Computer game is a misnomer. Sure, historically computer games have been electronic renderings of game concepts. And certainly a lot of developers of interactive entertainment insist on exploring game design as the basis of their work. That’s all very interesting, but in the mean time, computer games have evolved into a medium of their own.
So rather than dwelling on the things that computer games have in common with traditional games, we, at Tale of Tales, prefer to explore what is different about them, what makes computer games unique. We believe that only the exploitation of these unique properties will lead to the maturity of the medium. Here’s a little list of ways in which computer games are different from traditional games. Feel free to add.
1. Intimacy
Most traditional games pit human players against each other. This social aspect is so important that traditional games meant to be played alone are named after that very fact (Solitaire).
Most computer games, including many multiplayer ones, are played by single humans behind a machine. This is one of the most unique and powerful properties of the interactive medium. The intimacy between the game and its user creates a potential depth of mental exploration unseen before in any medium.
2. Stories are more important than rules
Traditional games can be highly abstract. Games like Chess, Go and Bridge are classics. Computer games, on the other hand, thrive on stories. Sure, Space Invaders and Pac Man are historical highlights. But would anyone want to trade in Myst, Tomb Raider, Ico, Half Life, Grand Theft Auto or The Sims for those?
Also, computer games feature characters. Creatures that we can empathize with, in whose behaviour we can recognize our own. Unlike the pawns and dice of traditional games.
3. Immersion
A traditional game can be absorbing. But you always remain an outsider. The game might enclose you in a Magic Circle but you always remain a manipulator of objects and rules that are outside of you. Computer games allow you to step into their worlds, to become part of the events. To some extent you become one of the pieces on the board, one that acts autonomously.
4. Not (just) for children
Games are traditionally considered to be for children. Probably because they are useful tools for learning. They tend to contain simple structures that are easy to understand. As we get older, the things we need to learn become more complex. Games don’t suffice anymore and we often turn to art for exploring ourselves and our surroundings.
The same adults that look down on those simplistic children’s games, are now moving joysticks and pressing buttons on game controllers in front of television sets and computer screens. These are not the same games!…
5. An artistic medium
Some people try to defend games as an age-old art form. But this is not a widespread belief. Games have their function in society but they are generally not considered very high on the cultural ladder. Computer games are different. They have an enormous impact on their users. They can lead to life-changing events. What we experience in computer games, stays with us, becomes engraved in our memory, becomes part of who we are.
6. Players as authors
Traditional games have strict rules. Because of this strictness, you can predict all possible outcomes of any game, based solely on analysis of the rules. Computer games, on the other hand, are much less predictable. While many of them still contain rules (although their strictness is fading with each generation), these rules tend to create options rather than diminish them. So much so that a player can play a game in ways that surprise even its creator. Players can bend the rules to create new games, overcome obstacles by simply combining rules and objects in unexpected ways and they can exploit bugs for fun. Many computer games take advantage of this creative potential and encourage the player to co-author the experience.
7. Aesthetics are more important than systems
You can play a perfectly satisfactory game with a few rocks and some sticks. It’s the activity of manipulating those objects that constitutes the experience. But computer games have such a strong desire for beauty, that they are one of the main driving forces behind the technology of the century. Hardcore gamers may pretend that the looks of a game don’t matter to them, but you won’t find many Halo-owners playing Wolfenstein3D. We want our games to be pretty so much that competition in an entire industry is based almost exclusively on how beautiful the products are.
8. Persistent social context
A traditional game constitues a context within which a social event takes place. Very often, games are used to create such an event. Families playing scrabble together. A son challenging his father to chess. Etcetera.
Computer games, while often played alone, have a much longer-lasting social impact. To some extent, one could say that the social element of games only starts when you stop playing, while in traditional games, the social situation dissolves when the game ends.
9. No losing
Contrary to traditional games, computer games cannot be lost. This is especially true for single player games. When people say they lost a computer game, they actually mean that they failed to accomplish a certain task. This often prevents them from making any further progress. So they give up. Nobody wins, nobody loses.
10. Cheating is allowed
In computer games, cheating is often as much fun as obeying the rules. Traditional games break instantly as soon as you start cheating. But computer games often include cheat codes that allow you to have unlimited money or be invulnerable, etc. Traditional games would dissolve instantly if the rules were broken like that, but computer games become all the more fun.
