Jimquisition: It's Not A Video Game!

[RA92]

There's no real explicit or implicit failure or win states to that, and if that's the case I'd say that it's not a game.

I don't understand what counts as 'real' implicit fail state to some people. Gone Home is similar to LA Noire in having to find clues to progress the story, only it doesn't dramatize it by zooming in, sound cues, etc. Is anyone willing to make the argument that without the shooting bits LA Noire wouldn't be a game?

And Portal has plenty of puzzles that don't have turrets and spikes, but it still had a failure state of "didn't complete the puzzle" so it's still a game.

Once again, just the act of navigating a 3D space can be a challenge itself to new gamers, so not being able to traverse can count as an implicit failure state as well.

 

[Therumancer]

I have to disagree in the strongest possible terms. Without standards, and exclusions, labels like "video game", "art", and "music" lose all meaning. Art, which is what is being used here is an example of this. Basically by broadening the scope of what can and cannot be art we've pretty much destroyed any meaning behind the term. After all a painting or statue is art, but with broad definitions as they exist now some dude just dropping a stick on the ground (ponder the meaning) or taking a dump on a US flag in front of stage, can be defended as performance art. This is why a lot of art endowments have been under fire, including some nasty political battles over government grants (as the US government has always made a big deal out of supporting the arts) and even suggestions that they be stopped or cut off, due to the way that label has become so broad that it has no meaning. Basically an art grant is supposed to be used to support some guy, with the idea being that they will produce things of tangible value that will fill US museums and add to our culture as a whole. In reality it can be used by some dirty hippy to keep himself in weed, with him coming out and say peeing on a cruicifix and saying it took him the time and money to make that profound statement for the world. Which of course leads to fights over standards when say the people with these grants want to limit the definition of art, to not include things like this. When it comes to things like music, there have been arguments about things like Rap music and whether it should be considered music, poetry, or even just garbage, which to many people seem straightforward (from both sides), but arguments on any kind of exclusion become tainted when a definition has been allowed to become so broad that some tribal banging a rock and stick together chaotically can also be defined as "music".

Exclusion needs to be understood as being a good thing, because without it nothing has any meaning when anything can be viewed as part of anything. To some extent I think a lot of it comes down to a lot of left wing political thought where exclusion is viewed as being an anathema, which even creeps into things like schools removing competition, and becoming increasingly about self-validation, which of course leads to a lot of problems when many of these people face the real world, but that isn't really the subject here.

To me, I look back at previous labels used by the industry itself to mark things as not being video games. Truthfully it seems more like it's the *vocal* gamers and those with platforms (connected to the above, and other points about slant made via things like #gamersgate) that object to this exclusion than the actual companies themselves. As Jim points out several developers have arguably said their work was not intended to be video games. Back when things were moving from disk to CD-Rom there was a push to define "Interactive Movies" as a separate genera and you had things like "Daedalus Encounter" and others created with this attitude in mind, it was popular at the time. Truthfully a lot of the things produced by people like David Cage, and the various Telltale properties are simply modern versions of what they tried to do during that time frame. I personally see no real problem with separating things like that from video games and calling them "interactive movies". In other harder to define cases but where something should not be a video game simply calling them "I.E.E." Interactive Electronic Experiences would be accurate and prevent confusion. I do not think anyone is served in the long term by overly broad definitions which could literally mean a program that simply gets turned on and produces static, a video fireplace, or a screen saver, could all be considered video games by merits of the fact that they use a video display and people interact with them (even if it's just by watching, or choosing to turn them on and off). That's where this ultimately goes. In the end it will mean video games will become like "art" where a hobo taking a snapshot of himself pissing on a train track can claim it's art.

