The ludological definition of "game"

[Janos Biro]

In 2007 there was a topic in this forum titled "What is a game?". I recently wrote an academic paper on the subject, and I think my point can add to the discussion, so I'm summarizing it below, in the form of a forum topic. Consider this a "game theory" topic.

The Danish researcher Jesper Juul (2003) listed seven different definitions for the term "game", citing from Huizinga (1949) to Salen and Zimmerman (2004). His own definition is: "A game is a formal system of rules with variable and quantifiable outcome, where different outcomes are assigned different values, the player exerts effort to influence the outcome, the player feels attached to the outcome, and the consequences of the activity are optional and negotiable".

Professor Jan Simons (2007) stated that theorists like Juul, Aarseth, Eskelinen and Frasca separate the concept of game from the concept of narrative, as if they belong to totally different categories. Thus they created a division in the game studies between "ludologists" and "narratologists". For ludologists, games are not about storytelling, they have to be understood "in their own terms". The controversy over the status of games as art falls precisely in this context.

Ralph Koster (2013) agrees with the ludological position, stating that games have to be fun, and fun is defined as "the act of mastering a problem mentally". Fun is different from delight. "Games are not stories. Games are not about beauty or delight. Games are not about jockeying for social status. They are, in their own right, something incredibly valuable". See the image below:



My point is that the conflict between "ludologists" and "narratologists" is not purely theoretical. The major reason why ludologists choose to follow such definition of game is that they wanted the game industry to be fully independent from other entertainment industries, like the movie industry. Arguments on both sides demonstrate that, and the image above makes it clearer too. That's why the Independent Games Festival, which has almost only ludologists as judges, doesn't have a "best story" category. That may also explain why games focused on narrative, like adventure games, are somehow considered "minor" games.

The sociological question of the emergent game industry fighting for market territory against the established movie industry may explain the real issue behind the discussion. Understanding it may may help the game culture to find it's balance again. There is no reason to exclude or despise gamers and game designers that see games as an interactive way to tell a story. The ludological definition become too restrict when you look at some experimental, artistic, conceptual or "story-driven" games that do not deserve to be called "non-games" or "quasi-games" just because they cannot be defined as "games" in ludological terms. The very idea of using "game designer" instead of "game maker" comes from this sociological background.

Some may even consider the ludological definition as reductionist. The concept of game is reduced to the mechanics that allow the game experience. In the AGS community, it seems most people agree that creating a good game involves creating a good story. But game designers all around the world are learning to think like ludogists, because ludology books are now considered the most advanced and influential game theory available. The consequence? What do you think?

HUIZINGA, Johan. Homo ludens. Taylor & Francis, 1949.

JUUL, Jesper. The Game, the Player, the World: Looking for a Heart of Gameness. In Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference Proceedings. Utrecht: Utrecht University, 2003, p. 30-45.

KOSTER, Raph. Theory of fun for game design. O'Reilly Media, Inc., 2013.

SALEN, Katie; ZIMMERMAN, Eric. Rules of play: Game design fundamentals. MIT press, 2004.

SIMONS, Jan. Narrative, Games, and Theory. Game Studies, Volume 7, issue 1, 2007.

[miguel]

Interesting stuff Janos,
well you already know that most people here will consider the story as the main aspect of an adventure game because the genre is based on dialogues, descriptions and good solid plots to advance in the game, instead of "levelling up" on other genres.
It is fair to say that if you rule out sport games, the best or more popular games today do have solid plots. The best FPS's contain characters that the player can relate and a set of dramatic trials that are written in order to create an illusion that not all you doing is shooting targets. The best RPG's are strongly based on the relationship between playable characters and npc's and studios can't just rely on a set of rules and cryptic text to gather players.
But you know all this.

One thing indie adventures fail often, in my guilty opinion, is to deliver too much of a story and too less of gaming purpose.
And that's what I think you want discussed.
When we make adventure games, we sometimes really just want to tell a story that is somewhat fascinating for us. Everything else comes after. And everything means objectives, goals, puzzles, and so on. So, suddenly you realize that all the player is doing is talking to npc's. Or you don't.

