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I'm not arguing that all of them are the same thing. I'm 1) wondering why we need to distinguish between them in the first place; and 2) saying there's way to m

by dmit 6y ago

I'm not arguing that all of them are the same thing. I'm 1) wondering why we need to distinguish between them in the first place; and 2) saying there's way to much overlap between the concepts for them to be presented as distinct.

Smaug123 6y ago
Well, to quote the article: > Now that I was making games, I shared Richard [Garfield]'s belief that I needed to have a working idea of what exactly constituted a game. > Even if you're just a game player and have no interest in designing games, I think having a working idea of what you think a game is will shape how you think of games and help you further engage in the hobby. I want to stress that I don't believe it's important that everyone have the same definition of games… but I do believe it's important for each gamer to have a definition that works for them. Today's column is about my definition. This is an article about how a game designer thinks about games. Of course the properties are not orthogonal, but that's not to say the words aren't gesturing towards slightly different parts of concept-space. The words certainly don't cleanly demarcate disjoint chunks of concept-space, but Rosewater's article nevertheless does have some content.
danShumway 6y ago
The point isn't to build categories for their own sake, the point is that categories allow us to group and exclude concepts based on whether they have similar "rules" or "feels". If you're designing a new thing or analyzing an old thing, it's useful to be able to sort through which heuristics and rules will likely apply to the thing you're examining. In other words, if we have generally good advice about how to make a game fun, and you know that advice is predicated on a certain definition of "game", it is easier to figure out whether or not that advice applies to the thing you're building. Rosewater's categorization of Minecraft as a toy rather than a game is a really good example: If you're a game designer, and you think of Minecraft as a game, there are a lot of game rules that Minecraft breaks. Its progression system is wack. It has a lot of design elements that don't really feed into its core loop well. And part of understanding why those "flaws" don't matter is understanding that Minecraft is working under a completely different set of design rules than a game like Doom. So one of the things we do as designers is we add distinctions between different types of experiences that allow us to make rules that are more consistent and predictable. If you're able to split computer experiences into different categories and say, "Minecraft and Doom are fundamentally different", then it's easier to come up with rules around flow, and progression systems, and difficulty curves, and unity of theme. As to why we need those rules in the first place? Because we want to make good games. Without narrowing a design space or coming up with heuristics to filter out good and bad ideas, designing games is just too stinking hard. There are always going to be exceptions to those rules, and that's fine. But the goal is still to give us mechanisms that in most cases allow us to talk about why an idea does or doesn't work. This is the same reason why games build player archetypes. Basically no one fits into a single player archetype, and there's heavy overlap between them, and there are players that defy all of the archetypes we come up with. That does not mean that player archetypes aren't extremely useful as design tools. People think about classification systems like they're some kind of moral or philosophical separation between objects. They're not, classification systems are entirely pragmatic, practical tools. All categorizations are wrong. No maps are completely accurate. But game design is an extremely fuzzy field, and it's hard to figure out what makes "good" design when your subject is so broad that literally every rule you come up with has exceptions. As a designer, I have multiple classification systems that I use for games and players, and some of them outright contradict each other. But all of them are useful lenses that I look through when I need to think about design decisions.
- meheleventyone 6y ago
  I think the other point is that no taxonomies are authoritative. Most of the arguing comes from either people trying to diminish the work of others with negative descriptions or from people assuming others are trying to be authoritative rather than merely descriptive of their own work. For everyone that doesn't think Minecraft is a game there are a bunch of people making, playing and talking about Sandbox Games.
  - danShumway 6y ago
    That's a really good point. One thing I try to get across to people when I'm talking about this is that not only are no taxonomies "official", but they even sometimes contradict each other, and that doesn't diminish their usefulness. All models are at best approximations of reality, all taxonomies are based on somewhat arbitrary distinctions. The point is what the model/taxonomy can do for you. So if you have two models that give different results when fed the same input, that doesn't necessarily mean that one of them is broken. It might mean they're optimizing for accuracy in different directions, and that you need to think about which model is more applicable to the current situation you're in. The game vs toy debate seems to get people more upset, I suspect in part because that was a debate used by some people who wanted to diminish the artistic value of Walking Simulators or other more experimental genres.
    - meheleventyone 6y ago
      This even goes outside games for example in biology and taxonomies of species. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_concept
- dmit 6y ago
  Thank you for the elaborate reply! There's a lot of room for thought there! But while I'm here... Minecraft is a quintessential roguelike game. You arrive, naked and alone, on a hostile world. You then build yourself up by the skin of whatever. You mine and farm and build, and you acquire food and clothes for yourself. The only rule Minecraft broke is the one that says you can't code a financially viable game in Java. (I guess there's no ascension, but at that point you've built heaven on earth anyway, so there's no reason to leave.) > As to why we need those rules in the first place? Because we want to make good games. I'm sorry, but super no. No game designer has ever feared that they would end up with a good toy, or a great activity, rather than making bank on Steam. > All categorizations are wrong. No maps are completely accurate. That's right! "All models are wrong, but some are useful." I was merely wondering what the use of the model presented by GP was.