What is your definition of a traditional game? Based on your post, examples include Solitaire, Chess, Go and Bridge. Does traditional mean “classic” to you, or simply non-digital?
Simply non-digital.
Honestly, these are all reasons that I like to cite when trying to quantify “videogame” as the word rather than “video game.” One suggests that they are, as you put it, traditional games using a video display which is pretty inaccurate. The other (one word) suggests that it is its own beast of sorts.
Good list!
In that case, I feel many of your points don’t apply well to tabletop role playing games (in particular) as well as some modern tabletop games. For example, I think a human-moderated tabletop game can offer superior intimacy, immersion and flexibility than a computer-moderated one.
But if we were talking solely about “classic” games, I’d have less to disagree with
There are a few I don’t agree with, but #9 is the one that makes the least sense. Failing to accomplish a task is losing. Failing to cross the finish line first or score the necessary goal is losing. Failing to defeat the boss is losing the fight and the game. What definition of loss are you using?
If you give up in frustration then I guess that’s technically forfeiting the chance to complete the game. But that usually only occurs after a long string of losses within the game.
Tony, I don’t know a lot about tabletop RPGs. I have never played them and they seem like an oddity to me, perhaps indeed something in between what you call classic games and computer games/digital games/videogames. But I would argue that being on your own (with a computer) is always going to be more intimate than being with anybody else.
Michel, please have a look at my previous post about this subject. If it still doesn’t make some sense, feel free to say so and I’ll try to explain (or “lose” the argument).
Michael, I agree tabletop RPGs are probably an edge-case for the purposes of your comparison. I have no doubt they are games, but are they “traditional” games? Perhaps a tighter definition of the term “traditional” is worth exploring, because there are probably several good examples of non-digital games (including RPGs) from the last 30 or 40 years that might challenge some of your comparisons. I wonder if there is a case for “classic” versus “contemporary” non-digital games?
Re-considering the intimacy issue, I must agree that playing solo is more intimate than playing with another person.
Err… the purpose of my post was to encourage people to research computer games, not traditional or classic games! 😉
Anyway, I’m not striving for academic accuracy here. Just trying to point out that computer games are not just games, that they are very different from what we normally consider to be games. And that, in my opinion, those differences are far more interesting and inspiring than what they have in common with games.
I actually agree.
However, I think you should emphasize storytelling; i.e. experiential patterns, as being more important than rules, rather than stories. Trust me, you’re avoiding a sandtrap by doing that.
But I do mean stories in the sense of authored narative concepts (obviously not necessarily linear ones). I believe that the fact that most computer games have stories is significant. And I don’t accept any flimsiness of plot or low quality of the narrative as a reason to dismiss the importance of story. I think it is very important for players that they play a space marine rather than a blue pixel and that there’s lots of loud explosions and not just a number that gets bigger or smaller.
I think I disagree. Some of the reasons might apply if you understand “traditional game” as board games and the like. But for me, the term game has a much broader meaning.
Many children play games on their own in their room. In fact, they invent games, huge storylines, and characters which they pretend to be and so own. For me (and for cultural historian Johan Huizinga, for example) all these activities count as “games”. So, for non-digital games, reasons 1,2,3,6 would apply as well in my opinion. Children also frequently change the rules of their games on the spot and do cheat.
In games like Charades, Categories or Taboo, players do create a substantial part of the “contents” of the game, so in a way, they are authors.
Sports games like soccer or rugby are mainly enjoyed by adults, so this would contradict reason 4. (I do consider sports as “games”, as in “Olympic Games”.)
Reason 9: you can lose at Counter-Strike or Mario Kart, I’d say. And you might as well argue that losing a game of chess is simply failing to accomplish the task of being better than your opponent.
Reason 10 only applies for single player videogames.
(One small problem, though: English is not my first language, so I might have slightly different ideas of “play” and “game”.)
English is not my first language either. And I do think that Huizinga wrote about play in general and not just games. I also don’t think of Huizinga as god and we should consider the possibility that he was wrong.
As for all your other objections, I agree with them completely. For anything I said, there is an exception. But as we say in Dutch, “the exception confirms the rule”.
