You’re absolutely right about distinguishing between play and games, or perhaps between playing and gaming (as mentioned earlier in the thread). My only goal was to avoid separating the social-cultural practice from the game, which is very difficult to do when writing… hence my turn to experience as a way of getting around the problem.

The Rules of Play definition works well enough I think. It is consistent with the idea that a game is a means-ends project with a specifiable “winner” or outcome. It works for a large majority of activities that we call “gaming”. At the same time, part of me wonders at the human value of an operational definition – I don’t define a game as anything in the article on purpose, because I think our gaming practices are a tacit form of understanding what gaming really is for us. My (really cruddy) social-cultural phenomenology is an attempt to get at that tacit understanding. I guess what I’m interested in is understanding gaming as a form of play – that’s not something captured by the Rules of Play definition. In some ways, I’d like to see a book called “The Play of Rules”, if you get my meaning!

Regrading your third point – yes! I’m with you on that definition, as I find that the kind of experiences I have playing games are very similar to the kinds I have with all sorts of other “mediums” .. reading, writing — all spaces that demand imaginative (fictionalizing!) activity from me. I’d love to see this thought pursued somewhere.

And I like how you bring up the point of videogames vs. material games. From a purely artistic perspective, I see videogames as a combination of an as-yet-unnamed medium (i.e. the “video” part) and the medium of games. I like your definition because that video part is basically a computer-based “interactive experience that creates a space for playing.”

I guess I subscribe mostly to the Rules of Play definition of games – a game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome. The authors very thoroughly dissected definitions of games throughout history and came up with a pretty good definition IMO. Note that their definition describes games as completely abstract – a system – and thus (intentionally it seems) avoids certain fundamental aspects of specific game forms. Their view of games covers rules, experience, and culture all together, but the definition focuses more on the rules part since it’s describing an object. Therefore, the playing of an instance of a game would be this abstract system expressed through a particular experiential form – board games, videogames, etc. – existing in a particular culture.

Note, the culture part is something that shouldn’t be ignored; in fact you highlight its importance when you talk about your fiancée and glow from computer screens (you play at night).

I have come to believe that the difference between games and videogames includes a mysterious medium based on a virtual, fictional interactive experience. And videogames add on the games to this medium. The experiential part of videogames has a lot to do with this other medium I think.

Ah you brought up the Endless Forest. I think that’s one “game” that distinguishes itself from all other games in that it has no prescribed goal or “point”… it is a space that exists to only invite “play”.

I’m with you on the idea that “a game” is not reducible to video games, board games, or any other thing we traditionally call a game. For instance, when I read books I try to take a playful attitude to it – sometimes I re-read dialogue in my head or out loud in a different voice, playing with the meaning. But it doesn’t *quite* become a game for me, because there are no bounds to my imagination.

I haven’t read much Baudrillard, but I think you’ve hit the nail on the head as far as (post-)modernity is concerned – most of our lives are spend living in relation to simulacra and games are now ingrained in us. We don’t even distinguish between material and immaterial reality anymore – an email is just as ‘real’ to a person as a letter is. Following your train of though – perhaps that is why we can’t distinguish between video games and material games (soccer) – we actually think they’re the same activity!

I can play a game anywhere at anytime. I can make a game of almost any situation, so what is a game? For a while, I have thought that a game was nothing more than a problem or goal that isn’t real. It’s a definition that works well for most any example I can think of. It allows a game to be relative as well to the gamer and experience. But it doesn’t accomplish what it sounds like some want from a definition, which is to separate games from non-games. (I’d argue that problem is a non-issue–a game in itself, if you will.) At least, it doesn’t force consensus on those answering the question. Endless Forest is a game by that definition–for those that accept the premise of its simulated problem or goal. I think that’s as good as we can get and probably all that’s worth getting from such a discussion.

But the problem of my simple definition is what it excludes . . . or doesn’t exclude. How is a novel, movie, or comic not a game? I’m not sure they’re not. Yet, we know that a game is not a movie. Perhaps a game is the equivalent of a rectangle, and a movie is like a square.

Then, there’s the confusion that a Baudrillard brings–that most of us live among simulacra anyway so when do we not deal with a problem that isn’t real.