What's more we as gamers have a vested interest in these exclusions, largely because if we want society to take this seriously, and see more things like scholorships and grants being given towards game design to produce more video games and such, we do not want to create an environment where donors don't want to get involved out of fear that their money is going to be spent supporting some dude who makes screensavers out of Lolcats. Or that say some film student will get a video game grant to produce a movie, saying it's a game because he occasionally has you hit a button to continue (with no real intent to be involved in gaming). If we become as broad in our definition as art and music that won't actually bring the prestige and acceptance we want, rather it will functionally bring a lot of scorn, as those things are already under fire with supporters pulling out (or trying to) simply because of how broad the definitions have become. Basically a guy who donates money to try and produce the next Mozart doesn't want his cash going to some dude who screams about how great it is to be a criminal in front of some dude spitting out a beat into his fist, and some dude wanting to help finance the next generation of Michaelangelos doesn't want to see his money going towards people flinging poo at a canvas and watching it dry "as a metaphor for how much society stinks".

I mean would you risk giving say $50k to me (someone you don't know) to produce a video game under the current standards? For all you know I'll blow the money on garbage, take some pictures of my junk, and put them on the internet with a mouth-shaped cursor so the world can suck me off. Jim would say that's just a bad video game nobody would play, but fits the definition, me, I'd call it trash and inflammatory to boot.... and hey, I cheated you, but good luck getting your money back under that definition because I did "support myself producing a video game" sorry if it didn't meet your standards but who are you to be pretentious and say what a video game can and cannot be. After all I've always wanted to tell the world to "suck me" and you let me finally realize that dream through a video game.... or so I can claim.

Understand by current definition we might as well consider 4chan an artists commune, and perhaps the greatest contributor of artwork to today's popular culture given the widespread influence it has. Indeed it could be argued more people nowadays are probably familiar with their antics and "productions" than the works of the great painters of the renaissance... Jim seems to want to do this to video games.

 

[Lightknight]

Another good ep Jim, but do you think that steam will ever create some method of filtering out this trash, or is the lure of money too much for them to resist?

That's an excellent question, but how would we expect for them to filter games out? A lot of the games don't have a metacritic score even if they're good because they're indie.

Perhaps steam will need to become it's own metacritic rating system. That would be a good solution if they also figured out a way to prevent people tanking or boosting scores for political reasons or whatever.

 

[Evonisia]

What?! Now I want the Silent Hill Downpour episode (especially since you, me and about 10 other people actually liked it) :-(

But yeah this attitude really only gives me the impression that people use it to describe more interactive story or world driven experiences that they didn't like.

 

[Genocidicles]

So how exactly would declaring tripe like Gone Home 'non-games' hold back the medium exactly? It wouldn't stop people from making and selling them, they would just be called 'interactive experiences' or some shit.

 

[Agayek]

Thats still an implicit win state, and due to player interactivity, its completely possible to not encounter that win state. Its possible to simply not get from Point A to Point B, like in a game like Dear Esther. The very movement you make as a player character requires accurate input on the part of the player, input that you can fail at. Running to the left of the screen at the beginning of a level in MegaMan is as valid a way as playing the game as proceeding through the level as intended, because both require player input.

You could also run laps on the front porch for three hours instead of exploring the house. All player input made is valid gameplay, just to different effects. Its an implicity fail state to do so, because you garner no new narrative content by doing that. Its really no different from failing to complete a puzzle in Portal.

And when you do that, you're not actually trying to complete the game, which kinda makes it irrelevant. That's the player consciously choosing not to engage with the game.

I'm basing my statements on the fundamental understanding of "the player is trying to engage with the software". You can make up all kinds of scenarios that would make anything fit any definition. For example, the player could simply stay on the train at the opening of HL2, quit, and call it a "non-game". That doesn't mean those scenarios stand up under scrutiny or basic reasonable expectations. I expect that once people start the program, they intend to engage with it and participate in the world it creates for them to engage with. Basing definitions and assumptions on them not engaging with it is spurious at best.

I don't understand what counts as 'real' implicit fail state to some people. Gone Home is similar to LA Noire in having to find clues to progress the story, only it doesn't dramatize it by zooming in, sound cues, etc. Is anyone willing to make the argument that without the shooting bits LA Noire wouldn't be a game?

