Exactly what is a game, Sup Forums...

Exactly what is a game, Sup Forums? A lot of anons claim that independent arthouse projects like Stanley Parable or Dear Esther shouldn't be ranked as vidya even if they share the same platform as Half Life or Portal, but can you truly set a definition for what a "game" is? Discuss.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language-game_(philosophy)

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Sure, in a game you can win or lose.

So this means that the early "Lego crossover" games (Lego Star Wars, Lego Batman, Lego Indiana Jones, etc.) aren't games since there technically isn't a lose state in any level?

Yep

Mad Max 2, Naruto The Movie, and Substance Painter also "share the same platform as Half Life or Portal."

What about, say, Grand Theft Auto? You can die during missions but that's the only time where you actually suffer a lose state. Dying in regular open world gameplay doesn't seem to count as an actual loss since there isn't any substantial penalty in terms of progress and as such, you aren't technically losing anything. Does that mean GTA is only a video game during missions?

And on the opposite end of your definition, what about games where there isn't a win state? Space Invaders, Tetris, Snake, etc - all of these are embodied in popular culture as video games, and yet, you can't really reach any sort of victory in them.

Isn't your definition a little arbitrary, user?

Those live actions films were made using the Source engine? I had no idea.

Yep

So almost nothing is a video game them, not even some of the most Sup Forums-core stuff around!

an exercise of skill that gives the participant enjoyment.

lol fags

a work that can have meaningful, unique reactions to player input - turning the page to read more text is not very meaningful, but something as simple as discovering an audio log is.

Do you think the meaning of the audiolog will be different for literally every single person that finds it?

i mean the act of having to seek it out results in unique interactions, not the audio log itself

if you were to simply have a set of audiologs down a single hallway, i'd argue the work is closer to an audio drama than a game. I haven't played dear esther so i have no idea how linear it actually is, but stanley parable definitely makes the act of discovery an important aspect of the experience, so i'd firmly categorize that as game.

Watch this.

Infinite audiologs.

youtube.com/watch?v=5SepcT0KtUM

F

youtube.com/watch?v=I7v4bJQTRcU

F

i don't follow, but F

Don't need to, go do the thing.

imo you need to be able to lose to call it a game

When children play pretend, like when they are pretending on the play ground to be pirates or Jedi or pokemon trainers or whatever, that is sometimes called a "game." However there isn't any way to win or lose.

It's an incredible scene from an underrated 90s cartoon.

This desu. Locking a game to something you have to either win or lose is incredibly restrictive.

pretending to be something so you can wave yourarms around and use your imagination is not a game. it's playing around.

a game should have a gamble.

Interactive systems with clearly defined rules and some system in place that evaluates your performance I guess? The performance evaluation can either be severe win/lose states or something like scores.

You cannot win Tetris

You cannot lose Myst

Try again

A game is structured playing. Playing is is a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities normally associated with recreational pleasure and enjoyment.

There you go.

>in a game you can win or lose

That is true for a GOOD game. Because it's boring if there is no risk whatsoever. Even minecraft which is all about building wouldn't be half as successfull without the fact that monsters in the game can kill you.
However, just because you can't lose it, doesn't make it not a game.

you can be bested by a puzzle in myst

>you cannot lose myst
what is a bad ending

The challenge of defining a game is this:

Any definition of "game" must necessarily describe Tag, since everyone agrees tag is a game.

But nobody wins or loses tag (you just play until it's time to stop playing), and the rules are extremely lax and ill-defined from one person to the next.

Also hide and seek.

There is no challenge mate. There is a legit established and world wide acknowledged definition.

You can lose in Minecraft. Dying and losing all your items can be a pretty severe loss actually, more so than just losing a minute or progress and going back to a checkpoint.

Wittgenstein should never be translated

You don't "lose" by getting stuck. That's the thing about puzzles; if you "lose" by not having it solved, you lose every puzzle over and over just by virtue of playing it.

Puzzles are games that can be won but not lost; endless score attacks are games that can lost but not won.

So if a game has to have a win and a lose state, it's neither.

Tag is a game that keeps restarting after somebody lost

Then post it. And when you do, decide if it actually described Tag or Hide and Seek.

And if it doesn't, then explain to me how Tag isn't a game.

>Even minecraft which is all about building wouldn't be half as successfull without the fact that monsters in the game can kill you.

learn2read m80

it's already there

>Tag is a game that keeps restarting after somebody lost
Is Halo a game that keeps restarting after someone is hit by a bullet?

You're bending the idea of "stop" and "restart" to try and draw a concrete win condition in tag where none exists.

>You cannot win Tetris
The only winning move is not to play. Checkmate.

I got fucking axed in Myst or Riven

I can accept that.

Though
>structured playing
Then Dear Esther is 100% a game.

Nobofy cares about tag you guys.
Point is, regardless of whether you can win or not, it's still a game, but a the ability to win or lose is like the salt in the soup and is what makes a game exciting.

