Gaming as multiple mediums

From this David Wong article on Cracked. The article itself is mostly doom and gloom, "bah, everything is an FPS, no creativity, etc" but this part made me thinking:

Do you think that we will see a shift in these directions?

It is indeed a bit weird, that as more and more things are becoming digital, everything is full of interactivity, yet everyone is talking about "gaming" as if it would directly competete with cinema, or with TV, or with toys, or whatever, while it's becoming more similar to calling everything that moves on a screen the "motion picture medium".

I know, that for example, Will Wright sometimes insisted on calling his works "software toys", because he saw games as something that is based on rules, while toys are based on creativity, and his software toys aimed for the latter.

Tale of Tales (The Endless Forest, The Path) artists, argued that their works are like paintings in a gallery, except that they happen to be presented as digital 3D rendered environments.

I personally also always argued for Visual Novels not being Video Games, even if they are in the "Games Supermedium", because they don't have practically any individual gameplay, only art and plot identifies them, the gameplay is just a framework format, while it helps to define every other game (even the ones that have significant stories).

Do you think that it still makes sense to talk about games as a medium? And if yes, do you think that this will change in the future?

edited 14th Jun '11 11:17:26 PM by EternalSeptember

Funny, one thing that came to mind was Team Fortress 2 and how it got so popular on You Tube, what with all the remixes, dubs, Garrys Mod videos, recorded sessions and Replays.

Oh GREAT

JUST AS I WAS WRITING A POST ON EXACTLY THIS.

Now everyone will think I'm ripping off Wong here, so might as well scrap the whole thing.

edited 14th Jun '11 11:38:05 AM by Aminatep

Or... you could just add your original thoughts to it?

YES. YOU POSTED EXACTLY WHAT I WAS THINKING ABOUT. AND WHAT ^^ HE WAS THINKING ABOUT, APPARENTLY.

With regard to Visual Novels in particular, I think their sales and reception have been actively damaged by people's calling them games.

edited 14th Jun '11 11:21:52 PM by INUH

And where do games that are actually about gameplay fit into this scheme, hmm? Metroid Prime, for instance, is hardly just an interactive story, but it's also clearly not what he calls a "true game".

Honestly, this is where I'm seeing a big fault in current video game trends. Too much focus on telling a story and not enough on making an enjoyable game.

Apparently its taboo nowadays to just want to play a solid, well made video game.

A great story can make a good game fantastic, but its not needed sometimes (unless its an RPG, then its priority numero freaking uno)

Oh well, I got Saints Row 3 to look forward too And taking vain annoying pride in never touching farmville or angry birds.

I'll have to disagree with that. I ain't about to play an RPG with a shitty battle system just for a story that might be good. I'll use Youtube for that, thank you.

Angry Birds is awesome whenever you are a casual, core, or hardcore gamer.

Farmville can go die in a tire fire for all I care though.

And an RPG with a mediocre story is not even worth playing.

And for the record, I dont consider Mass Effect 2 to be an RPG.

Not really, I watched someone play like one level and found it dull as hell. The fact its such a success blows my mind.

edited 15th Jun '11 2:03:25 AM by Thorn14

Because it's simple, pretty fun, and addicting?

Simple means it has few hooks that might 'catch' someone out of its niche. Thus, Love It or Hate It.

Whether we want to admit it or not, we tend to tolerate multiple aspects of a game that are less than satisfactory to us because of the one or two that have our interest (games which have only what we like are the exception rather than the norm).

We end up grasping for straws when someone challenges us about the tolerated flaws and pretend that there's actually some obscure merit to them.

edited 15th Jun '11 7:18:03 AM by Recon5

Yeah while story is something great in RP Gs I do think it shares the top priority spot with gameplay if it is not indeed slightly surpassed by gameplay. I've played through games whose stories, aesthetic, and characters I hated solely because of the battle system. Hi FFX! Then again I am a very weird person who likes NES and SNES era JRP Gs better because of the things that most people complain about so I am not representative of normal gamers and their tastes...There's not many who say that their favorite part of a JRPG is grinding even though they can beat the game without it...

I just really dig turn based combat. Especially if it is Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest story lines are well...they aren't prize winners. They are simple and nostalgic. Like the rest of the games.

If these things do split off and get called something else oh well. It will be weird for a bit but I can adjust. So long as I continue to get my turnbased JRP Gs, visual novels, and so on I am fine...

edited 15th Jun '11 7:43:22 AM by Aondeug

According to a game design class I just took, the world's best-selling game isn't a game. It simply doesn't fit standard definitions of what a game is supposed to be. (The problem in this case is that there's no win condition.)

I'm surprised this took so long to show up on TV tropes forums.

And no, gaming will not be multiple mediums, at least not without a radically different interface and presentation. By radically different, not the Wii Mote, or For The Cel Of It. I mean what Disney tried to do with that 3D gaming place with the helmets and simulated weapons with massive amounts of players at once. Interactive games are all the same medium currently unless you make a stretch for arcades, which are dying outside of Latin America, where they are simply stagnating.

edited 15th Jun '11 9:34:11 PM by Cider

Japan's still going strong though. Apart from the PC Arcades are their largest competitive gaming environment.

Arcades will only really die when Fighting Game companies stop optimizing their titles for old fashioned sticks.

Honestly, if someone includes that in the definition of "game," that's when I stop paying attention to them on matters related to gaming.

Perhaps the best definition I've heard of for "game" is "a recreational activity in which rules are applied in conjunction with people's actions to produce a quantifiable result."

Exactly. The Sims doesn't have one.

Sure it does. It has tons of them. I didn't say “a single, final result.”

The plural of "medium" is "media". Anyway. I think that this idea may be ignoring that the same is true of traditional media. There's obviously a very great difference between, say, "Guernica"◊, "Composition VII"◊, and this portrait◊, not just in "style", but in intended effect on the viewer, etc., and even more if you take into account the contexts of their creations, but these are all "paintings".

Further, I think that the categorization still makes sense, because the technical part of constructing a painting (or a video game) is largely similar regardless of these factors. In visual art, "medium" means something like "what you're drawing with and on" (to oversimplify) and this works pretty well as a metaphor.

Saying that Angry Birds and Heavy Rain are in different media to me sounds like saying that a cereal commercial and Twin Peaks are in different media. There just needs to be greater recognition that "being in the same medium" doesn't imply as much similarity as might be thought. This is more of a problem in video games than for other media, I think.

Really? Having a strictly defined end condition seems more like board games. When I was a kid I role-played with my friends (like pretending to be pirates or something); that ended when our parents got pissed at us, and resumed maybe the next day. That sort of thing.

edited 15th Jun '11 11:28:38 PM by Tzetze

Well, Dungeons And Dragons isn't considered a game either . . .

And yet it plainly is one. If a definition of “game” fails to cover some games, that's the fault of the definition, not of the games.

(I <3 silly semantics arguments) What "standard" is this?

Man, Play, and Games has one. Homo Ludens has another. I learned both in class, and frequently confuse them, but I remember one of them was the one INUH quoted in his post.

edited 15th Jun '11 11:46:43 PM by feotakahari