I haven't played Gone Home. I have no experience with it, which means I have no opinion on it. I drew two wildly divergent conclusions from different sets of information, presented them both, and said that I couldn't say which is the case.

 

[Entitled]

as a side note i love how nobody here is realy bringing up the walking dead, which is basicly a visual novel but is made without any japanese influence and so suddenly nobody questions its legitimacy....

Walking Dead is neither sprite-based, nor textbox-based. It's not in first person, and it doesn't have divergent routes.

You are still walking around with a character in a 3D space, and often solve straightforward adventure game puzzles, while VNs often have literally no more than 5-6 interactive mouse clicks through the whole story.

VNs are a specific format, with a specific definition. And yes, that format's details were codified exclusively by Japan, so anything trying to imitate it's patterns would be Japanese-influenced by definition. A VN not inspired by Japan, makes about as much sense as a Card Battle series that isn't inspired by anime. Even if someone would really stumble upon the basic premise without intentional imitation, it would be so different, that it would be a stretch to call it an example of the genre.

There are some OELVNs that don't have animesque visual art or narratives, but they were still Japanese-influenced from the moment their creators decided to follow the VN format.

 

[captain_dalan]

I have to agree with John Bain and some other posts here. Without a proper definition words do lose meaning (even though they may get a new one in the process - i am looking at you decimation). And just like them, i don't think i am restricting the media by sticking to a definition, but rather allow for opportunities of other forms to arise beyond the current standard. I haven't played many of the "games" called on in the vid, but for those that i did, i really don't think they fall into the game category. If we do allow for a "broad" and liberal use of any word, then where do we stop? Is a commercial a movie? Is news broadcast a movie? Is a documentary a movie? Or..... if take that baseball, cricket, chess, poker, paper-scissors-rock are all games, then do we restrict the media if we don't include reading the papers in it? In lack of better forms of communication, words are the best thing we have, and IMO we should stick to having relatively consistent meanings for them.

Far from me to say we should not apply critical thinking to them. Or to games....or movies.....or any form of art or expression in general. And ever further from me saying we should all agree in our critical analysis. As long as we know what it is that we agree or disagree on that is. Some of us may like "Dear Esther", some of us may like. Maybe for different reasons, maybe for the same ones. But i would not call it a game anymore then i would call the FIFA World's Cup finals a good read

 

[OldGrover]

So how exactly would declaring tripe like Gone Home 'non-games' hold back the medium exactly? It wouldn't stop people from making and selling them, they would just be called 'interactive experiences' or some shit.

Well, for that matter, why stop there? Why not declare anything we don't like "non-games"? I strongly dislike war shooters post the original few Call of Duty games - can I come up with a definition that excludes them? Probably I could. I strongly dislike Bejewelled and its ilk - how about re-catagorizing "casual games" as "casual experiences"?

I think "Gone Home", whether you like it or not, is clearly a game - it has interactive elements, it has puzzle elements, it requires you to work to complete it, even if that only takes a reasonable amount of intellectual ability. That I can't change its outcome significantly is no different than a half dozen linear war shooters released this year - they also proceed inexorably towards a pre-determined outcome, given a reasonable amount of twitch ability on the part of the player.

Putting them into a sub-genre of games makes perfectly reasonable sense - story focussed or puzzle or narrative or interactive novels, whatever, but the idea that you can draw that line perfectly is a pipe dream. Being a big tent hobby is a good thing - let's bring in lots of people, with their own ideas of what games are, let's be expansive, let's cross lines, let's mix and match, let's mashup... Everyone can come play, whatever play means to them.

 

[Agayek]

But pressing the button inputs to walk is itself engagement with the game. Its just engaging the game in a way that doesn't progress the narrative. In that regard, its not that much different from roaming most open-world sandboxes. Nobody would say that simply running around the open-world endlessly isn't gameplay, when in fact, its a lot of people's favourite parts of games like Fallout 3. Hell, Watch_Dogs is banking on you doing this, and added tons of environmental objects and street crime because people do that.

