All of it is mainly interaction with the environment. Though through interaction you would get clues for a certain puzzle to solve. It is all in a similar vein to cluedo.Thorn14 said:
Jimquisition: It's Not A Video Game!
- Thread starter Jimothy Sterling
- Start date
Not talking about you, but TB was clearly disingenuous when he was saying that he doesn't use the term in a 'derogatory' manner. What he's doing is excluding these games from the conversation because to him clearly they are something 'less' than his mechanics-heavy games of choice.MrDumpkins said:
Agayek" post="6.861792.21452605 said:
While I generally like his reviews (yes, I'm calling them that), I really didn't like his "in defense of definitions" video. You have your definitions, I have mine, but at the end of the day it's all semantics. TB might consider a "review" to specifically be a formal work, but a review is a review is a review. I looked the word up on dictionary.com, and yeah, TB's strict definition of the word IS listed, as the fifth definition. You have to make your way through four definitions before even getting to any mention of formality, and even that definition isn't referring to something like video game or movie reviews.Loki_The_Good said:
But I digress, the point I was gonna make is that I agree more with Jim than with TB. While I certainly can see how fail states are important to some games, they should be no means be part of the primary definition. In fact, the definition for video games that I've always used is basically how Jim said it in this episode (clearly he stole it from me); an interactive medium that requires on-going input from the user in order to progress. Gone Home and Dear Ester will stop "playing" if you don't move the mouse around and press on the keyboard, hence they are video games.
I'm not sure if calling Dear Esther a video game is justified when there's no discernible difference between playing it yourself and watching it on YouTube.
A walking simulator is technically a video game, but Dear Esther is so bare-bones that I'm not sure if it can be even called that. You don't have any interactions with the environment, so you may as well just be a floating camera and not a person in the game world, and you are always walking on the same linear path.
EDIT:
I just realized something. By his definition The Jimquisition is a video game. I can view it on my screen and interact with it using my mouse and keyboard (play, pause, jump to a certain point). So, is The Jimquisition a game? If so, it's more awful than Dear Esther. Even less interactivity.
A walking simulator is technically a video game, but Dear Esther is so bare-bones that I'm not sure if it can be even called that. You don't have any interactions with the environment, so you may as well just be a floating camera and not a person in the game world, and you are always walking on the same linear path.
EDIT:
I just realized something. By his definition The Jimquisition is a video game. I can view it on my screen and interact with it using my mouse and keyboard (play, pause, jump to a certain point). So, is The Jimquisition a game? If so, it's more awful than Dear Esther. Even less interactivity.
I wouldn't call those segments an extension of the menu screen, but the sentiment is more or less accurate. Or to be more accurate, if the games were only those opening bits, I'd consider them as "walking simulators" or whatever the preferred term is instead of "games".RA92 said:
I hope you realize that the game was released in Japan and that every single early Japanese visual novel took direct inspiration from this game, right down to using a Western art style instead of an Asian one (and thus have similar gameplay as well).Thorn14 said:
So why would visual novels be somehow different from video games when the very first recorded cases of a visual novel took directly their inspiration from something that you described as a video game and not as something that should be considered as a non-game but as something else?
I've never played the game and my only knowledge of it is a wikipedia search. I assumed it had puzzles and item hunts like your average early LucasArts adventure game. But I do know that visual novels rarely involve anything beyond making an A B or C choice at a certain time.hydrolythe said:
Thats not gameplay, because if it was, those "Choose your own adventure books" would be video games.
Phoenix Wright IS a game however because you have to find the right objects, present evidence at the right time, and all the other tricks it adds in.
I didn't like Dear Esther; far too pretentious for my liking. 'Gone Home' was good. I would have preferred it to have more puzzles in it (or any puzzles at all), but I fear that this was entirely the point. The Parable of Stanley felt like a nine day wonder. A highly amusing nine day wonder, but a nine day wonder nonetheless.
The only significant game that feels missing here is 'To the Moon'. Magnificent story, great characters, very funny dialogue, but zero game play element. That poor squirrel.
The only significant game that feels missing here is 'To the Moon'. Magnificent story, great characters, very funny dialogue, but zero game play element. That poor squirrel.
Didnt they also served as movement tutorials and teach you how to interact with your world? Like picking up stuff, opening lockers, moving objects etc?Agayek said:
I have a new criteria if something is a game or not for you guys to think about:
If there is a youtube video of someone experiencing the game... will there be any enjoyment left for you yourselfe if you go through it? Or is the story the only thing of interest and the whole thing will be rendered redundand by watching a youtube video of it?