It is true that I have mostly concentrated on single player games. This is because I consider them to be more unique to the interactive medium than games in which people play against each other. I’m interested in the differences more than the similarities.
[i]But as we say in Dutch, “the exception confirms the rule”.[/i]
Hey, that’s one of my favourite sayings! =)
…OK, I’ll get out of the highly intellectushal conversation now.
Hello,
I just found out this site and its very interesting the discussions. For the record, English is not my first language either.
The problem here is that games can be defined in such a broad way that there is going to be difficult to find any way to point the differences between digital games and non digital games. On top of that consider (Micahel) your own discussion about games and stories (where I also posted a comment), if games do not have goals aren’t games anymore? If you can play with stories by changing them on the fly as my 5 years old do often, they stop being stories?
I developed an Interactive Drama, Masq you can see it at http://www.alteraction.com where you actually play (modify) the story by making choices. And it triggers hundreds of paths. It really feels like if you are creating your own story, but all is pre-written. Still the players, who most likely know this, go along and pretend is their story. Like the famous “suspension of disbelieving” required by any piece of fiction to engage the audience.
I believe the difference between pre-digital games and digital ones is blurring and I suspect in some degree it may happen the same with the games and stories (at least from the academic perspective) think in the Rocky Horror Picture Show (movie), where people go to see the movie again and again to repeat the lines and play around with the “virgins” or TV series like “Lost” that everybody claims is a game. What about the old chose your own adventure games? or books like Rayuela from Cortazar which asks to be read in different order? So academically everything will merge, (and I mean academically referring to this kind of discussions or the ones going on between University Professors) however, in the real world most people will have different conceptions about the meaning of every word and we’ll have to deal with that too. (E.g. Try to explain a potential investor what is Masq, or even worst, try to choose the right words to advertising it)
In any case, all this is very useful to exercise the brain, and I hope come up with new abstract models.
I agree that it’s a muddled bunch. And I like that quite a bit. If I am attacking anything, it is in fact the puritanical attitude of many game designers that computer games are (or should be) only (or first and foremost) games.
On the other hand, if we want the interactive medium to mature, I think we should focus on exploiting what makes it different from other media, especially from other succesful media. Computer games will never produce cinema as good as film can. Likewise, computer games will never produce as good a game as a cardboard board and some pawns can. We should stop imitating other media and find what is special about this one, even if, academically speaking, these special properties are not unique.
We need to find what computer games can do that no other medium can do better. Then we will be on the road to maturity.
Great conclusion Michael.
I think an analogy to what you’re saying is the way the majority of films in the cinema are the same formulaic regurgitations of existing material, yet there are beautiful art films that rarely if ever gain the same degree of recognition.
In that way, Mamoru Oshii may be to film what Fumito Ueda is to computer games… deftly shoe-horning his idealistic approach into a package that can be sold to the masses.
(I’m a big fan of both the aforementioned, in case that wasn’t obvious.)
However, to the best of my knowledge, there’s no computer game equivalent of Matthew Barney.
And that’s a blessing!
Haha, this is one of those famous “list 10 things” blog posts. A good one, but it still feels a bit weird to have it in this format.
I admit we chose this format because somehow it’s irresistible -to us too. But it’s actually a good exercise: it forces a writer to choose, distinguish and prioritize. It’s a good tool for thinking.
What a poorly thought-out article. The definition of ‘traditional’ games must be extremely narrow for some of these arguments to work.
2. Stories aren’t important in traditional games? What about role-playing games? And why pick a bunch of modern games with no or vestigial narrative as examples of how games aren’t as abstract as they were? Myst is a set of puzzles, GTA is a car-racing playset, The Sims is a dollhouse. Computer games virtually always use story as contextual window dressing, like Cluedo and Monopoly do.
4. Games are viewed as for children? Yeah, like poker.
6. Traditional games have strict rules? Yeah, like Mao or Cowboys and Indians.
Point 7 is flat out wrong, but a fairly common misconception. A pretty, unplayable game won’t sell. The Wii puts paid to the idea that aesthetics are the only criteria on which games compete.
