Revisiting What Makes a "Game" a Game

So I was out walking my dog, and I was thinking about how I really wanted to get a copy of Outrun 2019 for the Genesis and relaxedly play through it. I've recently found myself increasingly wanting to play relaxing games. I have a whole list of games I play just because I find them "cozy". The Harvest Moon games for example.

I thought about how the creator of Outrun specified in an interview the series isn't a racing game, it's a driving game. It's meant to make you feel like you're driving an expensive sports car through beautiful scenery. I got to thinking about how much I enjoyed Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, and largely disagree with the Pre_Rec review of The Last Guardian being boring and light on plot and interaction and I found myself saying "It's the fucking experience" we're exploring a very beautiful and mysterious world the creator has wonderfully made people who like the series interested and exploring. Rich said "It's the same issues you'd have walking a real dog." and I just thought "Yeah, I *like* walking my dog."

But as I was making these criticisms I went back to some walking simulator Jack was slobbering all over some months back and how boring that looked to me. So I thought to myself, I can say those games aren't *fun* to me, but is it fair for me to say it isn't a game because I personally have no interest in playing it?

So I went back and examined the obvious "that's not a game" candidate we always default back to, Depression Quest. To me, that's still not a game. It's definitely not a *video* game. I thought for a moment of defining it as a "visual novel" but it's very light on the visuals as well, so I'm kind of left as defining it as a very boring Choose Your Own Adventure story where the choices are weighted against you, and there's a bit of music when you turn the pages.

How much interactivity is required for it to be a game? It just got me thinking, if a walking simulator isn't a game, why is a driving simulator? I think for me it just boils down to the graphics and the stories being told being really boring and off-putting, but there are a lot of games I'd describe that way that I still wouldn't say aren't games. And there are games with limited interactivity that I was still interested in playing because of interesting interface, world or setting, like Lifeline or Echo Night Beyond.

Yes Colin Powell, I do.

For reference, Lifeline is a PS2 game in which you use a microphone to give the game's main character directions, but cannot yourself directly interact with anything but the cameras.

Echo Night Beyond has you exploring a spaceship that was a luxury liner and crashed killing everyone on board. You can't defend yourself from the ghosts, only hide from them. Death occurs through having a heart attack from seeing them too much. Their spirits are purified by reuniting them with personal objects, and they're able to haunt places through a mist which must be sucked out of rooms through control panels.

Both have little more interaction than the average walking simulator, but I enjoyed both.

I don't know. How much interactivity does Pong have? It's just moving up and down. Yet it's obviously a game. How about the quiz games where you just choose an answer?

I don't see the point in calling something "not a game", except trying to elevate yourself by showing you play more "gamey" games than others, I guess.

Is there a fail state and win condition? Then it's a game. Like all the shitty shooters that get pumped out, fail state is losing all of your health, win condition is varying objectives.

Gone Homo, on the other hand, I'm not sure if there is a win condition or a fail state. It just sorta happens. Most visual novels even have a fail state, look at Phoenix Wright.

Who cares

Clearly someone does.

Only fags though.

Most sims don't have a fail state, neither does Animal Crossing. Doesn't make them not games unless you're going with some definition that's super out of context since it wasn't meant for the current situation of interactive media. Saying a game isn't a game because there's no fail state is like saying music isn't music because there's no lyrics, or a film isn't a film because it doesn't have intertitles. Mediums evolve.

Maybe in sandbox mode. If they have scenarios to complete, you can fail there.

So the scenario mode is a game but the sandbox mode isn't?

If you can't go bankrupt there, then the sandbox mode isn't a game.


And stop with shitty analogies to instrumental music.

lol how is it a shitty analogy?

Because you later state that "mediums evolve", giving instrumental music as an example. Instrumental music is not any more new than music with vocals and instruments or a capella music.

as in the actual series? I don't know if I'd call those a game or a simulation, though you're pretty spot on with definitions changing and at this point is sounds like semantics.

Technically correct, but the minigames you can take part in have win/loss, so I'd throw it into the simulation pile. Again, semantics.

So the original tetris is not a game then?

Isn't getting the top score the win condition for Tetris?

It's a state change, but I'm fairly sure the game continues after beating the high score. You don't get a "You Win!" screen, at least.

Isn't launching Kremlin the win condition?

It does have levels and progression, though. It's just more of a survival mode type game. Eventually you will lose, it's about seeing how long you can last.


Those games do have progression though, if you progress through the game new things are unlocked, changes occur in the game's world, this could be manifested in gaining new items, forming new relationships, seeing new events, etc. Every sims game I played had objectives in the main mode.

The shortest way I can explain it is that hipsters and SJWs are devoid of meaningful, psychologically fulfilling experiences, hobbies, or relationships. The walking simulators they treasure and deify so much offer them a fake emotional experience, so they can feel like they are engaging in some kind of important human experience. They seek to vicariously live the overhyped oppression narrative that they can never find in real life, and to get that sweet self-righteous high that screeching feminists get when they whine about something. They've made themselves believe that heteronormativity is somehow an inauthentic and incomplete vision of the human condition, so they salivate over pretentious navel-gazing simulators that puff up these mundane and meaningless experiences into philosophically titanic gestures of cosmic wisdom.