I was asked to do some background art and story for a point&click flash game. It all went well and I loved the experience but the man that assembled and coded the game used 10% of my original text. It's not a bad thing. A flash game is casual and although it's a point&click, it still must be a game!
There must be clear paths for the player to win it while having fun.

Adventure games are a very particular genre Janos and I think it may be hard to clarify its strengths to ludologists.

[bicilotti]

Mhhh, I recall Wittgenstein writing something on the matter, lemme see if I can find it... here it is (starts from paragraph number 66)!
Obviously language related/not thorough as possible, but still food for thought.

One thing indie adventures fail often, in my guilty opinion, is to deliver too much of a story and too less of gaming purpose.
And that's what I think you want discussed.
When we make adventure games, we sometimes really just want to tell a story that is somewhat fascinating for us. Everything else comes after. And everything means objectives, goals, puzzles, and so on. So, suddenly you realize that all the player is doing is talking to npc's. Or you don't.

I have been guilty of/witnessed this many times, spot on Miguel.

[Eric]

Yay! Jesper Juul, Salen & Zimmerman, and Johan Huizenga cited on an adventure game forum! Magic Circle ftw!   

What's your academic background, Janos? I've heard Juul's latest is great.

Miguel -- you're hitting on a still-ongoing debate in games studies: do video games belong to ludological or narratological studies? Here's a piece by Juul on the matter.

[dactylopus]

I think it depends on the genre.

Puzzle games like Candy Crush or Bejeweled can survive entirely on their ludological merits, whereas most adventure games survive mostly on narratological merits.  I think that both can apply, and both can be considered games.  In my opinion, the best games make good use of both elements.  You'll see this a lot more in action adventure games like the Legend of Zelda series, or role playing games like Final Fantasy.

I am a fan of Raph Koster and his games and writings, although I tend to disagree with his definition of a game as being too limiting and restrictive.  It's nice to see discussion of that here.

[miguel]

Mhhh, I recall Wittgenstein writing something on the matter, lemme see if I can find it... here it is (starts from paragraph number 66)!
Obviously language related/not thorough as possible, but still food for thought.

One thing indie adventures fail often, in my guilty opinion, is to deliver too much of a story and too less of gaming purpose.
And that's what I think you want discussed.
When we make adventure games, we sometimes really just want to tell a story that is somewhat fascinating for us. Everything else comes after. And everything means objectives, goals, puzzles, and so on. So, suddenly you realize that all the player is doing is talking to npc's. Or you don't.

I have been guilty of/witnessed this many times, spot on Miguel.

Bici, good read, thanks. It's funny how your signature from our loved friend makes so much sense right now.

[Thaumaturge]

I'm inclined to argue that the term "game" in "video game" is somewhat of an artefact title, coming from the origins of video games as games in the ludological sense. Since those days, however, "video games" have branched out, and I feel that today the defining trait of a "video game" is not that it has rules or goals, but rather that it be interactive (well, and that it run on some form of electronic environment, I suppose). To me a "video game" is about having an interactive experience, whether or not it's technically a "game".

If I were to name the medium today, I'm not sure of what I'd likely call it. "Interactive media" comes to mind, but that's perhaps somewhat overlong. :/

In terms of ludic versus narrative content, I think that I agree with the poster that suggested that video games may contain both. A video game, I feel, is not necessarily all story or all game, but some mix of the two. (Albeit slightly skewed: my requirement that a game be interactive allows for entirely ludic games, but I'm not sure of how to create an entirely narrative game--that is, one with no ludic elements at all--while yet having some interactivity).

(Funnily enough, I hold a similar view with regards to the genre-title "adventure game": it stemmed, as I recall, from comparison with the old game "Adventure", thus referring to a game similar to "Adventure", rather than a game on which one goes on an adventure. Over time the genre has acquired its own traits independent from that old game.)

[Janos Biro]

Thank you guys. Let me highlight some thoughts so I can continue this conversation:

"The best FPS's contain characters that the player can relate and a set of dramatic trials that are written in order to create an illusion that not all you doing is shooting targets."