9. “When people say they lost a computer game, they actually mean that they failed to accomplish a certain task. This often prevents them from making any further progress.” Uh, you’ve just described losing. The other article you cite just shows you’ve taken a narrow subset of computer games and concocted an arbitrary definition of ‘losing’. Good soundbite, superficial reasoning.
10. Cheating only makes games more fun if the game is badly broken/unbalanced to begin with or the player decides they’ve exhausted the possibilities of playing the game properly.
The other points are good examples of how computer games differ from non-digital games, but that doesn’t stop them being games.
Sigh, I hate to say it but this is probably one of the most blinkered uninformed single-opinionated set of points I have seen in a long time. Almost every single point is unbelievably flawed. Im not even sure its worth addressing them as you generally seem unable to modify your stance regardless of arguments.
I enjoyed our previous exchanges but to be honest posts like this reveal how little consideration you have really given the subject. It smacks of an artistic manifesto approach with little concern or interest in any deeper research. You are obviously pigeonholing an entire history and practice just to promote yor own ideas.
By the definitions offerred, sports aren’t games either. Remember that the rules of most sports changed over time as well, largely because they got broken by emergent play. Take a look at the shot-clock in basketball. It was a game of getting ahead, then keeping the ball away from the other team, which wasn’t what the creators intended. Plenty of computer games can be broken by cheating as well. Look at Diablo.
You don’t know what you’re talking about?
1. Intimacy
You can’t be intimate with a computer. It’s a machine, not a person.
2. Stories are more important than rules
You obviously haven’t played a tabletop RPG.
3. Immersion
In computer games you are more locked into the world than in tabletop games. Why? Because the world is rigidly locked by the code of the game. In tabletop games, the gamers can make up new rules – all they need is some creativity and consensus among those present.
4. Not (just) for children
You obviously haven’t played a tabletop RPG or wargame.
5. An artistic medium
The emphasis on Art means computer games effectively try to control their players – who become servants to the computer game developer, lead by the nose through the Work which is the game (which they have no ability to influence at the fundamental level). Games are not art. To say games are art is to say that art is more important than games – art is looked upon as the ultimate concern. Games are on not a subclass of art – they are on equal footing. Games are games. Art is art. Games are just as important.
6. Players as authors
You obviously have never played a tabletop RPG. In a computer game you are limited by what has been built in the game world. Not so in a tabletop RPG, where I can, with a just a few sentences, create an entirely new land.
7. Aesthetics are more important than systems
This relates to the art thing above – the notion it is more important for the player to be lead on a collar through the Majesty of the Work than to have their own exploration of things. If you want art, go to a museum. The art experience is a million times better and more intense.
8. Persistent social context
You obviously haven’t played a tabletop RPG campaign. (I had one that lasted about four years.)
9. No losing
You obviously haven’t played a tabletop RPG campaign. (I had one that lasted about four years.)
10. Cheating is allowed
Well, you’re right on this one. It’s much easier to cheat an unfeeling computer. When you are in the same room as your friends, cheating is such a low-down dirty thing to do, almost no one does it. They maintain an honour system.
As to point ten: come on – have you never played Bullshit?
Not to mention that the ‘cheating makes games fun’ argument is not only subjective and pigeon holing, but also makes an assumption that every single game incorporates cheats. Which these days, is getting rarer.
I’m going to have to join in with those who disagree with pretty much everything on this list. Commenters above have already pointed out most of the problems I can see, but I’ll add one bit:
7. Aesthetics are more important
Aesthetics are a huge factor in both classic traditional and in more modern board games. Take even a cursory look into the culture surrounding the game of Go and you’ll find people who are willing to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on high quality gobans and stones. And maximizing art budgets is just as real a concern in board game development as it is in computer games (just on a smaller budget scale).
Honestly, this whole list felt like it was simply underestimating or misunderstanding non-digital games in general. Many of the statements made about single-player video games apply to other single-player games (eg. Solitaire), and likewise the assumptions placed on multiplayer traditional games (eg. the consequences of cheating) apply just as strongly to multiplayer video games. The only difference is that video games tend to have more single player experiences, although that’s rapidly changing as well. And concepts such as authorship can easily apply to non-digital games as well; the extreme case is clearly theater games and role playing games, but there are surely other highly social games with a high degree of player freedom that create a strong sense of authorship (assassin and werewolf, arguably?).
