Most computer games aren't games at all...

and they’re all the better for it.

Gaming is hip. It’s hip in popular terms with some figures reporting some 60% of US households in 2009 owning a console and with the massive penetration of home PC’s we can safely assume many of those also have games installed and being used right along with pron surfing. The computer gaming industry’s turnover annually is now measured in billions and rivals Hollywood. Gaming is also hip in the media either as bone of complaint and controversy or as a medium to leverage for marketing benefit and demographic relevance. Gaming demonstrates even more hipness in academic spheres as a field of study where it’s become the new black for garnering research grants and premising conference papers.

But I think the word ‘Game’ is a problem…

There are a number of ways we might see this problem. Observe that the following are all considered Computer/Video games:
- Tetris
- Bioshock
- Nintendogs
- World of Warcraft




In both popular and academic regard there would be little objection to a group moniker of ‘game’ being applied to all these. And yet these 4 popular examples are as radically different as hiku is from an article in the New England Journal of Medicine. Whilst we would call both ‘writing’ such a term is useless as a grouping or a definition.

So this prompts us to consider a definition of the word ‘game’ itself. Here’s a few :

“a contest with rules to determine a winner”

“a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome”

“competition conducted according to rules with the participants in direct opposition to each other”

There are two concise implications of such definitions; the first is that a Game must have a clear objective and competitive challenge/obstacle that must be overcome. And further that a game must embody a clear Win/Loose paradigm.

So with this idea - ages-old through the human history of playing games - we can measure the four ‘game’ examples above to see if they fit the parameters of a game?

Does Tetris have a clear challenge/obstacle and embody a Win/Lose structure? Yes, no doubt.

Does Bioshock have a challenge/obstacle (or series of challenges)? Yes. But, does Bioshock have a Win/Lose paradigm? No… Certainly my avatar may ‘die’ but since I am immediately re-incarnated in the nearest Vitachamber or can restart at will from my near infinite save-games; the idea of ‘losing’ in Bioshock is completely absent. Bioshock, like so many of its narrative-based computer game brethren, assumes from the outset that the player will complete the ‘story’. The challenge, drama and tension is not at all in a Win/Lose scenario but rather in the experience of working through game. The old “life is a journey not a destination” adage is wholly applicable. Completing the game is as inevitable as death, life holds no victory and neither does Bioshock; just the experience of the progressive journey from beginning to end. Now, certainly in games such as these the player may choose Not to finish/complete the game but this is not Failure or Losing anymore than walking out of a boring movie hardly constitutes a failing to watch.

So we come to Nintendogs. Is it a game? Does Nintendogs have a clear challenge/obstacle? Only in the most obtuse of terms that, aside from feeding your virtual dog, are entirely self selectable and optional. Does it have a Win/Lose scenario? Clearly not. There is no victory nor ending resulting in losing. This is not to suggest that Nintendogs is without drama and challenge engagement but as Nintendogs lacks any kind of definable and summative conclusion there is a clear lack of the parameters that would otherwise and traditionally define a game.

Lastly we come to World of Warcraft. Is the venerable MMORPG a ‘game’? Does it encompass a clear challenge/objective? Yes and No. It resembles Nintendogs in the sense that any challenges and obstacles are entirely non-compulsory and self-selectable. A premise that unto itself is largely the antithesis of a ‘game’. Does WoW have a Win/Lose premise? Definitively not. WoW has no end-point or conclusion at all. There is no state of ‘victory’ and even character death is simply a temporary set back until the ghost of the character is re-spawned at a graveyard.

From these four it is only Tetris that apparently conforms to established definitions of a ‘game’. As such, in an effort to understand what these entities formely-known-as-games really are, allow me to suggest naming groupings that don’t use the highly problematic word ‘game’ at all:

- Tetris  = puzzle
- Nintendogs = simulation
- Bioshock = interactive story
- WoW = virtual world

What I have dared to do is suggest that 3/4 of what we might call games are not games at all. It seems to me that there are two elements that have contributed to the problematic nature of the word ‘game’ and its use to describe entities that fundamentally lack game-like components. The first is that the earliest and seminal computer games were indeed ‘games’ by definition. Space Invaders, Pong, TVSports, PacMan, all had clear singular objectives with tangible Win/Lose in competition with either a fellow player or against the computer. Hence the game concept of ‘lives’ and the deflating stamp of ‘game over’.

But a great bulk of what we now think of as ‘games’ - Bioshock, the Sims, Oblivion, GTA, Nintendogs, etc - have long dispensed with these mechanics. However as the lineage can be traced directly from Pong to Bioshock the former’s status as a ‘game’ is carried forward to the later. (This seems much like the use of the term ‘Film’ to describe a feature movie even if that movie was shot digitally and not ‘on celluloid film’ at all.)

