[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] What is a game? (again) was:[Excellent commentary on Vanguard's diplomacy system]

[Sean Howard]

"cruise" <cruise at casual-tempest.net> wrote:
> We've had these discussions here before, and it looks like we're no
> closer to agreeing on what the heck a game is than last time :P

How hard can it be?

Game: n. Scrabble
Videogame: n. Scrabble w/ headshots.

> No wonder we're stuck in such a rut, if we're not even sure if what it
> is exactly we're making!

Indeed! But that's because we are actually making a whole bunch of things
and trying to figure out the similarities that may or may not exist. I've
spent years trying to figure out what a "game" is, and I've ultimately
come to the conclusion that it is something like a "book". It says nothing
of the content, but exists more as a guidelines of expression. Surely,
there are many more fundamental differences between Second Life and
Burnout Revenge than similarities, much like a text book isn't
particularly similar to a dictionary of curse words in a different
language.

That's my theory and I'm sticking to it. "Game" is, in my opinion, and
ultimately worthless classification that exists more to differentiate a
game from a movie or book than to actually say anything significant about
the medium(s) it covers. Just like we have more limited definitions for
books, using the grander term "book" as an umbrella rather than a medium,
I think we should do the same thing with games - though FPS vs RTS doesn't
seem to be a particularly helpful distinction. However, serious game vs
learning game vs competitive game vs exploration game, etc... might be.

> I consider something competitive if it includes challenges - I'm
> competing against the challenge (and indirectly against whoever created
> the challenge, which could be myself).

It's only competitive if losing is a viable alternative to winning. In
most games, failure is at best a minor setback, if a setback at all. There
are some decisions which have permanent effects that are far more
influential than losing. And I'm sure that if you thought about it, you'll
think of dozens, if not hundreds, of games that cannot be lost - failure
to make the right decision simply loops you back to make it again.

> I consider a decision a challenge if I have to think about which choice
> to make. But a choice I don't have to think about is not really a
> choice, anymore - you could take the option I will never pick away, and
> change nothing. Therefore, any decision worth the name is a challenge,
> however small.

Um... no. That's just... well, that's kind of a shallow way to think of
decisions. For instance, if you are creating a character in City of
Heroes, what color will his outfit be? You gotta think about that, but
it's not a challenge. And it most definitively is a choice. Not only that,
but it can greatly affect how the other players online treat you (male or
female, dressed like Spider-man or a unique character, dressed in magenta
and cyan or like a oompa-loompa).

> A game is, as you say, changing the state of a system by making one or
> more decisions. Since, as above, I consider all decisions to be
> challenging, and any challenge involves competition, I view all games as
> fundamentally competitive.

I would not simply it that far. Not all games are a system. For instance,
a choose your own adventure book is a multilinear path that never changes.
Your decisions decide which path you make. Some gamebooks do have internal
states (modeled through a piece of paper and pencil), but that shouldn't
be the definition of whather or not one gamebook is a game and another is
not.

> I don't recognising this is limiting the game-design at all - finding
> the smallest atom of "game" possible gives much wider and finer-grained
> control over the final product, and enables more diverse results.

Thinking of games as ultimately competitive is, I believe, a huge mistake
that is extremely limiting. I think it has it's origins in game theory,
which is actually the study of competitive decision making and not
actually games at all.

-- 
Sean Howard