I don't disagree with your "games = interactivity"-sentiment. It works well. But while it is useful to distinguish games from other mediums, it doesn't classify games beyond, well, this very broad term. Both Oblivion and GTA are interactive, but they differ beyond that, and I'm trying to find ways to classify that difference.
As such, we need to find more detailed requirements for the different kind of games.
I agree that classification by genre is disappointing, as it does lead to fewer "genre crossovers". What can one do about it?
Maybe that marketing paragraph blurb on the back of the box of a game is a better description in that sense. I mean, at least if it were honest. But if games are only describable by writing a paragraph on them, we'll never be able to compare them.


What about visual novels? Those often face claims that they are not a game, but they are surely interactive. Not anymore than "choose your own adventure"-books, perhaps, but it is an interaction. But then, at some level, any other game is also "just" a series of decisions. Only there, many, many small ones amount to something, but are individually not important, whereas in the visual novel-thing, few decisions have great impact and change a lot*.

How to distill games down to a few, common elements that manage to describe a game somewhat well in just a few words?
I mean, I'd have trouble accurately describing GTA in one sentence, even.

We should have a thread in which we describe games in one sentence.
"Mario Kart: You race or battle each other in karts and use an assortment of different weapons designed to destroy any bit of friendship and sympathy between you".

I suppose exactly that difficulty is why we end up saying "GTA clone" instead. But weren't there a lot of GTA clones? I'd say enough that it slowly used those "open world/sandbox"-terms. Which, however, aren't particulary descriptive.
lostclimate, can you elaborate on this? I'm not following game sales much these days -- but isn't it still the case that commercially succesful games are followed by lots of clones (or at least very similar games)? GTA had it, and even things like Minecraft have.


* I am aware that I previously argued that such a broad generalization is useless, and I stand by that. My point was back then, and still is (even though it may not come across here, as I'm just interested in pointing out a difference) that the KIND of decisions have an impact -- and the context given by everything else (that having a much larger role than most people give it credit for).



Are you not interested in discussion?
Or don't you see the value in having clear, defined terms - this thread should have made clear already what problems arise as long as you don't have those.
Plus: Well, what is playing?
And don't just quote the first paragraph from wikipedia, I can read that myself. The thing is, there are so many different ways of "playing" that it's hard to describe. A child pretending to be a superhero is playing, sure. Is an actor on a movieset playing? Probably. Even if he's not enjoying it, you know, if he's just doing it for the money, and hates his part and everything about it with a passion? The ACT may be the same, but the INTENTION is different. Can "play" be defined with just one but not the other? Must it be defined that way?

Sure, playing is pretty clear, but what's "the majority"? Cutscenes can have a set time, but only the most limited games are set in the same way. For one player the majority of the game might be gameplay, but for a faster player the majority of the game might be cutscenes. And if the majority of it is cutscenes rather than playing, but it still has playing, what is it?

Back to the tangent:
I'd say "choose your own adventure" books are games, but obviously not video games. Choose-your-own-adventure eBooks would qualify as video games.

I feel that genres as they are have some value, but only because of what some of them actually are. They can be buzzwords for mechanics. We need a jargon/vernacular that describes established mechanics, and if it's a defining feature of a game we use it in its description. Jargon can be confusing, but genres are already jargon.

For example: FPS works fantastically as a genre because it's a simple joining of two mechanics: First-Person + Shooter. You might have a First-Person Explorer, or First-Person Driving Simulator, or Third-Person Shooter (although third-person needs better terms, because Third-Person could be interpreted as behind the player, over-head, shoulder-cam, smart-cam... these are all third-person). It's a connection of simple mechanics. A lot of driving games let the player choose the camera style, in which case it would no longer be a defining mechanic, and camera style wouldn't be mentioned.

MMO works similarly -- they used to be "MMORPGs", but these days the MMO prefix describes a mechanic of the game which can be appended onto others.

RPG is a genre, but not a mechanic, and it's pretty rubbish. It's a broad term that really refers to any game that demonstrates at least 5 of 17 different mechanics (intentional hyperbole -- I haven't actually counted out the staples of RPGs, but I'm sure you'll agree that there are enough that two RPGs could share none of the same mechanics and still be considered RPGs).

We should instead have well-recognised terms we can string together to describe the defining mechanics of a game. For example, you might describe a particular RPG as a conversational, indirect-combat (selecting actions to be performed rather than directly performing those actions; this would be as opposed to turn-based-combat [inherently indirect, making "indirect-combat" inherently real-time] and direct combat), smart-cam (Mario-style camera that follows loosely but is rarely directly controlled), grinding (earn experience through certain activities) fantasy game (actual style genres like fantasy and sci-fi still have their use).

