Quote:
Originally Posted by Varyon
It's not a game by the specific definition you're using, no. I recently started playing EVE Online, and it certainly doesn't fit your definition of "game" (there's no win state, although I suppose you could set yourself a goal like "have the highest net value" or "be CEO of the corporation with the most territory" or what-have-you, and the only lose state is to quit playing, given you could literally lose all of your ships, goods, and money but still be able to just start building up again from the free Corvette you can get from any station), but it's kind of hard to not consider it a game.
As for tabletop RPG's, I'd certainly count those as games, even for open-ended campaigns where the only win state is "We're content with how things have turned out and are ready to move on to a different campaign," and the only lose state is "We're tired of this crap - rocks fall, everyone dies, let's nuke this campaign from orbit and move on to another one."
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Yeah, under normal circumstances I wouldn't even bring it up, myself.
It's the special occasion of this thread, philosophy and whatnot.
That said, at the lowest state of chips, the downest they can be, based on the definition I go with, not a game.
But EVE is probably more involved than most games really.
The player run economy alone is a huge ball of yarn.
Then all that PVP, the factions, the subterfuge. There are so many ways to compete, even in meta ways (conspiring against one another using 3rd party communication and all that)
EVE's battles, especially the big ones, are legendary, possibly even more legendary that Ultima Online ones (or at the very least, more bombastic, simply due to the much larger amount of players, graphics, etc)
Certainly has drawn me in for some time, but I'm a penny pincher for online currencies and grind I'm burned out, too.
Watching some excellent tutorials killed the rest of my motivation.
Why would that happen? Why would an excellent tutorial do this?
Because it showcased some extremely potent ways of gaining resources, skill levels, and other goodies.
And I..not wanting to do any of it. Thus, I folded.
So yeah, I myself, in regular speech, call many a non game game too.
It's probably quite human, too (perhaps a point of philosophy, too, even if probably off topic. It's like how we say "stupid computer" and other anthropomorphisms for things that don't even have a mind)
But I also like the mince, and thinking about it.
Oh.
And while EVE and open end RPGs are sandboxes, they often have minigames in them that do have win and loss states.
(In the case of EVE, flying around in a ship to a new 'minigame' might be likened to clicking next in a dialogue that starts the next minigame)
Basic quests, for example. Encounters, all of these things tend to have rules/restrictions, win and loss states.
P.S.:
And while, again, this kind of strict set can seem a bit 'hot' for debates.
I do think that having some strictness can be good if you're a game designer, or modder.
Like when I added up there that flying with a ship in EVE from station to station to pick up new missions, is not really gameplay but more like switching pages in a book.
This might be slightly ... uncomfortable, but if one at least is concious about it, can make games better.
Usually by trimming down fat, waiting times, tedium.
I quite like Mount and Blade 2 bannerlord.
But there are several aspects of it that are not gameplay at all, even though they're dressed up like it.
Smelting down weapons to be reused in smithing, for example.
This is done by clicking a button. One at a time. Which is fine, there doesn't have to be fancy animations for everything.
But the developers don't offer a mass smelting option.
So, you have to needlessly flick your tendons to do this.
And some people even defend it "oh quit being such a baby, just click the button"
In Sandbox games, this could be needlessly slow travel (unless exploration is actually worthwhile, I myself am wary about fasttravel in Elder Scrolls games)
But yeah, again, under normal circumstances I just go along ^^ I just think there's merit to some hairsplitting too.