Clovus said:
I see this as highly problematic. First, if TCR simply added a room to the game that had a gun it and you had to use that gun to shoot a pig or whatever, would it suddenly be a "game" now? Or does it have to be hard to shoot the pig?
Picture it like this:
In a "game world"
You have a room, there are two doors.
Entering the left door gets you ending A
Entering the right door gets you ending B
Does walking to either door count as gameplay? It requires nothing more than pressing the forward button. There is nothing that player needs to think about.
So to address your question directly. It depends, does the player need to utilize the gun in a strategy? Does the gun require different mechanics? Does the player need to do anything other than press a button to proceed?
Clovus said:
It just seems pointless to come up with a definition like that.
To you maybe, yes. To others, not so much.
Clovus said:
What if they made it so that you could get past the monster sections by choosing two different methods? Now, even though the basic nature of the product hasn't really changed, it's suddenly can be graced with the distinction of being a "game"?
Like I said above. Choices like that aren't games, the methods you have are the game part.
Clovus said:
What does this distinction even accomplish?
Different people want different things, we can both agree on that right?
If you bought a shooting game, and 99% of the game was racing. That'd be quite annoying right?
Or say you bought a racing game, and there was only 10% racing.
Distinction helps prevent confusion. People who want gameplay can be less worried about their purchases, people who want their interactive stories can buy them with ease.
Clovus said:
Do we need to have a special category for "interactive fiction" reviews? Does Steam need a separate category for "not games" now?
Why not? They have categories for tool software, they've sold a movie, what does one more category hurt? Hell, they could even use their visual novel category.
Clovus said:
Is the problem that someone might accidentally by one of these fake games and be mad when there's not enough "gameplay" (even though reviews are a thing that exist).
Admittedly, yes, people should be smart about their purchases. I happened to be careful with mine and did not pay out of my own wallet for AMFP because I was worried about TCR's involvement.
But whether or not a review exist someone either needs either, to buy the game to review it, or play it to classify it. To save people the trouble, couldn't they be up front with consumers?
Admittedly the original Amnesia's Steam page doesn't list what the gameplay is. But Frictional released a trailer that showed at least the hiding aspect of the game, and even a demo for those who were curious.
Why couldn't TCR have done the same? Did they just want to grab everyone who loved the original game without telling them that they had cut out almost all of the mechanics? The trailer TCR released for AMFP was incredibly vague and full of jump cuts, so it's no wonder people assumed it was going to be like the original game and not another Dear Esther.
