Also I don't think you've given your definition of video game either. You said broad, but just how broad? Anything with any amount of interaction? In that case, does a Dvd menu count? How about pressing a button to advance the page of a book on Nook? Are web versions of Dr. Seus's books visual novels now? I'm not trying to mock or anything, but I'm curious when exactly you'd look at a .exe program and say "this ain't a game."
I said in the last post, I don't have one; a universally accurate definition of "game" doesn't really exist. It's a wild goose chase; you're always including a bunch of things that obviously aren't games and/or excluding a bunch of things that obviously are. The meaning of game is contextual so trying to pin it down doesn't really end well.
If you want to know my process of deciding whether or not something is a game, though, if it was meant to be a game, it's a game; this is obviously not perfect since it's not like publishing microsoft word as a game makes it a game, but unless someone specifically publishes a random program to screw with that definition of game I think I'll be okay. Basically it works for as long as no one's a smart ass about it.
I don't know who "these people" are, I'm sure their out there, but I am merely saying I respect the opinions of any reasonable person who says "I don't consider visual novels games under my own personal definition."
That's what I'm talking about. If you want to get into the problems with using interactivity as a measure of gaminess we can, but basically:
How do you measure interactivity?
How much interactivity is enough to be a game?
As I said before, how do you explain various traditional games that have little to no interactivity?
What about things that have plenty of interactivity but aren't games, like excel or a job? If you need an entertainment based example, what about IM programs?
If interactivity is absolutely necessary to play the game, are you no longer playing the game while you're, say, swapping your weapons in an in-game menu? While you're standing still, or if you're simply travelling from point a to point b without interruption?
What do we gain through excluding things that don't match your definition from being "games"?
Perhaps this is a better explanation, though... Interaction is at the heart of a game in the same way notes are at the heart of a song, but a song with very few notes is not no longer a song.
You basically seem to be saying here that if a visual novel isn't a game, than games can't have visual novel elements?
No no no, I'm saying that if a visual novel isn't a game for X reason, the assumed message is that X reasoning applies to all games.
So if visual novels aren't games because they aren't interactive enough, you've established that there is a required minimum interactivity that something needs to be a game.
Not reeaaaally. Again, this goes back to the "where do you draw the line?" issue. I think it's perfectly reasonable to say that something isn't a game if it has no or virtually no interaction, but that doesn't mean games can't have minimalist interaction. It's just a matter of personal judgement, is all.
Again, I don't really draw the line in the first place.
Heck, even if you think some artsy minimalist game which has no gameplay beyond just choosing text options that barely effect anything isn't a game (and I'm not saying I do think that, just an example) that doesn't imply that such an experience is bad or that it shouldn't be made. It just says "Hey, this doesn't fit into my personal definition of game, so I'm not going to personally call it that." I don't think that's really going to damage those games or the industry. Hell, maybe some Visual Novel creators prefer to think of themselves as writers/story tellers and wouldn't want their works classified as "games" anyway. Or maybe some of them do. To each his own.
That's optimistic and all, but for one it doesn't really quell the concern I have for what happens when most or a significant amount of people accept these definitions and push experimental or heavily narrative games out of our medium. Yet again, every time you say that something isn't a game you're specifying something that games
can't do- if that grows too big, you're going to end up with a limited scope of what a game can be, which heavily damages it as an artform. And in the end it's probably going to end up looking like everything we've done a hundred times in the past few decades; and if you want that, there's nothing stopping you from getting plenty of it now, it's that I kind of want to see how far games can go, and every time someone puts up a wall to stop me and people like me it's a little unsettling.
But the sad part is that the vast majority of the people questioning whether various games are really games are really just saying that they don't want these games. When they say that proteus or vn's aren't games, they're not saying they it doesn't meet their abstract definition of a game, they're making a no true scotsman fallacy to belittle games that don't meet their standards of what a game should be- it should be an escapist fantasy, not a nature walk simulator; a fast-paced shooter, not a slice of life.
Note that when I say "vast majority" I mean that I've never actually spoken with someone who questioned whether a game was a game and not put them into this category, although I'm pretty sure they exist and it would be nice to meet them because they sound interesting.