Players who like RPGs only if they're allowed some twitch-action will know to avoid that game because of its indirect combat (probably a bad example -- it might make sense to stick just to turn-based and real-time as descriptors of action).

i love discussion. i just dont see a point in the current state of this discussion.
Jibb for example asked what if a faster player has less game?
well the answer is obvious, the majority of a game is to be measured by the fastest possible gameplay lenght.

if you really want to dfine by genre, simply define by movie genres. stop calling GTA a sandbox game. call it an action game instead. it may be hard to differentiate at first but once you get the knack of it its quite simple actually. because then you have already define what the player does in the game. a horror game? well he bloody well tries to survive the lurking horrors. action game? well things go down hot! mystery? puzzle solving ehre i come! adventure? well lets experience something you dont see everyday! and so forth.

basically: a game is to be played and the genre defines the playstile. you dont play an action game for a few puzzles it may have. action can go down with fists, gunfights or lightsabers for all i care. it still is action. add ONE secondary genre and be good with it. like action fighting or action shooting or battle action whatever. example:

skyward sword, fantasy adventure, 100+ hours of gameplay (and roughly 30+ hours of videos)

diablo 3: mystery fantasy, god knows how many hours of gameplay, a few cutscenes

heavy rain: mystery, more of an interactive movie

starcraft 2: scifi war strategy (war strategy is the secondary genre in that case) endless hours of gameplay a few dozen minutes of cutscenes

and so on. this is how I categorize games and how I explain genres to customers or people i meet who have no idea about gaming.
i figured thata term like survival horror is kidna redundand. as is teh term action adventure or point and click RPG. i mean, who in this world except a few of us knows what a "3rd person tactical squad based online shooter" is? in the end, it still is an action game...

You all brought a lot of points and made an interesting discussion. Error tried to explain why Diablo is so much different than Minecraft as an example. But the original point was that Spike told, Minecraft has no gameplay and I just told you, that it has a gameplay mechanic, similar to Diablo, no matter why you like one of these games more or not, how art style, music or content differs. The point is: it has a gameplay, that comes just with a higher degree of freedom.

Because of that it is a game and not a movie, not an image, not a music and no magazine.

No, the original point was "Indie 3d platformer, puzzles with voxel based digital clay". The discussion has evolved since then. There's no reason to go back to Spike's first post in this thread, especially when you yourself feel that that's already solved, because it has evolved since then as well (although there's nothing wrong with going back to Spike's first point if you feel there's more to say about it).

@Spike: vague descriptors are great, too. Action, mystery (I think most would call this "puzzle"), horror and so on are fine and dandy. In fact they are helpfully vague, in that they describe the feel of the game without putting it into a well-defined box -- specific expectations aren't created; staples aren't necessarily included by developers through a feeling of obligation to the "genre".

On the other hand a gamer will often ask, "Yeah, but what kind of game is it?" And the answer might be something like FPS, RTS (two well-defined descriptors), or roguelike or RPG (two terrible descriptors for two different reasons -- one because it's effectively the same "GTA clone" thing as before, but now it's "Rogue clone", and the other because it connects too many mechanics that aren't related to each other, confining the developer as the label comes with so many expectations).

The very reason certain genres are so clear-cut is that they are connections of well-known descriptors (first-person, shooter, real-time, strategy, turn-based, massively-multiplayer-online...).

Rock Paper Shotgun tends to avoid using the RPG genre name for the same reason, referring to some games as "swords-and-conversations" and others as "guns-and-conversations".
Sure, except the more important question was: if it's no longer a game because there isn't enough playing, but playing still exists in it, then what is it?

Why, it's an interactive movie of course!

lol.

If I play a (typically) 6 hour game, 2 hours of which are cutscenes (I know it's ridiculous, but bear with me), it's obviously a game. Then on the second playthrough I have a number of things to my advantage: I've discovered shortcuts, I've mastered the gameplay, I know the most efficient way through every conversation and which choices result in me being able to skip entire missions and boss-fights, and I beat the game in 1 hour 59 minutes. By Spike's definition it's not a game (these things could theoretically be done by a lucky player on their first playthrough), and you think it's an interactive movie?

Here's the thing: definitions which are "obvious" (what's a game, what's playing, so on) are often only "obvious" from a limited point of view and the context of your own experiences, which will differ greatly with other players. What Spike considers "obvious" ways to draw a line differ from mine, and there's no less reason to accept the binary "is there interaction" as a good line. I'd argue that there's more reason.

no, a speedrun does NOT count. its not how long a speedrunner plays a game but how long the general gameplay is. for example, i can beat super mario bros in under twenty minutes. now if there WOULD be cutscenes for like 30 minutes, it woudl still be a game because there is content in that game that can ake you up to ten hours to do all of it. and thats the point.
heavy rain does not get longer and deeper if you take your time playing it. maybe by a few minutes but not by a long shot. neither does metal gear. resident evil however, you can play one area for hours, finding little secrets and secret locations...

Wait what? Are you saying the "obvious" answer is incorrect?

I also get the idea you haven't played Heavy Rain, and never got really into any Metal Gear games (edit: although I can't speak for the original Metal Gear on the NES if that's what you mean).