A Game Is A Game Is A Game

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what is a game? Monday, 20 July 2009 So to get started, I think it’s worth defining exactly what a game is. And when I need a definition, I tend to reach for the Oxford English Dictionary, where we find...

game noun an activity engaged in for amusement Monday, 20 July 2009 ...that a game is an activity engaged in for amusement. That seems fair enough, so now, let’s play a little game that I like to call... ‘is this a game?’

Monday, 20 July 2009 So this is a game - the girl with the glasses is particularly amused that she’s about to win with that column of red in the middle there.

Monday, 20 July 2009 This is a game. They look cold, but the guy on the left of the picture is clearly into what’s going on, even if he has just made a terrible mistake.

Monday, 20 July 2009 Scrabble is a game, and if you’ve ever been to a proper tournament, you’ll know just how seriously some people take it. After playing maybe 8 or 10 competitive games during the day, they relax at night by playing... Scrabble!

Monday, 20 July 2009 These Twister players look amused. You may or may not ﬁnd these games amusing, but that doesn’t stop them being games. A few more examples...

Monday, 20 July 2009 Starcraft 2. I haven’t played it yet, but I’m fairly certain it will be a game.

Monday, 20 July 2009 Diner Dash. I’ve heard the complaint levelled against games like Diner Dash that it’s just all about the clicking. I wonder if those people have ever played Diablo, which is just as much about the clicking.

Monday, 20 July 2009 Deer Hunter. It may not amuse you, but there’s a large crowd of people in North America that want this.

Monday, 20 July 2009 Left 4 Dead. Fun to play, and fun to watch others play. Plus, you can’t really go wrong with zombies, can you?

Monday, 20 July 2009 Myst. My mum loved this game. Again, it may not appeal to you, but that’s not the point.

Monday, 20 July 2009 Space Ace. It may not be something that anyone here aspires to play, but that doesn’t mean it’s invalid as a game. On the ﬂight down last night, I watched a father and daughter playing rock-paper-scissors - that’s a game, since clearly both found it amusing and fun. I’d say that Space Ace is about as complex as RPS, and I actually think there’s a lot we can learn from it, and not just in the negative sense. So, is everyone happy that these are all games, designed to provide people with amusement?

yay! we know a game when we see it Monday, 20 July 2009 Thank goodness for that.

casual games? Monday, 20 July 2009 So... what’s a casual game? Is it different in some way? Is it not an activity engaged in for amusement?

it’s this! I thought it was that? both you guys are wrong, it’s actually this. Monday, 20 July 2009 I’ve been to more than a few conferences about so-called casual games over the years. However, usually a lot of time is spent trying to deﬁne the term. There’s a lot of to-ing and froing, but usually we end up with some really vague things like...

games that are easy to play! Monday, 20 July 2009 Casual games are games that are easy to play! Great! But why would you make a game that’s difficult to play?

games that can be played for 5 minutes! or for a much longer time! Monday, 20 July 2009 Alright! So glad we narrowed that down.

games that are played by women over 30! Monday, 20 July 2009 That one seems a little vague, since that’s essentially the population of the world. But to me, you just described...

Monday, 20 July 2009 PGR 4, a game which I’ve never seen described as being ‘casual’, but one that by all the rules - easy to play, played for a short or long time, played by women over 30 - it should be because my girlfriend plays it. OK, so let’s use our old friend the OED to ﬁgure out what casual means...

casual adjective relaxed and unconcerned Monday, 20 July 2009 Yep, ok, some people play games to relax, but given how competitive some people can be with things like high scores and Sudoku times, I don’t see this as being applicable.

casual adjective showing insufﬁcient care or forethought Monday, 20 July 2009 So maybe what we’re actually describing is how the games are made? I don’t see much evidence of insufficient care at PopCap or Gamelab though, so perhaps not.

casual adjective not regular or firmly established Monday, 20 July 2009 I wouldn’t say that games like Diner Dash or Bejeweled aren’t firmly established. PopCap just announced that Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook had 5 million players in the first few weeks. I’d say that’s established.

casual adjective happening by chance; accidental Monday, 20 July 2009 I can see that some games allow for happy accidents, like when you play a piece in Tetris and suddenly realise that you actually cleared more than you were expecting. But I’ve seen similar effects happen in other games.

casual adjective informal Monday, 20 July 2009 Because as we all know, games like GTA and Halo are renowned for their strict sense of formality. I don’t know about you but nothing there really makes any sense to me. Let’s take a look at the supposed opposite of casual -

hard core noun the most committed or doctrinaire of a group Monday, 20 July 2009 This was actually the most positive definition I found - I had to then go and look up doctrinaire, which turns out to be a stubborn person of arbitrary or arrogant opinions. That sounds kind of familiar to this industry, but is it really something we want to be associated with? I think the commitment part is good, by the way - Valve and Microsoft must love the fact that there are people who buy every single game in order to get all the achievements. Having fans is good, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not sure we should be forcing everyone to think in exactly the same way. So the definitions are as contradictory as you'd expect...

Monday, 20 July 2009 But what about those people who play Bejeweled for 40 hours a week? In ﬁlm, hardcore deﬁnes a very particular genre, not necessarily the viewing audience. Alright, so letʼs look up ʻgenreʼ...

genre noun a style or category of art or literature Monday, 20 July 2009 So, again, I don’t think ‘hardcore’ is a genre of game - puzzle, strategy, sports, simulation, these are the categories of games. Look at Steam or the iPhone App Store - they don’t split the games into casual or hardcore. Why? Because that doesn’t make any sense. ‘Casual’ isn’t a genre either. Nowhere in that deﬁnition of ‘genre’ is the demography or the approach of observation/play mentioned. As an aside, this clearly shows that there’s no debate to be had about whether or not games are art - we have genres, it’s an art. Time for another little game... let’s play ‘is this a ﬁlm?’