I have a very radical opinion about this. When two people are making sex, love is not just a "set of dramatic trials" that create an illusion that they are not just rubbing their erogenous parts to feel pleasure. You see, that's what I call reductionism. When you are playing a good FPS, you are absolutely not just shooting things. What defines the human actions, real or virtual, is the attributed meaning. And we can consider the reductionist description of things as just another meaning.

From my point of view, games are totally about storytelling. Rules are nothing but tricks that storytellers created to make their stories more appealing. The problem is: our culture is fascinated with rules, for very specific reasons. I know very well the arguments of Jesper Juul and other ludologists, and I have reasons to disagree, but it all goes back to worldviews.

"One thing indie adventures fail often, in my guilty opinion, is to deliver too much of a story and too less of gaming purpose."

Let me try to look at it from another angle: From some point of view, the problem is not too much story. If you believe interactivity evolved from the art of telling stories around the campfire, then you can consider that storytellers learnt how to get the listeners reaction and then adapt the story to make it more interesting. In short, you don't have a good story if you don't know how to tell it, because the story and the telling are inseparable. Another analogy with love is needed: If you think you love someone, but nothing happens between you two, then what's happening there is not love, it could become love, but it is something else yet.

One thing is that games, like stories, don't actually NEED anything per se. Adventures don't really need puzzles or goals. Maybe most players think they need those things, and if you think you need to please them, then you will need to include that. But the only thing games need is the freedom to be whatever they may be.

It's not that hard to think of a good story, but that's not enough to make it remarkable. I think that adventures need better storytelling skills, with tricks that work in favor of the story, not against it. If the story and the telling are inseparable, then when the excess dialog is boring, the story is boring. I hope that makes sense.

"What's your academic background, Janos?"

I studied philosophy from 2002 to 2008, graduated (bachelor degree) and specialized in evolutionary epistemology. By that time, I've read a lot of philosophy of language and, of course, Wittgenstein. Later I studied theology and sociology (master degree).

In the full paper, I discuss a comment Jull made about that passage that bicilotti quoted from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations. Jull says: "It is of course a common assumption, following Ludwig Wittgenstein, that games cannot be defined." It is easy to see the problem here. Wittgenstein was responding to the accusation that his work does not explains what language is because it doesn't point to what is common in all activities that we call "language". He then starts to talk about the concept of "game", and later the concept of "number", to show that those terms, just like "language", do not necessarily applies to a closed set of activities with common features, and he explains why is that. It is a concept with an open frontier, but it is not indefinable.

Jull comment is wrong (in this case), and he hasn't really given a good answer to the problem that Wittgenstein raised about the concept of game, which involves the problem of language. Wittgenstein is saying that "familiarity" is not a necessary feature of concepts, so you can have concepts with no familiarity between its members, because when you draw a line, you are just drawing a line. The concept does not draws a line for you, we draw a line to use the concept, but we can draw the line higher or lower, depends on the use of the concept. That's what ludologists are doing, they are drawing a line for the concept of game, but it is not because they understand games better than anyone else. It's because they can't stand a world where games are not such special things as they want them to be. And my argument is that this is mostly because they think that if they just let games and storytelling merge, then this can be the first step to let the game industry be merged with the movie industry, and that would be horrible for business.

[miguel]

One thing is that games, like stories, don't actually NEED anything per se. Adventures don't really need puzzles or goals.

I really don't agree, Janos. When I decide to play a game, whatever game it is, I want to be challenged and feel capable of beating my opposition. If I'm playing football I want to win, if I'm playing cards I want to win and if I'm playing a video game I want to win. There's a certain thrill of winning or loosing.
When I read a book I'm in a different state of mind, very different from playing a video game.

This said, if you strip an adventure game from its puzzles and goals you are taking away all the risk and fun of it! You might as well read a comic book. My ideal imaginary adventure game would be a hybrid between a comic book, an adventure and a soft-platformer. Beautiful, daring design and graphics, smart dialogues and just that bit of action to keep you alert.

Gaming is beating the game. The most successful games are difficult to beat and either require fast fingers and quick reflexes or a good dose of the gray stuff! The best ones combine all this elements.
   