I have to say I really disagreed with this post. In fact, I have composed a lengthy reply, that links back to here, at:
http://www.ggl.com/index.php?controller=News&method=article&id=5299
After my post above, I couldn’t shake that it doesn’t seem right to simply write off Tale of Tales as being naive. They’ve been doing interesting things longer than I have.
Is this perhaps based on a cultural or linguistic difference? Something similar to how “game” and “play” are harder to differentiate in French, since they both use the same root word?
Thank you for the thoughtful responses. I’m very flattered that you all took the time.
Now. The reason why I am interested in how computer games are different from non-digital games is clear: because I believe that it is only through developing their unique properties that computer games will become a mature and culturally relevant entertainment medium (otherwise they will end up in the toy store next to the other games, instead of in the media store next to the films and books). To do this, we need to be prepared to remove the things that are holding the medium back.
My question is: why are many of the posters so concerned with the similarities between computer games and other games? Why is it so important to focus on the legacy rather than the potential?
I think because to lose sight of that would mean to make lesser games, indeed stories that can not be experienced as fully as they could be if the ‘traditional’ game aspect was equally strong.
That is not say that all games should be structured the same way or be all about competition, but rather that the experience of interaction itself is, or should be, central to any game.
“2. Stories are more important than rules”
A very big part of what made Shadow of the Colossus great was what it *felt* like to play it, not just emotionally, but physically… The feeling of weight as you climbed atop these giants and brought them tumbling down was half of the experience. And that’s not just in the animation. It’s in the controls.
The same is true of Ico.
The story and characters may create the context that give it meaning, but the interaction is the experience.
The ones that have most stayed with me have been those that succeeded in both…
Michael, Is it possible for you to perhaps examine and respond to the posts where people have critiqued your points, rather than just post another question that deflects the issue from your own initial post and its obvious flaws.
“why are many of the posters so concerned with the similarities between computer games and other games?”
the same reason anybody working within a genre or hybrid genre or cross genre is interested in its relationship to its precendents, consituents and associations. Being informed and well researched about all aspects of your pratice is a good thing. I sometimes feel that once you have decided that an aspect doesnt appeal to your ideals you consider it no longer worthy of consideration. To be honest, i think your blinkered and limited approach to defiing videogames is just as likely to hold back progress as the ‘hardcore’-style ludologists/gamers you criticise. Legacy is history, and history is there to be learned from. I dont doubt that most of the posters agree with your aspirations for videogames, but until you address some of the points th eyhave raisedI don’t beleive that you are really intetersted in a discussion. I would hope that the number of responses countering your points would at least make you reconsider them or are you still convinced of their accuracy?
Strongly disagree with a lot of this. For so many reasons that I don’t have the time to go through them all.
Suffice to say, this is a very narrow and ill-thought out view on video/traditional games.
Christiaan, I think our concept of story is different from most people’s. We have as much quarrels with narratologists as we do with ludologists. I totally agree that the interaction is crucial and that Fumito Ueda is a master in expressing story through interaction. Not story in the sense of linear structure and plot, but story in the sense of conveying emotions, personality, relationships and atmosphere. Anyway, that’s subject matter for another more elaborate post some day,
Tom, I am not a scientist. I am an artist. I am very much still convinced of the accuracy of my points. But I don’t believe in universal truths and unambiguous solutions for problems. I can see a lot of value in many of the points raised by the commentors. And as many people have pointed out in their own abusive ways, the truth of a statement depends mostly on context and point of view. I think we approach these issues from places that are completely alien to game-fans.
But I will go over the objections and try to explain myself and/or admit defeat. Probably in a new post.
Agreed. But contemporary videogames don’t just have old videogames or non-videogames as their precedents! We also need to learn about architecture, painting, poetry, literature, sound art, music, sculpture, theater, film, industrial design, furniture design, comic strips, performance art, opera, photography, etcetera! If I seem a bit overzealous in minimizing the importance of older games for contemporary ones, it’s only because most game developers and gamers seem to be over-focussed on only game design. There’s a lot more to this medium than games!
I started writing a response to all the objections made. It was going to be a series of posts, one for each point. But then I realized that I didn’t have much more to say. I found myself repeating the introduction to this post in different ways. But you might as well just read it again.
