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Published:: 24 April 2009 at 7 am

Category:: Thoughts

What’s in a game?

not the same
Short article by Tynan Sylvester followed by a heated discussion.

Things haven’t changed much, have they? Except that Mr Sylvester may be wrong. Maybe Hungry Hungry Hippos and Fallout 3 are still too much alike to make his point.

I know what he means, though, by saying that the term “game” does not fit videogames anymore. Except that it does. Even Fallout 3 is still a game underneath. He’s just playing it wrong. But his wrong style of playing is infectious. And at some point, there will be more developers than just us -with bigger budgets- who design explicitly for this play style. It may take another generation, though. A generation of designers who were born after Pac Man and Space Invaders. Looking forward to it!

I seem to have made my own equations before:

I agree in funny ways.

Posted by Michaël Samyn on April 24, 2009 | Filed Under: Thoughts

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Tale of Tales is a game development company founded by Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn. We make interactive projects that often take place in virtual spaces. Our motivation is mostly artistic. We want to discover and exploit the enormous expressive potential of realtime technology. more…

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Ben 24 April 2009, 5:26 pm

Aren’t games like Fallout 3 intending for you to play them wrong?

Cortout 25 April 2009, 7:52 pm

Oh, thank you for the link, it oppened quite an interesting discussion on a other forum.[http://www.uberclub.org/comments.php?DiscussionID=727&page=1#Comment_5796]

I think that thinking that a video game deserves another name when reaching the “art” rank brings big differences between those in the game section. By that I mean that letting no differences between Fallout 3 and hungry hungry hippos is a bit mean for the first one. Isn’t the gap enourmous enough to seprate them?

While writing this I noticed that it’s actually what I do. I call interactive art what really passed the game package, and call all the rest “games”. What am I fighting about?

Well that was for your own comments, but for what Tynan Sylvester actually said, I think that it’s the vision of games that needs to change, not the name. It’s true that saying “I play video games” doesn’t sounds respectable for a lot of people, but maybe because we haven’t show them more “mature” video games, even if they’re not near the end of maturing.[evitate the VG as mature medium débate: check]

So that is what I think we should do, change the vision, not the name.

Tynan Sylvester 27 April 2009, 4:27 am

Hey Michael,

Thanks for the post. I didn’t know you’d written on this before, but now that I’ve read your post, I think that you definitely did a better job expressing the concept than I did.

I just want to call out one funny thing that you wrote above:

“And at some point, there will be more developers than just us -with bigger budgets- who design explicitly for this play style. It may take another generation, though. A generation of designers who were born after Pac Man and Space Invaders. Looking forward to it!”

Pac-Man was released in 1980, Space Invaders in 1978.

I was born in 1986.

The future is now.

Michaël Samyn 27 April 2009, 6:59 am

I’m so happy I live to see the future! :)

Judging from the controversy that followed my post back in the day -even Edge magazine called me out on this in an otherwise very supportive article- I’m not sure if I did a better job back then. But it is kind of you to say so.

Thanks for stopping by. And for joining us in our uphill struggle. There is huge plateau at the top. I’ve seen it. It’s beautiful! :)

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What’s in a game?

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