[bicilotti]

Jull comment is wrong (in this case), and he hasn't really given a good answer to the problem that Wittgenstein raised about the concept of game, which involves the problem of language. Wittgenstein is saying that "familiarity" is not a necessary feature of concepts, so you can have concepts with no familiarity between its members, because when you draw a line, you are just drawing a line. The concept does not draws a line for you, we draw a line to use the concept, but we can draw the line higher or lower, depends on the use of the concept. That's what ludologists are doing, they are drawing a line for the concept of game, but it is not because they understand games better than anyone else. It's because they can't stand a world where games are not such special things as they want them to be.

Very interesting and well put.

I agree with Miguel on the "challenge" part and the different state of mind you are when reading a book and playing a game though! Even though, you say that is just a cleverly crafter "illusion" on the part of the storyteller...

[Janos Biro]

Gaming is beating the game. The most successful games are difficult to beat and either require fast fingers and quick reflexes or a good dose of the gray stuff! The best ones combine all this elements.

Miguel, you are free to disagree. But let me ask you this: If I don't really want to be challenged, and I don't really care about feeling capable of beating my opposition, if I have no special need to win, no thrill for winning or loosing, and my state of mind when playing a game is very similar my state of mind when reading a book, am I still playing a game? Have a I ever enjoyed playing a game in my whole life? What am I doing all this time, then?

When colonizers taught my indigenous ancestors to play soccer, they liked it so much that they created a special event for all the people to play it. They only changed a few rules: the game goes on until both teams are tied. There is never a winner or a loser, everyone wins and commemorate together. They like it better that way. So, are they still playing a game?

As you can see, I think your concept of game is a little ethnocentric. Or maybe you can call me a non-gamer. Because what makes the games better for you is exactly what I don't like in them.

bicilotti,

One could say that your culture told you the story that games must be "challenging", and you took it for reality. One could say that this is because your culture wanted all games to be about the same story: a story of war, a story of conflict between opposing forces, a story about being stronger then the rest. A story that could inspire and lead your people to victory in other aspects of life. You know what I mean.

[Janos Biro]

This said, if you strip an adventure game from its puzzles and goals you are taking away all the risk and fun of it! You might as well read a comic book.

This is more or less what ludologists say: Games are X. If you take X from games, you better watch a movie. If you want to make games without X, you better make movies. Well, I like to play games that are more like interactive comic books. You don't have to strip the puzzles. Just make them optional. Does it hurt? Besides, you can have puzzles and goals in a book too. So...

[Weston_Kaunk]

Janos, this might be due to my ignorance as an undergrad but I believe you are misunderstanding the ludological position.

The distinction that games should be understood on their own terms rather then the narrological "novel form" terms is not to divorce games from story but to acknowledge that their story cannot be divorced from their interaction. Where the narrological stance believe the merits of a games story can be understood separate from the play the ludological position maintains the interactive element of the medium as the defining trait. Wittgenstein would refer to game's specific nature of interactivity the family resemblance of the medium. On the note of the problematic nature of language in many cases the reason developers will label their products non-games is to avoid that very issue of construct. Our society so easily writes off things as what they can and cannot be that when they see something they'll instantly go into the experience with the wrong state of mind. To label it a non-game in the negative manner is distinguish it as something else in the absence of positive; that is with the title game it becomes something very distinct in the mind where with the negative non in front it becomes something more ambiguous and open for the "reader". It opens the work to be based more on it's own merits then on a comparison to any other specific piece in the medium the work is associated with. In this way projects like Depression Quest, The Day the Laughter Stopped, Loneliness, and The Marriage (by Rob Humble) to name a few have tackled serious topics through gameplay without necessarily formatting their projects to the ideas of score or blatant win/lose states. These are also great explorations of ludonarrative, which simply put is just the narrative we assign to the interactions in play. The story is the interaction. Play and interaction in games simply does not function without story, while it might not take the form we immediately think of it, there is always a narrative. Whenever someone walks into the room and asks you about what you are playing, the fact that you can always explain to them the events that coincided to your present position in-game are a testament to inherent narrative in play. The events are the narrative. (here's a bit I wrote for school on ludonarrative http://nlgo.net/archives/8491)