Monday, 20 July 2009 So, is this a ﬁlm?

Monday, 20 July 2009

Monday, 20 July 2009 For those of you unfamiliar, Troll 2 is generally regarded as the best worst ﬁlm ever made. But it’s still a ﬁlm.

Monday, 20 July 2009 You may not like certain types of film, but that doesn’t mean they’re not films. They just have different genres that appeal to different people, who may or may not watch films frequently or not. There can be bad films, certainly, poorly structured, terrible editing, and so on. But they're still films. And you have different genres. But they're still films. And you have different funding and distribution models. But they're still films. I've never heard the term 'casual films'.

just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean everyone won’t like it Monday, 20 July 2009 Equally, there can be bad games. But they're still games. And you have different genres. But they're still games. And you have different funding and distribution models. But they're still games. ‘Casual’ is not a genre. And at the end of the day, games - all games - need to be fun. This is an entertainment industry, just like ﬁlm. Like it or not, we’re performers. We entertain people with our performances, and not everyone is going to like our performance.

fun noun light-hearted pleasure or amusement Monday, 20 July 2009 There’s that word ‘amusement’ again - it connects the word fun to games. The two are inescapably intertwingled. Fun and games, games and fun, that’s just how it is. And just how it should be.

Monday, 20 July 2009 I just spent 3 days in a ﬁeld 40 miles north of Edinburgh with 84,499 other people listening to music. I had a great time, but it’s clearly not everyone’s idea of fun.

Monday, 20 July 2009 Shopping isn’t my idea of fun, but evidently some people enjoy the process.

Monday, 20 July 2009 Chasing a block of cheese down a steep hill isn’t my idea of fun, but clearly others ﬁnd it fun.

Monday, 20 July 2009 I have a friend who loves running marathons - great, but I don’t enjoy running at all.

just because you don’t ﬁnd it fun doesn’t mean everyone won’t ﬁnd it fun Monday, 20 July 2009

Monday, 20 July 2009 Someone who ﬁnds puzzle games fun is potentially going to ﬁnd Tetris, Myst, Pikmin and Portal fun. By describing some as casual and some as hard core, we’re putting people off. Do you want to deny someone the experience of any of those games? Because I don’t. Denki is seen - and sometimes dismissed - as 'just' a 'casual' games developer. Whenever I read that sentence, it makes me feel like we're just it in for laughs. And actually, that's true to an extent, but not in the way you might think. From our previous look at that word 'casual', it implies we're not professional in what we do, and that we have a careless, throwaway approach to game creation. We don't see ourselves as a producer of any one genre of game, for any one platform.

Monday, 20 July 2009 You may only know us from our work on digital TV, but we worked on...

Monday, 20 July 2009 GameBoy Advance prior to that. Our design approach didn't change.

Monday, 20 July 2009 And it's not changed for the work we're doing for Quarrel on Xbox Live Arcade or for our Wii game.

Monday, 20 July 2009 We have a distinctive style in our games, sure, but we'll make a game in any genre, on any platform, if it's something we'll want to play. You may not want to play it, but we’re comfortable with that. From our point of view, if some people absolutely hate what we’re doing, then we’re doing something right.

you know what would feel arrogant to me? ... delivering something where we didn't hold your time precious Monday, 20 July 2009 That may sound arrogant, but to paraphrase David Simon, the creator of The Wire, what's arrogant is putting out games that aren't fun, that people don't want to play, that people don't want to tell their friends about, that aren't the best damn games you can possibly make. I think we’re in danger of missing our opportunities -

Monday, 20 July 2009 We’ve spent too much time navel gazing about terms that we can’t even deﬁne, and not enough looking outwards to see how we can grow the market even faster than it’s growing right now.

Monday, 20 July 2009 The reaction to this story about game funded by B&Q amused me - there were people who hate the very concept, and people who think it’s a great idea. I’m with the latter -- we should not be sticking our noses in the air at ideas like this. Why do we want to keep games as some sort of special club? My dad would play this, and he doesn’t play games at all. That’s a good thing.

we don’t make games to make money we make money so we can make more games Monday, 20 July 2009 Forgive me, but I’m going to paraphrase someone else - Walt Disney. I don’t think anyone in this room is here because they want to make games to make money. We’re in this industry to make money so we can make more games, better games. But really, I just want to encourage everyone to make the games you want to play. Don't fall into the trap of making the games you want to make, or the games you think you should make, but make the games you would actually pay money to play. That sounds totally obvious, but I'm not convinced how often it happens, and I know I've been guilty of it in the past.

make the best games you possibly can Monday, 20 July 2009 The one key thing I've learned is that you cannot make a game for everyone. You just have to make it for yourself. And do you know what? That's OK. Because if you don't make it for yourself, you're not going to make the best game you can. You're not going to have any passion for it, and if you can't convince yourself to play it, how do you ever expect to convince anyone else to play it?

DO EPIC Monday, 20 July 2009 SHIT Credit: http://sxsw.com/node/1409 So sweat the details, go the extra mile, forget the ill-deﬁned non-descriptive labels, and let’s just make the best damn games we possibly can. [I stole this slide from someone at SXSW: http://sxsw.com/node/1409. If you’re not aiming for this, why are you doing it at all?]

david.thomson@denki.co.uk ? Photo Credits http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaronbassett/3712135551/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/jpockele/216334845/ http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/05/coopers_hill_cheeserolling.html http://www.flickr.com/photos/36665622@N00/253527065/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/geodanny/2519669618/ Monday, 20 July 2009 [Apologies for not crediting every photo; I didn’t have source info for all of them. If this poses a problem, let me know.]

A Game Is A Game Is A Game

by Denki on Jul 19, 2009

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