Thats the thing, any sort of player input is still input. Its engagement. There's no such thing as valid and invalid player input, because you're either interacting or you're not. Mechanically speaking, it doesn't matter how you play the game. Jumping in circles, completing puzzles, and shooting people are all player input, they're all ways of playing the game. Maybe not as intended, and maybe not playing the game well, but it is still playing the game.

Something seems to be getting lost in translation, so let me try to clarify further:

I am speaking from a position where "the player engages with the game as it is intended to be by the creator" is the default assumption. I am not referring to random "but what if you do X?" scenarios, as those can be made to fit any possible definition, and are therefore useless for the purposes of definitions, debate, or conversation. Yes, it is totally possible for people to do completely inane things that the software in question was never intended to do, much like how you can use a microwave to destroy optical discs, for example. That doesn't make a microwave any less of a cooking implement, just like someone running in circles in HL2 makes it less of a game.

My point is that it's ridiculous and unhelpful to base arguments and definitions on "potential" rather than on "execution". When it comes to discussions of "failure state", there needs to be a base understanding that the player is attempting to engage the software on the terms it was intended to be engaged on. Otherwise, you can come up with an infinite amount of sophist bullshit that can support any and all possible arguments.

 

[James Hull]

I kind of want to see the Silent Hill Downpour video now...

 

[Wisq]

Basically an art grant is supposed to be used to support some guy, with the idea being that they will produce things of tangible value that will fill US museums and add to our culture as a whole. In reality it can be used by some dirty hippy to keep himself in weed, with him coming out and say peeing on a cruicifix and saying it took him the time and money to make that profound statement for the world. Which of course leads to fights over standards when say the people with these grants want to limit the definition of art, to not include things like this.

Or, instead of trying to (re)define art, they could just define criteria required to receive a grant. Especially since "art" has been in the eye of the beholder since long before we had grants anyway.

What's more we as gamers have a vested interest in these exclusions, largely because if we want society to take this seriously, and see more things like scholorships and grants being given towards game design to produce more video games and such, we do not want to create an environment where donors don't want to get involved out of fear that their money is going to be spent supporting some dude who makes screensavers out of Lolcats.

One, they can also define criteria required for a scholarship or grant. Or just judge them based on those criteria.

Two, video games will be taken seriously when the people who grew up playing video games become the people giving out the scholarships and grants. (Sure, some places are already trying to get ahead of that, but often with laughable results because they don't truly understand the subject matter.)

I mean would you risk giving say $50k to me (someone you don't know) to produce a video game under the current standards? For all you know I'll blow the money on garbage, take some pictures of my junk, and put them on the internet with a mouth-shaped cursor so the world can suck me off.

No, I wouldn't risk giving you $50k because a) that's a lot of money (to me, maybe not to some) and b) even if I 100% trust your intentions, there are an awful lot of terrible or never-completed indie games out there. It would have nothing to do with what I considered a "game" or not.

(Besides, if I were giving that much money, I would want to know exactly what the game was going to be, long in advance, so we wouldn't have the problem of definitions.)

Understand by current definition we might as well consider 4chan an artists commune

Works for me. (Although I'd be much less inclined to hang out there than in most artists' communes.)

and perhaps the greatest contributor of artwork to today's popular culture given the widespread influence it has.

Quantity is not quality -- nor influence. 4chan memes are directly used in many situations, but classic works have a much more subtle influence. In fact, the proof of their widespread influence is that we often don't even know we're invoking them, they've become so ingrained in our culture. Tropes, words, film techniques, etc.

Some 4chan memes might someday reach that status, but for the most part, they're fleeting and already feel dated within a few months or years.

 

[Demonchaser27]

Firstly, Jim, nothing Personal.. but you and the rest pof the Steam Curators can drown in a lake if it gets that section off my store page.

