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On the Literal Subject of Games
We tend to use the terms 'games' in the colloquial. Generally speaking, we know what this means, but it's still pretty dependant on context. Like, you'll hear people draw distinctions between games and sports, for example. Or, we kind of intuit the difference between a game that children make up to entertain themselves in the moment and, say, a board game. We're oddly less specific about how we name video games, though. What I didn't really know, actually, was how finicky academics have tried to get with game definitions and catagories - here, the problem seems to be one of nomenclature. Basically, we use the word "game" as a catchall for a certain type of behavior within organized parameters, but not all games function the same way.
I drew most of my direct knowledge from the academic treatment of games from the broad strokes laid down in Nielsen, Smith, Tosca's Understanding Video Games. The book itself was helpful, but I'm not impressed with scholarship's treatment of videogames in general, yet.
For me, it seems more foolish to treat all videogames as part of a single, unified category than it would be to treat all movies or televised media in the same way. You can, insofar as it's broadly the same kind of media format, but aside from the broadest strokes, it doesn't make too much sense to try to discuss something like the JRPG game genre in the same way as you'd attempt to address football-based sports games. Discussion like this seems to be designed as something of a time-saving device, anyhow.
Additionally, there are quite frequently games that aren't actually games - or games that are only games depending on why you play them. I think of Minecraft, here. Initially, there was some discussion as to if Minecraft was really a game at all - you could certainly 'play' it or, more appropriately, you could play in it, but it didn't have any specific goal or any organized opposition. It was more like an environment or a simulation. (Though, referring to it as a simulation gets troublesome - a simulation of what, exactly?) Today, Minecraft does, actually, have an end-game, a boss, a way of completing the session, even though executing it only drops you back into the same core session. I don't play Minecraft with any real intention of ever reaching the end boss and defeating it, though I do want to investigate and build in every realm of the game. By most definitions, that would make me bad at the game, or at least playing it incorrectly, but I don't feel that's the case. There's an issue of intent, I think, then.
That also raises a question of games like Dungeons & Dragons, or World of Darkness products, or many other tabletop role-playing games, or games in which there is a story mode, but no real particular emphesis on that kind of organized, linear play like, maybe, the famous Grand Theft Auto series.
To my mind, then, "game" is increasingly an ineffective term of analysis, as there's too much play in the term. Or, maybe what would be better would be for we academics to accept a certain amount of ambiguity that's inherant in the act of play - not that rigor is bad, but all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
I drew most of my direct knowledge from the academic treatment of games from the broad strokes laid down in Nielsen, Smith, Tosca's Understanding Video Games. The book itself was helpful, but I'm not impressed with scholarship's treatment of videogames in general, yet.
For me, it seems more foolish to treat all videogames as part of a single, unified category than it would be to treat all movies or televised media in the same way. You can, insofar as it's broadly the same kind of media format, but aside from the broadest strokes, it doesn't make too much sense to try to discuss something like the JRPG game genre in the same way as you'd attempt to address football-based sports games. Discussion like this seems to be designed as something of a time-saving device, anyhow.
Additionally, there are quite frequently games that aren't actually games - or games that are only games depending on why you play them. I think of Minecraft, here. Initially, there was some discussion as to if Minecraft was really a game at all - you could certainly 'play' it or, more appropriately, you could play in it, but it didn't have any specific goal or any organized opposition. It was more like an environment or a simulation. (Though, referring to it as a simulation gets troublesome - a simulation of what, exactly?) Today, Minecraft does, actually, have an end-game, a boss, a way of completing the session, even though executing it only drops you back into the same core session. I don't play Minecraft with any real intention of ever reaching the end boss and defeating it, though I do want to investigate and build in every realm of the game. By most definitions, that would make me bad at the game, or at least playing it incorrectly, but I don't feel that's the case. There's an issue of intent, I think, then.
That also raises a question of games like Dungeons & Dragons, or World of Darkness products, or many other tabletop role-playing games, or games in which there is a story mode, but no real particular emphesis on that kind of organized, linear play like, maybe, the famous Grand Theft Auto series.
To my mind, then, "game" is increasingly an ineffective term of analysis, as there's too much play in the term. Or, maybe what would be better would be for we academics to accept a certain amount of ambiguity that's inherant in the act of play - not that rigor is bad, but all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
