Well... After my (stupid) Einstein quote i shall speak for myself.

We are saying that games ave to have this, games have to have that, but do they really ?
Can't we just for example pick a pencil and pen and play something like pictonary for fun ? or monopoly for the greedy ones ? I don't think we will ever reach a definition of game because of only one thingy: We all have our minds set in different pictures. A long time ago i was playing a game (well i though it was a game) and a friend of mine start arguying with me that wasn't a game, (i don't remmeber what game it was), and now I ask, who's right ? We will never agree on one static definition or vocabulary, even though a general vocabulary for game design would be good.

Chess vs. Checkers

I once had a school debate about this (well, it appeared in a exam to categorize chess and checkers as a game or as a sport and it lead to a debate ) In the final conclusion we reach to this conclusion (maybe wrong) that chess is considered a sport and checkers a game, but i must say, surf ? is it a sport but not a game ? i think so, now about soccer, is it a sport and not a game ? no !

I just don't think we will ever reach a definition of what is a game and what isn't !

bye

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Bruno Sousa aka Akura
Founder and programmer - Magick.pt
magick_pt@geocities.com
http://magickpt.cjb.net

In order to communicate with any degree of success, we need convention - a set of standards.

Its hard enough to communicate already - if I say "balloon" - do you perceive a hot air balloon, a party balloon, filled or empty...?

A dictionary definition of Game is,
A contest, physical or mental, according to certain rules, for amusement, recreation, or for a winning stake.

Geoff refines this definition by applying the computer context to the definition thus limiting what a game can be.

It is my understanding that one definition of a sport is, "to play a game". Accordingly, the abstract set of sports, without further refining, would include all sport, including tetris, chess, checkers etc...

Just my thoughts..
Pete

Actually, I think my definition works for any type of game, not limiting to computers. The point of differing from what the standard Websters definition was to be more precise and describe the elements closer as since we are designers, we need a more precise definition than the layman.

artificial intelligence - the branch of computer science that deal with writing computer programs that can solve problems creatively

This is how AI is defined by dictionary.com. Now, to the average person, this is fine. But this is NOT an accurate assesment of what AI is to the AI scientist. Thats pretty much the reason for this. We are the game scientists, we need more accurate terminology and language than the average person on the street.

-Geoff

Thinking about it some more, the essance of why I want to define what a game is comes down to this:

I am a game designer and developer.

Shouldnt I know what a game is? If I dont know, who the hell will?

Could I explain what I do to someone else? If I cant explain it to someone else, do I really even know what Im doing?

A: "I make games."
Q: "Whats a game?"
A: "..."

These kind of things make it seem fairly important to have a good definition for what a game is IMO.

-Geoff

I couldn't let this one pass... =)

A: "I make games."
Q: "Whats a game?"
A: [DavidRM backs away slowly so as not to startle the cornered, scared, unintelligent creature he mistook for a person...]

;-)

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DavidRM
Samu Games http://www.samugames.com

[This message has been edited by DavidRM (edited August 10, 1999).]

Geoff -

I concede that a victory condition must be present in order for an activity, even if it's a fun one, to be classified as a game.
I thought that when I said "a game is where rules begin", I meant to imply that victory condition would be set.

I guess I should have added that rules are the definitions of which actions taken in the activity are to be measured and evaluated.

When you can measure the success of an activity, you can set goals to achieve.

When a certain goal has been achieved, you have the victory condition.

blah blah blah... I talk to much.

Time for me to chip in...

I have to agree with the original assesment of the definition of a game, but i take issue with the SimCity thing.

SimCity Classic, as it has later been dubbed, did not have a pre-set goal, per-se. There was no place where the Maxis people just said, "ok, you won," but we've already agreed that when you win, you don't have to stop. You include games with high-scores as games, because your victory condition is getting the highest score.

In Sim-City, there was no one, "score," but you could go for highest population, safest city, or if you were the sadistic type, highest crime rate. There were also Scenarios with difinite win-conditions. You can continue playing these cities afterwards, but i personally never felt the desire to.

Anyway, i would classify SimCity as a game, even if only barely.

-Shelrem

I agree with you that the scernarios were games, but I think it is a good thing to see SimCity classic, less the scenario maps (which I dont actually remember if they gave goals, as you may not have and then you didnt really have to save the city from Godzilla), would fall under the category of a "toy, near-game" because of its next-step readiness into being a game.

As for the score, you could go for highest population but it didnt keep track of the people who got the top 10 populations, so this becomes a personal goal, instead of a game provided one, such as a pinball machine has.

-Geoff

- A game must interact with the player.

Playing is a form of interaction so this is a somewhat circluar definition.
perhaps
*A game must have at least one player.

- A game must state all the rules (even flexible rules) so that the player knows what must be done.

Myst stated no rules. Is it not a game? The quake game engine has many rules enabling rocket jups etc. The damage of rockets and the height you can jump were not stated. You could argue that those are not realy rules then but that would mean that a game must state all the stated rules, which is silly.

- A game must have some sort of challenge, an obstacle for the player.
Agreed.

- A game must be able to have some kind of victory condition. Something has to HAPPEN: win, lose, gain some sort of closure (even if this is just the highest score/level).

I have played deathmatch quake for hours on end and stopped without lookin at my frag score. I play because the playing is fun. The fact that deathmatch doesn't really give a point of closure I think is one of the reasons it has been so enduring.

- A game by virtue of its rules and goals will define a small world/reality that all players understand commonly as the rules are there for all to see.

If all of the players understood the world because all of the rules were plain to see then adventure games would not work. Many games are based upon people figuring out what has to be done and how to do it.

- A game is created for the purpose of entertainment.

Some games are created for the purpose of gambling and to make money. Some play these games for entertainment, some play to try to make money. Nevertheless They are created for the pupose of making money.
Some games are created for the purpose education.

It is not the fact that it was created to entertain that makes it a game but rather that players who play the game find it entertaining.

I still think a game definition is worth striving for. It will be extremely difficult to come up with a definition that excludes all non games but allows all games. Especially when there are probably some things that some people think are games and that others think they aren't.

I would note on the above topic that the "rules" in Myst are shown as boundaries limiting what the character can do, much like an "out of bounds" limit on many games. "You cannot leave the path in this screen" is as much a rule as "You can't step over this line or you're out of bounds" is in basketball.
Similarly, it is not necessarily "hiding" the rules when one has experience points, algorithms for damage, etc, in adventure games. It is the introduction of random chance, which is common in a vast number of games, especially those of the board game variety. For instance, when playing Monopoly, one would not expect to know the exact dice roll they will have in a game, or the property they will have the chance to acquire. The player simply knows the parameters possible (I will be able to move between 1 and 12 spaces when I roll this dice, and the set of possible results of the spaces I land on within those 12 moves is clear). Thinking of the possible outcomes of the dice roll as a (very simple) algorithm makes it very similar to the "rolls" done by computers in adventure games. The main difference is that most people don't want to get out their calculators for Monopoly (alright, take my dice roll times 5, subtract 3, mod it with 3, and... ooh. Baltic Avenue.) while in computer games relatively complex arithmetic is no problem whatsoever.

-fel