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

[Sean Howard]

"Caliban Darklock" <cdarklock at gmail.com> wrote:
> And yet, that's precisely what it is. Just like "The Sims" isn't a
> game, even though many people call it one, because it doesn't involve
> mutual agreement on the rules. It's a toy.

I excused myself from this thread because I was becoming frustrated at
such a petty semantics argument (and my frustrated reply was politefully
declined by the mod :)

But I have to put my foot down here. I don't care if Will Wright said it.
The Sims is no less a game than a pop-up book stops being a book. Semantic
arguments like this arise when people too narrowly define a broad subject,
and then end up arguing over where the line stops and starts. Stop this
nonsense right now before everyone starts arguing about which definition
of "play" most rightly fits gaming.

Life is too short to argue about the Sims.


>> A game is free of consequences outside of "the game"
>
> This isn't true. See strip poker. The consequences of being naked are
> largely the intent of playing the game in the first place.

You aren't thinking things through properly. The stripping itself is not
part of the game, but rather the selling and buying back of specific
tokens. Though the metaphor chosen is clothes, they by no means need to be
actual clothes - unless you play video strip poker and actually remove
your clothes when it tells you that you lost.

By the same stretch, even if you replace Tetris blocks with naked people
bent in rather uncomfortable looking positions, it doesn't stop being
Tetris. The metaphors chosen enhance gameplay but are never actually
gameplay itself - and if there are consequences, they are simply because
the player agrees to append those consequences manually. I've played strip
poker where nobody actually removed their clothes, and games of strip
Goldeneye buck ass naked. That wasn't the game. That was me.

If you use strip poker to get to that end result, you have to understand
that the booty call exists above and beyond the game itself. You could
just as easily play strip poker, get nekkid, then put all your clothes
back on. Gaming is like Vegas. What happens in games stays in games,
unless you decide otherwise.

>> The slogan you quote ("it doesn't have
>> to be fun to be fun") is cute, but what exactly does it mean?
>
> If you don't get it, you don't get it. ;)

It's using fun with two different meanings. It's like saying that it
doesn't have to be pleasant or easy to be enjoyable.

> Sex is a game.

It certainly can be, but it isn't always, and I think you've introduced
more than your fair share of dirty thoughts to this discussion as it is :)

> A game is damaged and potentially destroyed by the introduction of
> toys, because the toy alters the game for everyone.

Have you actually thought this through? Have you considered the
consequences of what you are suggesting? You are literally redefining what
a game is and calling it a toy, and then making game such a narrow
definition that only a handful of games would actually qualify. You are
working in the opposite direction than you should be, and undoing what
little understanding about games we actually do have just to be a
semantics miser.

Like for instance, by your definition, Warhammer 40k isn't a game and all
the units are toys - which is like a glorified version of saying Chess
isn't a game, and if Chess isn't a game, then what the heck is?

-- 
Sean Howard