Well, I have to leave for a meeting that’s bogus, but I have to pretend it’s real.

Thanks for the response. I agree with you – one can distinguish between ‘a game’ and ‘play’, and perhaps I did not focus enough on that difference here. However, differentiating between ‘a game’ and ‘my playing’ of it is practically impossible when I’m actually playing one. That might seem awfully irrelevant to most, but what I’m getting at is that our talking about “games” as if they were an object of some kind is an intellectual, after-the-fact, rational judgment that we make when we disengage ourselves from gameplay. That disengaged judgment of game vs. player is obviously very useful as you’ve (and many others have) pointed out, but when it comes to understanding the dialogue that exists between game-and-player the distinction falls apart. After all, what’s “a goal”, “a progression”, “an obstacle”, or “a strategy” without a player who perceives all of those things in a game? What you perceive as ‘an obstacle’ might be perceived as ‘an opportunity’ to me.

I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t disagree with any existing definition of what a game ‘is’, it’s more that the definitions are often so absolute and limiting that the whole experience of playing a game goes out with the bathwater.

Perhaps what we’re both after is the distinction between ‘gaming’ and ‘playing’. Those are two very distinct modes of interaction I think, and your definition of ‘a game’ seems to be much more apropos to the first term, and much less apropos to the second?

Whew. Your post/comment really got me thinking on this one. Thanks!

I recently wrote my definition of what a game is here:

http://interactive-illuminatus.blogspot.com/2010/03/definition-of-game.html

It’s a fairly specific definition and it will knock out a few video games that people might have thought of as games, but a lot of discussion about video games like Heavy Rain would find a little more focus if we had exact, working definitions for the terms we are throwing around. That’s my opinion, anyway.

To clarify – I didn’t write my post as a critique of yours (as it was already written by the time I found yours – thanks gnome!). In fact, I found your post lucidly written and enjoyable for what your goals were. I’m very sympathetic to the need for more creativity in the adventure genre, believe me! Adventures were my first games, and I’ve seen all different variations on the theme… and honestly, the scheme has become purty darned stale for me. I find myself playing the original LucasArts and Sierra adventures just because they have some originality to them lacking in adventure games lately.

Back to your points. I know what you’re getting at regarding the idea that rules of a game are a general description of our styles of play. And yes, I agree – there are no rules that aren’t somehow perceived by the player. But I think what I was trying to suggest was that the “cold and analytic” language is exactly what sets up the problem in the first place… it defines a game as a set of rules or conventions per se, rather than making the experience primary. The experience of playing a game is of course my following certain rules, but that is not the whole picture. The cold and analytic language *implies* an player somewhere in there, but it doesn’t make the player the central object of your scrutiny. And that’s what I’d like to do – I want to really see how players play the game, how they organize their lives around it, how they prepare themselves for playing, before they ever sit down in front of the PC. And when they sit down I want to know *how* they’re playing and understanding the “rules”. Most of the time they don’t even see the rules at all – they just see a bunch of opportunities for experimenting and exploring.

So I guess we probably don’t disagree on anything here – it’s more a case of what the focus is. Since I’m a social/cultural psychologist, obviously I want to spend a lot of time understanding the player’s total world (not just the game world). That is probably not something of interest to most game designers unfortunately.

Thanks again for the response Igor – it’s great sharing a conversational space with like-minded thinkers.

And my definition of adventure games is all about the player’s experience – even if I was cold and analytic about it. The first of the defining conditions I gave is my direct and straightforward response to one of the strongest player expectations towards adventure games. But the second condition is what might have made you question the accuracy of the whole definition, as it allows for a wider use of the term than it has been the practice. By creating it this way I wanted that people look beyond the stereotypes of what an adventure game is and see that there are many unexplored possibilities to tease the brain in exactly the same manner as the most traditional inventory based puzzles. It’s an invitation to innovation for future adventure game designers.

Ah yes, I am sporting some embarrassingly 1989 “hockey hair” in that pic. Not to mention the grey sweat pants and tucked-in socks. Definitely the picture of sauve.

BTW, that’s a great pic of yours mate…