Secondly. I think the criticism of 'it's Not a game' is valid. Sorry but it is. The idea of a game is that not only is it interactive ut it also allows a means of expression and changing the state of the world through actions. Dear Ester, Gone Home, I really can't count as games. There's not really anything to do in them. I feel less like a player and more just the trained moneky the narrator is employing to turn the pages in their book.

Now that's not saying, these are bad things but games convey certain expectations and when you have a definition that can really be *that* broad then it pretty much undermines the idea of a definition.

There needs to be some definition and guidelines as to what constitutes a game and not. Now that's not constricting the medium mind you, no it simply creates a new medium. I consider things like Gone Home and dear Ester to be not so much games as 'visual interactive novels'.

Animal Crossing may not have a lose state but you can change the state of the game in a way that you wish. Gone Home... there's not so much that the player changes in the world. Would the world be any different if the player did not follow through the game? If No, well then It's not really a game is it? That is not a bad thing. A visual interactive novel/story can be quite good if taken as that...

So i for one will say Gone Home is not a Video Game.. it is a Visual Interactive Novel. Rather than trying to broaden a definition to encompass everything much better to create new definitipons for thinsg that fall outside the previous data set.


Now Jim, there's a lovely boiling lake in South Africa... would you and the rest of the Team Curator be so kind as to take a swim in it. You'd make me and a thousand or so other steam users ever so happy. Because it's either thant or Valve realizes their mistake and moves the curator block somewhere else in their interface. So You... curators, boiling lake.. chop-chop

I genuinely agree with this. I don't think games "need" a failure state. I mean I could play Pokemon Puzzle League all day on the free play mode and still enjoy it. However in the part where you talk about "obeying rules that are set for the sake of it" I think that they very best video games allow you to bend those rules a bit.

I take a very Matrix-y approach to how I look at good gameplay. I think Morpheus' line, "Just like a computer program there are rules. Some can be bent, others can be broken," fits prefectly into my idea of a well designed game. Super Metroid is one of my favorite games solely because it has this sort of gaming logic to it. Things can be reached and/or surpassed out of order. The playthrough is rigidly dictated by the player's knowledge or lack-there-of. Players love to be able to find tricks and "cheat the system", if you will. After all, there is the whole saying about "Rules are meant to be broken."

 

[jdogtwodolla]

Remember when Wii Fit came out? That was the first game in the "not a game" trend that's been going on still to this day. That was followed by point n clicks of all types, which really shows how bullshit people wanting to use this undefined label can be.

Trying to define it is useless and it does nothing good for games. It barely does anything at all seeing how it's moved from genre to genre, but never anything good.

Well in the case of Wii Fit, the challenge is more or less beat your highscore.

IMO one of the simplest ways to ensure that a work meets the more traditional definitions of a game is a score of some sort.

And sorry if this makes me sound like an asshole, but how does one measure feels?

How do you measure feels? I don't know, and I don't know if it's even appropriate. I'm not even sure what I said to bring on that question.

what is a traditional definition of a game? Thomas was Alone, Bioshock, Machinarium, Tag and Ring Toss at the local fair (toss one ring onto a bottle and win the bass guitar) don't really have scores. Machinarium doesn't even have a fail state as far as I've played into it.

 

[Agayek]

Okay, you would have to be brain dead to not see this as Sterling weighing in on GamerGate despite saying he would not.
Can't help himself I guess.
Just like he had to side with Quinn with wizardchan.

Two things:
1) He already weighed in on GamerGate 2 weeks ago, and it wasn't to side with gamers. Quit crying about it.

2) Where the fuck did you get all this from? What the hell does someone saying "no man, these are totally games" have to do with GamerGate?

 

[Wisq]

2) Where the fuck did you get all this from? What the hell does someone saying "no man, these are totally games" have to do with GamerGate?

I think a lot of people don't remember (or even necessarily knew in the first place) what GamerGate was all about. It's morphed into a sort of generic tag for "everything wrong with games, ever".