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by YurgenJurgensen 647 days ago
That’s easy: At least one of the following: A failure state, a success state or a score.
2 comments

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?
Exactly what it claimed to be: An alpha/beta test for a game.
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.

This is a straight-up lie. Hardcore and the Ender Dragon were added in 2012, in the patch that would become 1.0.0. Score was added in 0.24_SURVIVAL_TEST in 2009 (https://minecraft.wiki/w/Java_Edition_Classic_0.24_SURVIVAL_...). Do you have any examples that aren’t outright fabrications?
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.

One could argue these are minor failure states, but ok, let's change it to anything that loses some amount of progress. Dying in non-hardcore Minecraft is a failure state because whatever you were trying to do was cut short, whether exploring an area, gathering resources, etc.

If you restrict failure states to only mean things that end the game, then games like Dark Souls do not have any failure states, since in Dark Souls you always respawn when you die. Most other modern single player games would also not have any failure states, since they also let you respawn as often as you like.

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.
Don’t dodge the question: Why not?
You're right, the Sims is a toy not a game. You can create games with toys but they are different