Some recently video from please use archive.is had a scrawny betamale faggot insisting that all games are bad because they are only about violence. What stuck out to me during this video is that he derided games and complained that they don't offer any "emotional truth" to the audience. That idea of "emotional truth" really sums up why they have so much trouble enjoying and playing normal games that offer to actually fulfill and satisfy the unusual itches that we can't experience in modern society anymore.

tl;dr - The key difference between a low interactivity game and a shitty SJW walking simulator is that the game offers an unusual or abnormal experience for you to explore and toy with. A walking simulator hyperbolizes a meaningless, and mundane experience in a pretentious way, attempting to present something like learning about a gay teenager or cleaning someone's house as amazing because it forcefeeds the audience some identity politics or hyper-liberal bullshit message.

TGM has a game over success, I thought. Tetris has a win condition but it's not achievable. You have to clear all the blocks but there is an infinite number of blocks.

The point is that if you consider the condition "a game needs to have a win condition" as stringent, a lot of stuff that intuitively seems like games are out, like simulators and "endless" type of games. Even if tetris happens to have a win condition in some editions, there are more than enough endless runners to make up the slack. Thus, I don't think a win condition should be considered a necessary trait of a game. I'm unsure about fail state, but I think it should probably be there. One argument against is minecraft creative mode. It seems like minecraft ought to be considered a game, but at the same time, creative is basically building lego. If I'm building lego, I'm not playing a game any more than I would if I were drawing. It more like having fun than playing a game. Walking simulators or visual novels where you can't lose (bad ending doesn't count) are thus not games. I also feel that a game needs to contain some form of obstacle or adversary. If it does not present challenge or choice and demand exertion of some skill or ability it's not a game. For instance, a VN which only has a next button (or a set of conversation options what only prints some dialog and doesn't affect anything), that's not a game any more than a book is. If, however, there's a set of branching paths, some of which results in defeat, it's a game. It's necessary to make this judgement because otherwise text adventures (the go north, take sword kind) would not be games since they are essentially VNs without the pictures and more options and requiring the player to manually type the text corresponding to the options in the conversation graph.

I had a huge post that was eaten so instead I'll leave it as: "Is having an objective a key element instead of having a 'win condition'?"

The Crew. It's quite terrible as a racing game. The controls are weighty and stiff, which I believe is influenced by your "character level", so it's the type of game in which you have to suffer, or grind, before you can reach a point at which your padded stats will begin to provide a smooth experience, but driving around from region to region has a sort of charming appeal. Try it out, you might like it if you can manage to live with all the other minor annoyances that come along with the package.
This is the wrong line of thinking. We don't determine what is and isn't a game by whether or not we are interested in playing it. It's a very simple process. Games need gameplay. Gameplay is traditionally presented as an obstacle to overcome, but the definition isn't so rigid that it can't be modified. However, it's difficult to determine what can be considered gameplay outside of the obvious and conventional applications; chess is a game and, therefore if someone created a virtual representation of it, this digital version would also be considered a game, because it would presumably follow the same rules that chess has defined, or at least an approximation of them. Things get complicated when more wild or abstracted interpretations of "gameplay" are experimented with. For instance, older and well received titles in the survival horror genre, like Silent Hill and Resident Evil, are very similar to the dreaded "walking simulators" of today. When you get right down to it, both games are plot and dialogue heavy, cinematic, atmospheric, and centered around a whole hell of a lot of walking, which is obviously used to facilitate exploration. Even so, the difference is clear; In the aforementioned games, the player is able to defend himself against foes that chase them, progress through segments by solving puzzles, and complete other activities that compel the player to engage with the content (easter egg hunts, special objectives, etc).

These elements are what facilitate gameplay. In addition, there is a threat of failure that is constantly looming overhead. This is failure isn't permanent, but it serves to generate tension, along with the atmosphere, and if it is removed, then the game becomes ineffectual in its ability to provide the player with a sense of dread or foreboding, which is vital to said game's presentation. I don't want to go on too much of a tangent, but the major error in this line of thinking is evident when you consider that these games treat death as its own punishment. In other words, if the player were given a motivation to survive that goes beyond simple self preservation, then their deaths will be more meaningful than the current punishment of being forced to reload at the previous checkpoint.

In short, you need two things to define a game: First you must define gameplay. It doesn't have to be an obvious, conventional, or straightforward rule set, but there need to be rules, and there need to be consequences for breaking those rules. If there are no rules, then you have nothing but an empty shell of a world, and no matter how beautiful or well crafted, the seams will begin to split when the player realizes that it's all for naught. If there are rules but they're not stringent enough, then the player will become bored with his own ability to break said rules. Good games provide a balance of punishment and reward. You want to keep your player engaged, so you have to craft challenges that test the player's ability to react to stimuli that adhere to the rules that govern both parties. In addition, punishment should come with consequence.

You can have an atmospheric world that calls for exploration, and also build a game around it. It does not have to be one or the other. Why is Minecraft so popular? No, it's not autism, it's because the game mimics the time tested "gameplay" of old; using one's own imagination. At the same time, there are rules that govern your experience. Creepers are a constant threat; the depths of your generated world offer environmental hazards and even more enemies that stand in your way. The hellscape of the Nether holds precious resources but even greater environmental hazards and enemies. Minecraft is not perfect, but it offers players an immense amount of freedom while also placing obstacles in the way of attaining that freedom.

So, that's it. You need rules, and you need consequences. That is what games are made of.