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richardhutnik on 21 December 2009
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WereKitten said:

@Richardutnik

Maybe the problem is simply that the "videogame" term is an umbrella for too many different things. From video-toys to interactive fiction to collaborative or competitive tests of skills.

But the same can actually be said for the "game" term as applied to "physical" activities, as RPGs themselves testify.

I believe we probably started to see a drift from the classic view of what a game is, when RPGs came along.  They started to add a storyteller (GM) into the mix, and players who would be actors in a story, and do improve.  The GM would evaluate things, and they got put in with other forms of traditional games.  Then we go to the area of videogames, which then started to add single player play to them.  Also thrown in text adventures into the mix, and all this form of structured play (play in a rules-governed system) got added as "games".  Then the next step was that games that added increase production value, such as FMV, voice actors and so on, ended up getting more sales.  And then the movie industry starts to notice and how these increased mix of movie and game is catching on, and now the lines are very blurred.

Throw in also puzzle games like Tetris to, and it goes on.  The term is blurred in the concept of games now.  In the analog (board and cardgame side) of things, the lines are clearer.

I am additionally senstive to all this, because I am spending my time (when not job hunting) on a non-profit that promotes abstract strategy games, so categorization is important to me.  And abstract strategy games are the embodiment of things that DON'T have stories to them, and are not puzzles or anything else like that.  They are boardgames meet sports, with the winning and losing being nearly and completely determined by what the players do.  Exception would be for the potential allowing of dice involved, in games like backgammon.  And they are independent of theme, so they don't even have a themed environment they are based on.  They are just pure mental competition.  And from this, you can get a story out of what happens.