If a game can be completly "ruined" by a youtube video of it... there is no reason to call it a game. Thats why lets plays dont really kill the enjoyment of games because everyone experiences games differently. But if the experience is allways the same for everyone... then where is the game?
Loki_The_Good said:
What I think is that TB doesn't realize is that languages are evolving, ever-changing things and the first things that tend to change with the times. If you try learning a 1000 year old dialect of you own language you will find that many words are the same but have changed meanings or even have the opposite definitions.
The dictionary is not set in stone and definitions widen and pronunciation change as the decades roll by.
I'm gonna cut right in here and say that I find this sentence to be extremely dangerous, intellectually speaking.WhiteTigerShiro said:
To borrow a phrase, "Words offer the means to meaning, and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth". Words, and by extension semantics, are the cornerstone of rational thought. They define and shape how you think, what you believe, and how your mind works. And in that, it's perfectly fine for everyone to have their own personal definitions. After all, it's their own minds, people can think however they please.
The problem is when those definitions are put forward as a means of communication. Words are the only means by which we can convey ideas, the only vehicle through which people can connect with and share their perspectives with others. But if the word has wildly different meanings to each individual, meaning is lost. Conversation withers and dies. Shared, collaborated, and improved ideas are driven out. It becomes impossible to hold rational discourse because both parties are using the same words to say completely different things.
That's why definitions are important. The entirety of human society is based on them. It is never acceptable for the same word to mean completely different things to any two people, because that undermines the very foundation of human interaction.
For the sake of clarity, I will assume that a game requires two things: A. Interactivity, and B. A failure state. Which, outside of kinetic novels, pretty much every visual novel has. I will use Katawa Shoujo as an example, for it is a very base VN, and most others expand on it's mechanics by adding things like puzzles, mini games, trainable stats and more.Thorn14 said:
In Katawa Shoujo, at certain points in the game, you will choose what to do, where to go, and what to say to several characters. Doing this garners points in a hidden system. Spending time at the track field gives you points with one girl, spending time at the library helps with another, and so on. This is the interactivity. If you fail to gain enough favor with a girl in the first chapter, you get a game over, likewise, in each of the girl's routes there are several times where you can choose to do something wrong (like cheat on your girlfriend with her best friend) that will also give you a failure state.
and finally, if there's no harm in them not being called games, then there certainly isn't any harm in them being called games, right?
Actually, thinking about it, it's not just about the diminishment of the games.Thorn14 said:
The definition of gamer is defined as people who play games. If we say certain genres of games(experiences, whatever) aren't games, we can say certain people aren't gamers and their makers aren't game developers. If you like visual novels and walking simulators and play them more than other games and play other games only occasionally, why should you be considered a nongamer, and therefore not worthy of attention or consideration when discussing development of games, when you likely dedicate as much time to or more to these sort of experiences? If you take the time to actually make these games(experiences, whatever), why shouldn't you be considered a game developer as much as anyone else who put their time to these issues?
Also, such distinctions between the two potentially leads to adding elements to these non-games that ultimately wouldn't improve them to be considered valid by these people who claim these genres aren't games. The Stanley Parable wouldn't have been improved (and I argue it would have been harmed) by adding failure states, but it would have become a game, making people who play it gamers and the people who made it game developers.
Finally, as much as I hate to bring it up and bring bile upon myself, I'm not going to censor myself on this because I feel this is an important point. This idea has the (intentional or unintentional) consequence of labeling some women-dominated genres among both buyers and developers as not part of the larger gaming scene. Gone Home was primarily developed by women, for example, and while I don't have statistics on me, I'd hazard a guess that the visual novel market has many female buyers and developers as well.
If people are going to ask why women supposedly don't make games and instead just complain about them (a discussion this forum went through pre-gamergate), why when women are actually making experiences that at the very require all the work of games if they aren't games themselves do we seek to define those games as non-games? When people ask "Why aren't women making games instead of complaining about them?" or "Why should we cater to women? they aren't important in the current market" do they really just mean "Why aren't women making games to match my standards?" or "Why should we cater to women? Women don't play right kinds of games to matter to me"? If so, then both arguments are completely bunk courtesy of the definitional goalpost moving hidden beneath them, and there really is little reason to justify the current state of gaming and the industry for women.
I think there is a problem with your statement, since "Choose Your Own Adventure Books" are not on a video device. Which cancels them out of the definition entirely.Thorn14 said:
They actually require interaction through video motion in order to continue, which is why I consider them to be video games.