I also found that I actually agree with most of the objections made. If you look at it from a certain angle, everything I said is wrong. I knew that. That’s even sort of the point. I’m only trying to look at things from another angle. Because I’m not satisfied with the intellectual status quo. And I see a more glorious future for this medium than a place on the shelf in the toy store.
Much like the people who responded really like playing games, they probably saw my statements as a challenge, an obstacle to overcome. For me, however, there is always multiple realities going on simultaneously. Not one of them is the only true one or the correct one. If anything, I’m interested in adding more possible realities, rather than reducing their number to come to some kind of resolution. I’m not a gamer. There’s a reason why I did my school thesis about ‘Pataphysics -the science of imaginary solutions… 😉
Ultimately, like so many discussions, this would have become a semantic one. And those are so boring! Maybe the title to this post should have been “Ten Reason why computer games are not just games” or “Ten reasons why I could think people prefer playing computer games over other games”. Fine by me if that makes it more acceptable for you. Ultimately, I’d rather spend my time inventing more imaginary solutions than attempting to reduce reality to a single meaning.
That is why I like the interactive medium in the first place! It allows multiple realities to coexist happily. Ambiguity is at its core. Sid Meier might like games because they are a series of interesting choices. I like them when they allow me not to make a choice. To see, and be, many things simultaneously.
Embrace ambiguity!
Embrace non-linearity!
Reject plot!
Realtime is a poetic technology.
Wow, what’s with all the news responses all of the sudden?
Anyway, I agree that most of the objections are kind of weird. All general statements have exceptions, and pointing out one exception doesn’t make a general statement less useful. If I say “what goes up must come down”, and someone else says “you’re an idiot, what about space satellites?” they aren’t disproving what I’m saying, they’re just pointing out where it doesn’t apply. A lot of these responses are of that type.
How I approach this subject, for the record, is that I believe computer games are “games plus other forms of art”. E.g. a game is a game, a computer game is a game plus a painting plus a movie plus anything else you want to add. It’s a *combined* media, it’s not a single media, and different people focus on different parts of the combination. Just as opera and musicals combine music and theater, games combine virtually every form of art into one.
What news responses?
I agree that “games” are a hybrid artform. And I consider the game element optional. Like all the others, it has its own history and its own excellence. A computer game, however, is something new. We still need to discover what makes it so unique, so appealing. I personally don’t believe it’s the game element, if only because games are not new.
That being said, people play computer games for many different reasons of course, and not just because they are a unique form of entertainment, They might just like the music. Or the gameplay. Or something else.
That was a typo, I meant “new responses” — there seems to be more comments to this entry than any other here, and most of them are relatively new compared to the entry’s posting date.
I agree that the game element is optional, but so are all of the others. Text adventures remove the visual element, there are games without sound and games without stories, etc.
I think what’s new is the combination of so many at once. So far the game part of it has been emphasized more than the others, people have seen them as “games plus other things added in to improve the game” and not actually combined the forms too carefully. I don’t think it’s any one part that makes computer games unique, it’s the combination of the parts.
Think of music videos — they’re a combination of music and video, there’s nothing unique to either of those parts, but when combined you get something new, greater than either part. I think the ties that bind the different forms of art, the different ways that they can be combined, is what’s unique about computer games.
This post was revived when Kieron Gillen discovered it and sent a bunch of his minions to bash us, here and on other blogs.
You’re right about the combination of things leading to a result that can be greater then the sum of its parts. But I’m not sure if combination is the onlique “unique” property of games. I have a feeling that here’s something else, something truly new, a new element in the mix. We can’t call it “gameplay” because games are ancient. But digital media allow for new forms of play, of interaction, new experiences, that were not possible before.
I agree that the game element is optional, but so are all of the others.. i think your blinkered and limited approach to defining video games is just as likely to hold back progress as the gamers you criticize.
If it were adopted en masse, perhaps. But we only see our work as complementary to that of the “masse”. If everybody would be doing what we are doing now, we would do something else. It’s not about narrowing the potential to one specific thing, it’s about broadening it!
That being said, the important point is to realize that videogames are different from other games. How it is different is up for debate.