On Definitions of a "Game"

I recently responded to a Cynical Brit video about Glitchhikers and "what it is to be a game". The post is a little long (I am given to a certain amount of pedantry), but you can read it after the jump.

 tl;dr: Brit thinks "games" need a failure state; I didn't agree. More after the jump.


I would argue in favor of a different definition of a "game". I propose that a game is "any intentional interaction with a system or systems meant to provide amusement or insight and that has low consequences outside of the interaction."

This explains why football is a "game" when it's a few guys in a yard somewhere and a "sport" when it is World Cup time -- the consequences are too high for it to still be a game.

"It's just a game?"

This definition covers all the unnamed games we play, too. People who troll in youtube comments are obviously playing a sociolinguistic game where they see if they can rile people up. There is no failure state here (it's not like they "lose" if people remain calm), but a debate partner of a troll would be right to ask "is this a game to you?", because it is.

So, too, are the games we play when we're bored "guess what time it is before you look at a clock", "how many objects can you stack", and "make it look like you're squishing people's heads between your fingers". These little games are not competitions and they do not have human-constructed rules or explicit failure states -- they interact with naturally occurring systems; internal clocks, physics, and convergent perspective, respectively. Kids play these kinds of games all the time when they are bouncing balls around, playing on the swings, and building sandcastles. One might argue that these kids are just "playing", but what do we "play" if not games?

It's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye -- then it fails the consequence criterion.

By this definition, Dear Esther, Gone Home, Glitchhikers, and Proteus (and The Stanley Parable) would definitely be games. In order to not be a game of some kind or another, you would have to not be able to interact with the systems -- or at least not interact with them in such a way as to increase your amusement or insight. Dear Esther lets you increase your insight in that exploring different areas gets you different parts of the narrative, Gone Home lets you gain insight into the narrative by searching for and studying objects left around the home, Glitchhikers lets you gain insight by interacting with the dialog trees of the hitchhikers, Proteus lets you gain insight by exploring different areas at different times to learn about the effect seasons have on the various flora and fauna of the procedural island (as well as by triggering progress by approaching the lights). Consumers of these games are still "players" rather than "viewers".

We play with systems to learn about them. Proteus's core system is change over time.

They do need a clear name so that players know what they are getting in for. I would propose "narrative exploration game" as a replacement for the intentionally pejorative "walking sim" or hoity toity "interactive digital narrative experience". "Narrative exploration game" communicates the core engagement (narrative), and the core interaction (exploration) fairly succinctly in my opinion (compare to puzzle platformer, action rpg, and twitch shooter).

Gunpoint is an excellent Puzzle (core engagement) Platformer (core interaction)

It doesn't matter what names you consider or don't consider to be insulting or pejorative. It doesn't matter if the insulting name is very clear, either. One might call a gay person a "queer" or a black person a "negro", without intending to be insulting -- but they still are being exclusionary and dismissive. They are using a term meant to clearly delineate the straight from the queer and the white from the negro. Just because a term is clear, doesn't make it not pejorative.

Saying that Dear Esther, Gone Home, Glitchhikers, and Proteus are not "games" is to try to exclude them from the existing culture surrounding games and gamers. It's the same madness that people employ trying to say who is and who is not a "gamer". You are not protecting anyone from these games by calling them "walking simulators" instead of "games", you are saying "if you're a gamer, you should ignore these"; "these are unimportant to the rest of gaming culture". You are making an unnecessary and undeserved delineation. It is the same as the 19th century art critics who said that the impressionists weren't "art" and so, didn't deserve to be displayed in the galleries and expositions of the time.

I swear I didn't know about these ahead of time... I just searched "impressionism game"

Games are still so young as a medium, why define the borders so definitively now before we've had time to experiment and see how vast and expressive this medium actually is?

Doesn't have a failure state.