by dmit 6y ago

Smaug123 6y ago

Well, to quote the article: > Now that I was making games, I shared Richard [Garfield]'s belief that I needed to have a working idea of what exactly constituted a game. > Even if you're just a game player and have no interest in designing games, I think having a working idea of what you think a game is will shape how you think of games and help you further engage in the hobby. I want to stress that I don't believe it's important that everyone have the same definition of games… but I do believe it's important for each gamer to have a definition that works for them. Today's column is about my definition. This is an article about how a game designer thinks about games. Of course the properties are not orthogonal, but that's not to say the words aren't gesturing towards slightly different parts of concept-space. The words certainly don't cleanly demarcate disjoint chunks of concept-space, but Rosewater's article nevertheless does have some content.

danShumway 6y ago

The point isn't to build categories for their own sake, the point is that categories allow us to group and exclude concepts based on whether they have similar "rules" or "feels". If you're designing a new thing or analyzing an old thing, it's useful to be able to sort through which heuristics and rules will likely apply to the thing you're examining. In other words, if we have generally good advice about how to make a game fun, and you know that advice is predicated on a certain definition of "game", it is easier to figure out whether or not that advice applies to the thing you're building. Rosewater's categorization of Minecraft as a toy rather than a game is a really good example: If you're a game designer, and you think of Minecraft as a game, there are a lot of game rules that Minecraft breaks. Its progression system is wack. It has a lot of design elements that don't really feed into its core loop well. And part of understanding why those "flaws" don't matter is understanding that Minecraft is working under a completely different set of design rules than a game like Doom. So one of the things we do as designers is we add distinctions between different types of experiences that allow us to make rules that are more consistent and predictable. If you're able to split computer experiences into different categories and say, "Minecraft and Doom are fundamentally different", then it's easier to come up with rules around flow, and progression systems, and difficulty curves, and unity of theme. As to why we need those rules in the first place? Because we want to make good games. Without narrowing a design space or coming up with heuristics to filter out good and bad ideas, designing games is just too stinking hard. There are always going to be exceptions to those rules, and that's fine. But the goal is still to give us mechanisms that in most cases allow us to talk about why an idea does or doesn't work. This is the same reason why games build player archetypes. Basically no one fits into a single player archetype, and there's heavy overlap between them, and there are players that defy all of the archetypes we come up with. That does not mean that player archetypes aren't extremely useful as design tools. People think about classification systems like they're some kind of moral or philosophical separation between objects. They're not, classification systems are entirely pragmatic, practical tools. All categorizations are wrong. No maps are completely accurate. But game design is an extremely fuzzy field, and it's hard to figure out what makes "good" design when your subject is so broad that literally every rule you come up with has exceptions. As a designer, I have multiple classification systems that I use for games and players, and some of them outright contradict each other. But all of them are useful lenses that I look through when I need to think about design decisions.

meheleventyone 6y ago
I think the other point is that no taxonomies are authoritative. Most of the arguing comes from either people trying to diminish the work of others with negative descriptions or from people assuming others are trying to be authoritative rather than merely descriptive of their own work. For everyone that doesn't think Minecraft is a game there are a bunch of people making, playing and talking about Sandbox Games.
- danShumway 6y ago
  That's a really good point. One thing I try to get across to people when I'm talking about this is that not only are no taxonomies "official", but they even sometimes contradict each other, and that doesn't diminish their usefulness. All models are at best approximations of reality, all taxonomies are based on somewhat arbitrary distinctions. The point is what the model/taxonomy can do for you. So if you have two models that give different results when fed the same input, that doesn't necessarily mean that one of them is broken. It might mean they're optimizing for accuracy in different directions, and that you need to think about which model is more applicable to the current situation you're in. The game vs toy debate seems to get people more upset, I suspect in part because that was a debate used by some people who wanted to diminish the artistic value of Walking Simulators or other more experimental genres.
  - meheleventyone 6y ago
    This even goes outside games for example in biology and taxonomies of species. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_concept https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_concept
dmit 6y ago
Thank you for the elaborate reply! There's a lot of room for thought there! But while I'm here... Minecraft is a quintessential roguelike game. You arrive, naked and alone, on a hostile world. You then build yourself up by the skin of whatever. You mine and farm and build, and you acquire food and clothes for yourself. The only rule Minecraft broke is the one that says you can't code a financially viable game in Java. (I guess there's no ascension, but at that point you've built heaven on earth anyway, so there's no reason to leave.) > As to why we need those rules in the first place? Because we want to make good games. I'm sorry, but super no. No game designer has ever feared that they would end up with a good toy, or a great activity, rather than making bank on Steam. > All categorizations are wrong. No maps are completely accurate. That's right! "All models are wrong, but some are useful." I was merely wondering what the use of the model presented by GP was.