built into a specific thing. You can't make your lego into a penrose triangle no matter how hard you try, for example.

It's not fundamentally different, there's a rules framework for your lego just as there's a rules framework for minecraft. It's just a lot more complicated.

[Shadowlord]

Dear Esther has a rules framework. It has to for the dialog to be occuring in response to you going to particular places, and for you to even be able to walk around at all.

P.S. Why even try to define what a game is? It isn't like you can call Gabe up and talk him into using your new definition on Steam.

[jhxmt]

In my opinion, to qualify for a game it requires:

...

2. The ability to lose. A "game over" screen after your avatar dies horribly is not required, there just has to be some sort poor conclusion, bad ending, or something else that you must work to avoid. You can't automatically win.

Hmm.  By that measure I'm not sure the original Secret of Monkey Island qualifies as a game (barring the one instance where you can stay underwater for more than ten minutes - which, given the situation, would pretty much always be the result of deliberate player action, so you might even consider that a win state rather than a lose state).