     
I am in agreeance with Miguel that games do a "game" or interactive element for us to experience and recognize it as such. Here is the importance of the game medium's "family resemblance" to acknowledge the overlap of other mediums who also maintain a level of interactivity. Television, reading, comics, make-your-own-adventure books; all of these have a level of interactivity that could lead to them being compared to games. The difference to understand between these is what communication theorist Marshal McLuhan keyed "hot and cold" The colder the medium the more is required of the "viewer " and the more the mind maintains a residual level of activity. Where with movies you can turn it on and zone out entirely, with a book you remain more active as it requires you to turn pages and the like. Hot is more passive while cool is more interactive. Had McLuhan lived longer he would have had much to say about the internet and video games. But with this we can understand video games to be one of the coolest mediums(pun intended). The important distinction of games is that there is almost no passive information, the mind is interacting with almost everything. Where in a book when a room is described the reader is only interacting with the paragraph and description, in a game the reader is interacting within the room itself. the story, visuals, audio, everything. Think about even the most passive aspect of games, the music. Game music is typically affected by player interaction(changing maps, fight scenes, combos) it changes from passive to an interactive part of the experience. There is a difference when you throw in a cd to when you are entering the Fields of Hyrule. Also we should distinguish "challenge" or "goal" part of games are not just the stereotyped win or loose states, that would be ethnocentric. In games the goal is a quantifiable response to player input. Think of when kids make up games. They point a finger at you and say "BANG" and if you respond by grabbing your shoulder or falling down, it becomes a game, quantifiable response. Many games manage to exist on the most meager inputs. Rainbow Unicorn Attack, Jump Kick, Flappy bird for crying out loud. The "game" does not vanish without win or fail states those are simply extensions of the input=response rule of games that we use to contextualize the experience. We see this in cheat modes with games. When you are unable to die, have unlimited money, unlocked all the weapons, does the game become not a game? No. It may have become less interesting, but that is simply due to the nature of design, when I play a song backwards it doesn't stop being a song, but it's not as easily recognizable and is more difficult to experience.

I believe the individual you mentioned criticizing the adventure genre as being less game and more story is doing so out of heuristics. Without a thorough experience of any genre of any medium a viewer may not have the understanding to notice the nuances of the specific genre. Point and clicks are games just as much as any other games, simply because some individual's limited experiences with them remind him strongly of other mediums does not mean their defining nature(interactivity) is a less factor for their visual or whatever other nature is an aspect of the product. Someone whose never really listened to (rap/metal/country) could try to make the argument they are lesser forms of music, but they're only doing it because they're unfamiliar with material enough to recognize the nuances of that genre. Because of their distinctive nature from other genres it's common for people to not have heard enough of rap or metal, or country to recognize they're musical qualities.  Here's something I wrote on defining games (http://nlgo.net/archives/7355)

[Janos Biro]

Weston, this might be due to my ignorance too, but I still believe that I understood the ludological position. I just don't agree with it.

You just used the "games are interactive" argument. This may look crazy to you, but no, I don't think games have any special relation with interactivity. It all depends on what you call "interactivity", really. Depending on it, interactivity may be just an illusion. The Stanley Parable is an example.

Now, is The Game a game? Well, I'm sure that if you look hard enough, you can see some interactivity in it, or you can say this is not a game. It doesn't matter. What matters is that saying that "interaction" is what sets games apart from other things is still drawing a line, and the argument remains. We only expect something like "interaction" from games (or anything else you can cast as the "specific nature" of them) because we are told to expect something like that. The relation is constructed by the use, it is not obvious by "looking at its nature", and it is not there on its own, for a simple reason: nothing is. You can't really look directly at the "nature" of anything, your vision is always mediated by the attributed meaning. Whatever you choose to see as the "nature" of something, it is still a choice. Nothing can really be understood "on it's own terms", except maybe analytic propositions. Comparison is inevitable because concepts are always made out of comparisons.

Take calvinball, for example. Is it a game?

Instead of allowing all games to be equally valuable, what ludologists do is try to convince everyone that a game is more valuable when it has more of whatever they say it's the "defining trait" of games, preferably in enough quantity to set them safely away from other media.