The other potential reason for the problematic nature and mis-assignment of the word ‘game’ is derived from a shared technological base. Whilst we may view Tetris, Bioshock, Nintendogs and WoW as four very separate and removed entities, the fact remains that they are all electronic entertainment, screen-based media, existing as software and all generated from the same creative tools of manufacturing computer images. The aesthetics of electronic entertainment for the viewer are invariably tied to the means of their production.

But just because WoW is made from the same tools as computer games and looks ostensibly like a computer game, does not mean that it is a ‘game’ or provides the same experience as a ‘game’ by definition. What is interesting is that few would call Second Life a ‘game’ and yet it is a twin sibling of World of Warcraft. Both are made from the same basis of a 3D graphics engine, both are open worlds where users freely choose any objectives they want to pursue. Both aesthetically look like games as the general populous would understand them. Yet both lack the Win/Lose scenario or a defined and specific objective. World of Warcraft is simply a less boring version of Second Life. It may have more things to do that involve weapons and blood and strange creatures but otherwise functions invariably as a virtual world in a dressing of game clothes..

The difference between WoW and Second Life, that warrants a popular use of the word ‘Game’ for one and not for the other, might be observed in the demographic each is trying to attract and engage. WoW calls itself a Game because it is designed to attract ‘Gamers’ - people who define themselves as Gamers. Second Life is not seeking to attract Gamers, it endeavours to attract those outside of an established gaming social grouping.

Perhaps the use or absence of the word ‘Game’ is little more than an exercise in market positioning.

Now, let me be clear - the fact that I am arguing that Bioshock, Nintendogs, WoW (and their siblings) are Not games, should not be read as a negative criticism of them as works of art and entertainment. Bioshock, WoW, Nintendogs are not deemed or positioned as lesser for being ruled outside of the name ‘Game’; indeed quite the opposite. By recognising that these forms of screen-based media entertainment and art are Not games is to acknowledge that they function above and beyond the somewhat petty Win/Lose mechanics of games. By being more complex, more nuanced, more sophisticated they are elevated and exalted. More importantly by observing that they don’t share the common traits of games we better position ourselves to more accurately understand what they really are; the means by which they engage, the other forms of art and media they fluidly derive from, remediate and connect to.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the eminent philosophers of the 20th century, uses the idea of defining Games as the premise for his seminal work ‘Philosophical Investigations’ (the Wikipedia entry on him and his book is really very good for an overview). Wittgenstein’s thrust of argument is simply that a word’s meaning is derived solely from how it is used in popular and common conversation and communication. Thus in regard to my argument here that most computer games do not fit the definition of a ‘game’, Wittgenstein would counter simply by saying that since people call them games, they are so…

It’s the kind of logic that’s hard to argue with without sounding like a wanky academic looking for a reason to justify their next research grant and conference travel funding. But I do believe that such broad and egalitarian perspective fails to make definitions useful and productive tools.

And why would we want to do that? To make BETTER games of course…! To take the art of ‘games’ further.

I would suggest that so long as we continue to define electronic interactive media as ‘games’ we will continue to curtail and truncate their development as moving-image arts by chaining them to antiquated concepts of ‘Win/Lose’ and ‘Game Over’.

Comments

[ellard]

Actually I feel Tetris and Bioshock both have death and rebirth. Either one you can try again, immortal. Some arcade games such as Pacman have no end to them (unless you get such a score as to roll over and crash the code) but they are games.
I am not sure there has to be a win or a loss, so long as there is an escalating conflict and a balance of power (channelling Chris Crawford).

One of the the wonderful things about games are emergent rules. Maybe the Internet as a whole is a game where one can play a Troll or A White Knight or join a guild like Anonymous. The rules are not in the design which makes the whole issue kind of open ended - is it the player that finally decides whether it's a game or not? Some Jeff Minter games can only be survived if you reach a Zen like indifference to the outcome - if you think about winning it slows you down too much.

[Mike Jones]

It's a really good point Tom. You're dead right about the notion of Game-Over as really the same construct as vita-chambers and save-games - death and rebirth.

Perhaps the better and less provocative angle is to suggest not that Games arent Games but rather that by the word Game being so broad and loose it is not particularly useful or specifically descriptive. That there are better ways to describe games. The mechanics, aesthetics, concepts, imperatives and modes of games are so varied and diverse that a singular grouping of 'game' is akin to describing all non-humans as 'animals'.

Mike

[RobShaver]

As an academic, I think you do a great service in examining such things in more depth than I might have ... and it makes me think. Defining categories of "games" is useful for those who may undertake creating them.

In thinking about such things, I always start with the assumptions ... in this case your definition of the word, game.

