Notgames Forum

I think I am guilty of that at least
Sometimes with game I mean "videogames", other times just "normal" games and finally sometimes mechanics that that mimic those of traditional games (card games, boardgames, etc) that are about winning/losing.

I am now trying to use videogames, whenever I can, since there is a vast difference between these and traditional games. I am not sure what use for "traditional game rules" though, gameplay seems a bit too broad and "traditional game rules" perhaps to narrow.

Perhaps a terminology thread would be good? In which we not only talk what words we on this forum shall use, but what kind of words can be used when discussing these things with others and cause the least confusion.

From my experience a surprising (?) large portion of game developers don't play games regularly. In fact, a majority probably is more passionate about their creative pastime ( writing / composing / photography etc. ) then consuming video-games.

True. Many of the developers I've spoken with "haven't got the time" to play games.

Are these designers? I mean people that are responsible for what gets into the game. I know a lot of programmers and artists that fall into this category, but from after reading at Gamasutra, it seems to me like many designers are hardcore. Or to be more, fair, enjoy hardcore games the best.

Perhaps I am wrong though and that these people do not play hardcore games, but like the design in these. Or perhaps the people at Gamasutra is not a good place to draw any conclusions from?

I was just surprised by the amount of "Games must have a challenge" type of responses. So I am searching for an explanation

What you call "Videogame" I'd call "Interactive virtual experience". Games are experiences that provide us with interesting challenges to try and overcome. They've been around about as long as art.

But that in itself can be seen as a misconception, Thomas is quite right in not assuming games have interesting challenges to overcome. Two cats vs. a ball of wool is "play", as is two children dressing up like Victorian noblemen; just like two teenagers running along the beach to see who is faster. They are "playing" at something, a temporary 'magic circle' within different laws are true: for a few blissful moments, not being a Victorian nobleman is odd, for a stretch of mere minutes the only attribute that counts is being fast. A structured experience like this is a "game", providing "play". This is the definition I have settled living by, courtesy of Roger Callois. Challenge can be a part of it, dubbed "agôn" by Callois. I can not always see the point of a separatist movement which takes 'challenge' as the thing that is needed. There are too many borderline-cases in any definition to take 'challenge' and point it out as the defining factor.

This is how where I think "videogame needs challenge" especially fails, because challenge is such a loose term. For example: Reading a book with sticky pages is challenging. Is reading this book suddenly a game? There are more cases like this and any sort of separation gets very hard.

I agree get that "videogame" is not the ultimate term, since it easily conjures up thoughts of chess and other classic games. But I do not think it is possible to change, so we might as well just widen its meaning

I disagree with one of your fundamental assumptions here. Yes, a game is something you "play"; but that doesn't mean that everything you "play" is therefore a game. My view (to steal some lines from posts I've made in other threads) is that the english language uses "play" to describe two distinct kinds of activity.

"Interactive virtual experiences" can be games, but they don't have to be. A "videogame", by definition, has game elements and thus provides a challenge. If you go around urging people to consider how "videogames" don't need to be "games", you really shouldn't be surprised when people take you to task for trying to redefine a term.

I am not surprised at all, there is a whole world of people who assume that someone has agreed on the definition of 'game'. I myself was claiming things not to be games and rather 'interactive experiences', to great annoyance of my teachers a few years ago. A definition proposed by Callois in 1961 has no meaning although apparently this unsigned agreement about 'game' is.

I am not saying that a video game need not be a game. I am saying that a game need not be competitive, nor have challenge as its highest goal. This is not a new thought, again. The definition of 'game' is like the definition of 'play' very much in flux, true. But don't assume that because many people say so 'game' must mean 'something which has among other properties challenge'. Many people will attest that a game can have a high level of 'immersion' whereas immersion is more properly an attribute gained from the apparatus being of 'imposing' (if you will) value. Many people use 'immersion' to mean what is commonly meant, but that does not mean by mob rule that this is what the word means. This is the case I make for games having to 'include challenge'; I think that is a common misconception derived from a large focus on the competitive factors of games.

I myself prefer to follow Callois' indication and keep the term 'game' open. I cannot stand modern writers who suddenly say games must have a quantifiable outcome, games must have a set duration... The term 'game' can be used far wider without excommunicating many forms of game without offering them somewhere to go but 'experience', which is a thorough useless nondescript term. One may as well say that a film needs to have a narrative and without narrative it is 'moving pictures'.
Games may include a quantifiable outcome.

Two children playing at being jungle explorers are playing the game of being jungle explorers, not playing 'the toy' of jungle explorers, nor playing 'the experience' of jungle explorers. They are pretending to be jungle explorers and this mimicry defines the rules of the game. You could say that if one uses common sense he breaks the 'game' and 'looses' but that is more of a magic circle-related element and not game-specific.

I thinks words change meaning all the time. Not just over time or from community to community, but within a single person, continuously. I can post the sentence "The Graveyard is not a game" on Facebook, look up from the keyboard at my daughter who walked into the room and tell her that "Love is not a game". In a time span of just a few seconds, I will have used the word "game" with two widely different meanings. It's an illusion to think that there even is an agreed upon definition of any word. We should try to understand what people mean when they use a word. And not be distracted by what the word "actually" means.

That doesn't mean I do not fully support Jeroen in trying to open up the understanding of what a game can be -especially within games industry circles. And indeed, Callois is a very eloquent source to fall back on. Even common use of the word, as illustrated above, shows that the word already has a much wider meaning, without requiring academic research. Game developers just tend to forget. Or they narrow down the definition of games for the sake of argument.

Strictly speaking, we should probably call most videogames "sports" and not games. Because sports are the kinds of games that you do competitively. But this would ignore all the opportunities for mimicry, fantasy and whimsy that many videogames also offer (elements of the wider concept of games).

The problem with allowing "game" to mean all the things it could mean, immediately creates the need for a word that signifies only rules-based goal-oriented, competitive challenges. So it's probably more practical to just try to understand what a person really means, rather than criticize their (necessarily) clumsy use of language.

Wow, that's a great way to think about it.  So many videogames seem to have a sports mentality, and I want to explore the kinds of videogames that don't have that mentality.

I was thinking 'could call it sport' writing my post but I am glad you did not hold that thought back, Michaël. I like the thought.

It is not a category but a component name; 'agôn'. Competitive play. Categorizing games as in need of competition would leave a game like Psychonauts/i] which is still 'doing things' narratively on a weird edge. It's more a mix of types.

It would be interesting to put together a team of people who have never created computer games, aren't gamers by any stretch, but are proven outstanding creatives/experts in something tangential to games. Like, a novelist, an architect, a painter, an actor, a psychologist, a sculptor, a musician, a... well okay, not that many people, but you get the idea. A few people who have thought a lot about creativity, expression, storytelling, the author-audience relationship, and other related things. Then put them together with a small team of coders, artists, animators, and sound designers and let them brainstorm and experiment with creating something interactive. It might become a game of some kind, but it could just as well become something completely new and... notgamey.

One of the problems of having outsiders create games, is that the technology is so specialized and new. As such, outsiders often come up with very conservative ideas, actually. As far as I have seen, the best ideas come from people with experience. I regret this, though. I wish it were different. It will be in the future, I think, when the technology becomes more accessible and our knowledge of the medium has grown.