Let's take interactive fiction (IF), for example. It is a kind of game, and it is a form of literature. Back in the golden age of IF, many authors believed that IF would be the future of literature. No one would want to read non-interactive books ever again. Interactivity, in this case, is a method that serves the storytelling purpose. The act of playing an IF is the act of reading and telling a story at the same time, that means being an active part in the act of telling. What you play is the story, not something that also has a story. But the story is arranged in a way that you cannot find it without interacting with the author. Rules simply mediate the interaction between player and author. What gives the title to the work is not the rules of "interaction", but the story. Interactivity is needed to play IF because the story will not be told without it.

A specific game identity is defined by its specific interaction or its specific story, or both? How much can I change the interaction or the story before it becomes a different game? How "cool" must something be to be considered a game? Video-games are necessarily more interactive than game-books? Nothing prevents you from making a game-book with more complex interaction than Pac-Man. A game that you play by not giving any input can still have a quantifiable response to player input? A purely sandbox game, no goals and no challenge, is still a game? If you set the goal of reading a book to the end in a given number of hours, does it become a game?

[Eric]

Is that "cool" asked in the McLuhanian definition of the term?

[Janos Biro]

Yes, Eric. Sorry, I forgot to make that clear.

[Janos Biro]

Weston, I have just a few more comments to make:

“The voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles”

This seems like a very good definition. I've thought about games this way for a long time. But I have some problems understanding what exactly is “voluntary” and “unnecessary”. However, the main problem is the idea that games are basically about overcoming obstacles. That's because I think that you can see any action as the “overcoming” of an “obstacle”. You can even think of love in such terms. But in the same way it doesn't seem appropriate to talk like that about such activity, I don't see the reason why I should think of games this way.

“To play a game is to attempt to achieve a specific state of affairs (prelusory goal), using only means permitted by rules (lusory means), where the rules prohibit use of more efficient in favour of less efficient means (constitutive rules), and where the rules are accepted just because they make possible such activity (lusory attitude).”

Again, when I read this, I think about a scientist describing what “love” is by describing what happens when a person is in love. It is so poor it could only be the product of a disenchanted society. Also, by this description, flirting must be considered the most popular game ever.

gaming's future is bright and promising

I'm not so optimist...

[miguel]

Some things should remain intuitive, responsive and fun. You're going too philosophical with this gaming thing. Games are just popular events with simple rules that require some kind of skill to win. Yes, there is a goal, an objective in any game.

The argument you use that "what if I don't want to win anything, I just want to linger in a virtual world", is valid to a point. The point that you just get bored.
It's like visiting a museum, you seek some particular piece and after the rewarding feeling of being there, and the time you take to study it, there's nothing else to do, really.

"The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art."
-- Oscar Wilde

[Janos Biro]

Miguel,

You are being very philosophical too, can't you see? Your position is also a philosophy.

I knew I would eventually get this kind of reaction, but I believe I'm not just being nitpick. Sometimes we need to rethink the "obvious". I think that games should remain magical. Games are very simple and yet very complex. We need to discuss them so they can evolve.

My point was not simply in favor of lingering in a virtual world. It is about recognizing all the possibilities for gaming. The opposition between action and contemplation is just one aspect. See this game, for example: Wait. Lindsay Grace makes extraordinary games, in my opinion. What is boring to you may be fun to me. What is fun to you may be boring to me.

[miguel]

Sure, poor Mary if we all loved her. But even in Wait players are rewarded for doing something, although I agree that the concept is cool.
But what about this game? Can't you feel the magic? The game is beautiful!

Funny you say my opinion is philosophical as well because in fact you're more academic than philosophical, in my opinion. (I'm sounding like the wizard from HQ). Trying to explore all the possibilities for gaming is okay and interesting and probably crucial to evolve, but striping genre games from their "classic" features is like taking the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. Or worse, it's like watching modern art for more than 2 hours without laughing.

Other thing I do not agree

Spoiler

mas percebo porque és Brasileiro

[close]

is to insert love into the equation. Scientists and Programmers may not be the greatest persons to explain love. I'd say poets are but unfortunately they rarely make video games!