English words often take on many meanings. We call the wild animals we hunt "game", for example. What about the game of politics or the game of business? The use of "game" here I think does imply winners and losers, but the rules of who won or who lost are not completely defined.

If you play a tennis match, loosing the first game does not decide the match. Only a series of games determines the outcome. And then there is always the next match to be played later.

When playing Tetris the game always comes to an end, but did you win or loose? What are the rules for that? Isn't it to make a better score than before or beat someone else's best score? Who or what is the contest with?

This is the game which you thought best illustrated your rule #1 but I think it best illustrates that a game need not specify the rules for winning or loosing.

So I'd like to redefine your three rules with this single rule: A game is an entertaining activity with a set of rules which prescribe how the activity is to be conducted.

Notice that we "play" games (although I'm not sure the gladiators in the Roman games would agree). We also watch games, just as we watch movies. So the participants who are playing the game are entertained by interacting in it, while the watchers are passively entertained.

While I agree with you that most people would not call Second Life a game, perhaps my definition clears that up. If you enter Second Life and play one of the games that are available then it qualifies as a game. On the other hand, if you just wonder around like a tourist, then it is more of a passive entertainment.

Classifying the various kinds of games is also useful.

I would not classify Tetris as a puzzle game any more that Space Invaders or Centipede. Tetris has two-dimensional objects coming down the screen which the player must deal with. I don't think puzzle games should not have a real-time constraint. Games in the realm would be any solitaire card or tile game. I think Tetris is a combat simulation with very low fidelity.

Coming up with one set of categories seems counterproductive.

Here's a list of some of the elements which games may contain:

Puzzle: Not real time.
Simulation: Have a real time component. Combat simulations. Flight simulations.
Story: An element contained in almost any other kind of game.
Quests: Could have puzzle elements mixed with a real time simulation component and story elements.
Strategy: Very complex puzzles with random elements.

Another way of classifying game elements might be like this:

Board game simulations: Chess, Checkers, Scrabble.
Card game simulations: all solitaire card games, poker, bridge.
Side scrolling: Mario Brothers, Mortal Combat.

Well, I've run out of gas on this. There's more to these categories but I don't have the energy to do the research right now. Maybe I should leave that to the academics:)

Peace,

Rob:-]

[Yelena]

That is pretty helpful. It presented me several ideas and I'll be placing them on my blog shortly. I'm bookmarking your site and I'll be back again. Thank you again!

play

[Brady]

Rob,

I agree with your point about Tetris's ambiguous win/lose structure. At some point, the screen will fill up with blocks and the "game" will end. Is there a certain number of points at which you've won or lost? I'm reminded also of an iPhone game I've spent many a subway ride playing: Tower Madness. It's a typical tower defense game in which you set up towers to shoot at mindless lemming-like aliens who cross the screen. The goal is to set up towers in such a way that the aliens are unable to get all of the way across the screen. A certain number of aliens try to cross. If you keep them from crossing, you win. If they cross, you lose. However, In one mode, "Endless," the number of aliens is...well, endless. There is no end to the game, no win or lose unless you happen to set a goal for yourself (If I get to at least 500 aliens, I'll be happy"). Does Tower Madness cease to be a game if played in endless mode? The working definition we have seems, in this way, problematic.

I'd also like to comment on your modified definition of gaming: "A game is an entertaining activity with a set of rules which prescribe how the activity is to be conducted." The words "entertaining" and "rules" seem potentially problematic here, creating issues of subjective perception and broadness.

As worded, the entertainment is left up to the player. If I fail to find Monopoly entertaining, then it ceases to meet the definition of a game. However, perhaps then we would just say that, to me, Monopoly isn't a game. This seems to somewhat invalidate or at least depreciate the usefulness of the word "game" as a descriptive category to be discussed among people of differing opinions. The definition could also be modified to relate the entertainment value to the creator. Perhaps we could say, "A game is an activity intended to entertain..." But then conscious intention is required in order for a game to exist. Anyway, I don't have a solution and I feel I've gone too far down the subjectivity rabbit hole.

The other issue the definition raises for me is the potential to be too broad to be useful. If I go to a restaurant, I need to order food in a certain way, sit at the table in a certain way, tip the waiter, not shout things out, or throw food on the floor. In short, I must follow the rules. I am also entertained. Similar examples could follow for concerts, movie theaters or nearly any activity supposed to be fun. Rules and entertainment are so all-pervasive and loosely defined that the definition has the potential to encompass nearly every activity. While this may be perfectly valid (perhaps all of life is a game), a broad definition doesn't seem to fit the purpose of discussing the nature of electronic media.

Thanks for the excellent posts everyone. They've been very thought-provoking.

Brady