A set of rules a user wants to adhere to.

Games require a winning and losing state. Your input must affect the outcome.

VNs are not games. The Walking Dead is AMOST not a game, as there is some combat between the choices you make that don't affect the outcome. That said, that combat is awful.

Well, I wasn't the guy that said it isn't. I am the guy that just wanted to correct the guy that wrote a game is all about winning and losing.

Definition of game: (noun) Sup Forums likes it

>a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck

video game is that but played on a screen in a virtual world

It needs to be a form of play, that is to say the one using the video game needs to
>engage in activity for enjoyment and recreation rather than a serious or practical purpose

It can be competitive or not, and it needs rules to decide what degrees of freedom the user has.

It's pretty simple really

So, you didn't play Myst? Myst has a hard lose state.

You have a goal in tag whether youre escaping or chasing, failing or succeeding at it is a win condition. There's no overarching score or anything to keep track of the ultimate winner but saying that tag doesnt have win or lose states is disingenuous

A game is something you play.
Play is defined by its entertainment purpose.
Hence for example in the context of using a simulator to learn something or farming gold to sell it on WoW, the object can not be constituted as a game.

Ace Attorney and Danganronpa are VNs with winning and losing states.

Let's analyze some genres

>FPS, RPGs, ASSFAGGOTS
It's play, it's competitive, it has very clear rules and it's decided by skill and in the case of games like CSGO by luck as well.

>VNs
It's play, it's not competitive, it has simplistic but clear rules for progression, but it is not decided by skill, strength or luck. Therefore it's not a game.

>Walking Simulators
Like VNs, they aren't decided by skill, strength or luck and you are just watching the events unfold in front of you. Not a game.

Therefore, a game is defined by having either a win or lose condition, or both.

AA are more like adventure VNs, which need skill in order to win unlike eroge VNs. My verdict: Games.

Sengoku is an eroge VN with a lot of gameplay.

It's stupid to say winning condition, an infinite roguelike doesn't have one but it's a game. Just use my definition and instead of saying win/lose say that it requires skill or luck. It's a more general and inclusive definition, while still excluding walking sims or lewds.

I meant to type Sengoku Rance.

Yes, I guess there are some of those but they aren't the norm.

So a game is something that is designed to challenge the player, drawing from their abilities and thereby stimulating them to achieve some positive effect. Things like infinite roguelikes still have setbacks and lost progress, which can be considered losses. I would still say it's valid to define a game as requiring a win or lose condition.

That means, Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls are games since you need some skill for QTEs, but Life is Strange isn't a game since you don't need any actual skills? What about point-and-click adventures like Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle?

that's just distorting the meaning of winning and losing, you cannot win roguelikes like dorf, period
there is no win condition in the rules of the game

You define what a game is by defining what things are not games. Much like how the Catholic church defined what a real religion is by instead defining things like Paganism and Heaven's Gate not as a religion, but as a cult. Although the end result is an amorphous definition, a reasonable person would be able to differentiate between a game and a non-game, and a religion and a cult.

That works until you get weird borderline stuff like VNs with game elements and simulators without any goals.

Monkey Island needs thinking so those are skills in my opinion.

As far as QTE go, I wouldn't call those skills. It's just pushing a button, it would be like saying that having the hand-eye coordination to move the pointer is a skill, which isn't.

As a follow up, QTEs are not skills but rhythm games are. Just like moving the mouse pointer and clicking an icon isn't a skill but aiming in a shooter game is.

>having the hand-eye coordination to move the pointer is a skill
Gives your mouse to a person who has never used a computer before and watch as they struggle doing that. It's a skill, but one taken for granted. I guess QTE's are more about reaction times than skill though.

Okay, now explain how Rhythm Heaven is not a game that only consists of QTEs.

>Gives your mouse to a person who has never used a computer before and watch as they struggle doing that
My definitions are only for heteronormative cisgendered white men.

I guess it ends up as a matter of opinion, I wouldn't include QTEs as skills except in the form of rhythm games.

Couldn't you argue that dwarf fortress has player-defined win/lose conditions? It only truly becomes a game when you're in a frame of mind to devise some grand scheme and make strides toward achieving it. Otherwise it falls short of being a game, and is a mere sandbox.

It is, but the QTEs are not trivial so they take skill. I wouldn't call an FPS a game if all you had to do was aim at a big target in the middle of the screen to win.

Dorf is a sandbox game. It's for play, it has rules and it takes skills and luck. Simple. The hard thing to do is where you draw the line as to what is a skill and what isn't.

Never saw your grandpa use a computer user? This definition's too arbitrary desu

Basing a definition on difficulty is not a good idea. Difficulty is a subjective thing. I've seen people struggling with Heavy Rain QTEs to the point they got stuck.

the problem with your definition is that there are no hard lines that can be drawn when it comes to how much skill it takes, it could easily boil down to "that game was too easy, therefore it wasn't a game"

From what I remember there were two schools of literary criticism/philosophy of video games: narratology, that thinks games as another mean to tell a story and ludology that thinks games are it's own thing and should be studied as formal and abstract systems (??)

