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by netdevnet 650 days ago
What makes a game a game though? Do you necessarily need action and damage points?
5 comments

That’s easy: At least one of the following: A failure state, a success state or a score.
Help me out here, I'm blanking on Minecraft's failure state, success state and scoring system?
You are aware that I said ‘at least one’, right? Although Minecraft has all three. It has a scoring system literally named ‘score’, Hardcore mode ends if you die, and killing the Ender Dragon rolls the credits.
None of those were present when Minecraft was first released to the public and wouldn’t be present for years.
Right, every single game was at one point incomplete
My point is that it was still a game before having those feature.
So what? Maybe it wasn’t a game in 2009. It was blatantly unfinished at that point, so this is hardly an issue.
Before Minecraft became a game, what was it?
All three of those things were added in Sept-Nov of 2021. By January 2021 the game had already sold >1 million copies.

It was absolutely a game at that point, ask anyone who played it. Being blatantly unfinished doesn’t matter, it would have remained a game even if he never ended any of those features.

Pretty much every game (including Jeremy's) on Steam has Steam achievements
The failure state would be 0 health?
Only if you play hardcore mode, otherwise you respawn.
That's still a failure state. A failure state doesn't need to permanently end the game, just be something you try to avoid.
Hard disagree. That's stretching the definition of "failure state" to mean "anything negative".

By this logic getting hit is a failure state, taking fall damage is a failure state, another player scoring points is a failure state, not actively getting points is a failure state.

Ok, so Harvest Moon and similar farm game are not games. Games about crafting are not games. The Sims are not games. I could go on but I think you already realise that your definition is not valid. Btw, I am not disagreeing with the claim that Jeremy's games are video games
If all your Sims die, is that not a failure? Harvest Moon has Steam achievements. (And a ‘best ending’ category on speedrun.com.) You could go on, but if those are the best you could think of, I don’t think it would be very productive.
In the Sims, mortality only applies to adults not toddlers and below, so only a portion of them can die.

How is a Steam achievement a score? A score is a scalar value not a Boolean one. And arguably it is not part of the game but part of Steam. You won't get Steam achievements of any game if you get it from another store. But using the Store achievement definition, Jeremy's games also qualify because they have Steam achievements (most games on Steam do have the achievements even those that fall outside of your definition of game).

How is toddler immortality relevant? A failure state exists. If toddler-only households are viable, that’s just a design oversight, which is an unrelated issue.

I never said that steam achievements were a score. Please try to read my posts. I thought it would be obvious that they represent a success state. I also note that you ignored the fact that Harvest Moon literally has an ending.

Also, I don’t know why Jeremy’s games qualifying is relevant. I never said they don’t.

I am not reading your mind just reading what you write. So what is and is not obvious is something solely concerning you.

If Steam Achievement is not a score, is Harvest Moon not a game then? Same thing about crafting and building games.

And having an ending is not synonymous with a success state or a failure state. I think it's clear that your definition is not a valid one as many games don't fit it

Achievements are baubles and trinkets. They are neither necessary nor sufficient for something to be a game.

And I don’t know if you’re aware, but a vast amount of Sims players use the game to build and decorate houses and then play out stories in them. The Sims dying is not. A lose condition, but the final page of their story.

Why not? You are aware that many ticket-redemption games reward the player with literal baubles and trinkets, right?

Just because many people choose not to engage with the mechanics doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

I never said they don’t exist, I said they are neither necessary nor sufficient for something to be a game.
You're right, the Sims is a toy not a game. You can create games with toys but they are different
This is going to become navel gazing really fast.

“Art with game tropes” implies that “regular games” aren’t art. Which I disagree with. We may not have gotten Shakespeare yet, but writing was an artistic medium before him just as games are one before its version of him.

And whether a particular piece of software is a game is also not clearly defined. This has been a big argument several time, see the one over Gone Home and walking simulators.

Others later down argue over Minecraft and “a win state, fail state, and scoring systems”. Minecraft did not have any of these for a long time, but it would be unconvincing to say that it only become a game after it gained them.

You misassume my meaning. When I say I games are not art, I don't mean they are not as good / important than art. I just mean they are different. In fact, if anything, I think they are much more important than art.
If before I missasumed, now I don't understand. What is your meaning? What do you mean by art, and different how?

I see games as a form of human expression just as writing, movies, painting, etc. They many be newer (video games certainly are) and they may be in a categorically different medium (human agency) than the others, but they're still art. And maybe one day soon someone will produce a game worthy of being called Art with a capital A.

I agree with you. People treat art and video games are exclusive things when they are actually not.
In my view, which is mostly inspired by Huizinga's works, the game is a constructed set of rules. The main game is the culture itself, that branches into the great playing tree of humanity. The video games are not that different from any other set of rules, but they are interactive, immersive and self-governing/autonomous, which is an unusual set of qualities for a media.
You need quantifiable outcomes / performance metrics.
It's all depending on perspective