>mfw Wittgenstein was right and they can't be strictly defined
>mfw I don't know what games are anymore

You can just say that because difficulty is subjective, whether something or not is considered a game depends on the individual. For instance, consider how most of Sup Forums refuses to consider modern "games," games.

a game is what i say is a game because i am the only real person in the universe

prove me wrong dorktheists

That's exactly my point though. If you base your definition on difficulty, it will become a subjective definition and everyone will have a different definition of what a video game is. Sup Forums hates to be associated with people that play certain games which is why they define games in a way to exclude those people. I've seen Sup Forumsirgins arguing that turn-based RPGs aren't games since all you do is pick stuff from a menu.

Everyone is forgetting that the moral of Wittgenstein's story is that terms don't have to be clearly defined for them to be meaningful.

doing something extremely stupid and dying is the fail state, lol


are you a retard or something?

If you're fine with almost everyone disagreeing with you, sure, go ahead.

the problem is that you're basing your entire definition on the presence of skill.

It would be much easier to define based on the presence of any interaction at all, though still difficult.

e.g. Nekopara is not a game because there is not only no interaction, but no illusion of interaction, unlike even most VNs

I know the OP is asking us to disprove Wittgenstein and nail down a discrete definition of a game, but as is clear from this thread, it varies by person, because a game is defined by subjective parameters. Therefore there is no universal index for determining what is worthy being a game, and you must add the variable of the individual to this so-called equation in order to solve for the answer of what is a game. The problem people have when considering what constitutes a game is that they leave subjectivity out of it, when that is in fact integral to a game's identity. It's what gives games their beauty. Art has the exact same problem. I think a more interesting question would be, what distinguishes a game from art?

>I think a more interesting question would be, what distinguishes a game from art?
No user please don't

I think the defining characteristic of a game is choice resulting in variable outcome towards some ultimate goal. A simple pass-fail mechanic is not a game. A puzzle is not a game because there's only a single valid solution. But a series of them offering variable outcome (you get some right and get some wrong) that can be compared to another's outcome would be considered a game. Asking someone a quiz question isn't a game, but a quiz show is because you've created a way to score that variable outcome against someone else. I feel like some form of "score" is very important in a game. Even many old-ass adventure games had a score, because you were able to reach the end without necessarily doing every single thing it wanted. Getting to the end of say RE1, your leftover ammo is a score. A direct measure of how your decisions added up over the course of the game.

You don't necessarily need something as hard as a win-lose, but you need at least some way to measure a series of choices. A lot of things can fall under this, and you can make nearly anything a game if you want by creating your own framework for what the score is, but how good a game is will largely come down to the nuance of choices and outcomes available.

user here confirms you don't play around in games

What I'm saying is that I think games and art are similar, but fundamentally different. In both cases they are fundamentally reflections of the individual. I'm not trying to ask "are games art?" because I don't think they are, strictly speaking. I would consider the two cousins. Unfortunately I don't have time to flesh out this idea at the moment.

That's just the easy way out though. As soon as you add even the slightest subjectivity into a definition, it loses its meaning because anything can be a game then. Plus, there are many cases where you will need a global definition of what a game is. Even if you're free to subjectively think of anything as a game, not everything can be a game for everyone. Thus, all we need is a set of minimal common characteristics that define games. Anything that fulfills these criteria will be accepted as games by everyone. Anything else that only fulfills some of the criteria is not a game per definition, but you're still free to think of it as a game if you're a special snowflake.

Video Game: Any digital work where the player can affect the outcome of the presented material

Next thread

if i stroke my swollen member and pretend there's a mouth below it waiting for something i am not playing a game, i'm playing with my cock.

Wittgenstein is a fucking dip

Photoshop? Fucking Excel? Notepad? Calculator? Command Line Tool?

intent, user.

First post worst post

You can win Tetris. Default mode has an end and on endless winning is just beating the high score

It's the only way out. There are far too many different things that are called "games" existing today for all of humanity to universally agree on one definition. You could nail down the definition in a totalitarian fashion with language, dictating what is and is not a game, and even enforcing it via some obtuse law, but that would undermine the spirit and excitement of what games are.

Wrong.

Because that means no game is a game.

You can't affect the outcome of a game. You play the game and reach the ending. The ending is already predetermined by the story writers. You're filling in the story as you play the game. If the game has multiple endings, that's also already predetermined by the story writers. The only difference is that you ticked a different flag on your way to the ending.

You can never affect the outcome of a game, because you are confined to the rules of the game and you reach the predetermined ending of the game.

You either play the game, or you don't.

>work
you imbecile, as in a construction specifically designed to be consumed by an audience

Those are digital tools for creating unrelated material

A painting is a piece of art, an empty canvas is not