A Game by Any Other Name

So Patrick linked to this video on Twitter this morning:

(Source link here.)

This video is, essentially, a two-part argument. One its its attempt to define what makes a video game a video game. Gone Home is used as a reference point, but he also makes the argument that calling a title like Gone Home "not a game" is not a pejorative. The latter half of the video is both a defense of this viewpoint and what I felt was a rather sharp critique of the games press in regards to their role of how games are defined and who defines them, going so far as to call out individual members of the dev industry and press (I would argue to varying degrees of success).

I would not call this a perfect argument, as I feel it does meander at points (it could certainly have been shorter than its fourteen-minute length, though I did not feel that it was time wasted), but the video is actually thought out and presented well enough that even Patrick was impressed by it despite his general lack of agreement:

There's quite a bit I can dig into here. I'll leave it at that, partially because I don't remember everything I could dig into.

I admire the attempt at a more rational critique of current overarching trends in game writing/game writer's culture, and the debate surrounding the "gaminess" of a given game, but I think this fails. By taking on two disparate topics he ends up not fully explaining either point very well, and ends up resorting to a few outright accusations that leave too much room for his arguments to just be again written off as a 'privileged' person once again complaining about Gone Home (which is exactly (and expectedly) what happened in the responses to Patrick's tweet).

His definition of game is flawed because there's no line. Is the Sims a real game? Skyrim? Minecraft? Any dating sim? Is it a "real game" if there is skill involved but that's not the focus? Or is there a sliding scale from "More Game" to "Less Game" as you go from more about skill testing to less about skill testing?

Also, this guy has a pretty big persecution complex, which rears its head in the back half of the video. There's a weird bit where he basically says "you're the real bigot for calling people bigots" and then proceeds to mention that some of his favorite games are non-games. It's... odd. He also made a pretty lengthy video about how you're only allowed to call yourself a nerd if you got the shit kicked out of you by the cool kids in highschool, and it's cultural appropriation otherwise.

I admire the effort, I guess but there's nothing unique about this dude's point of view. It's pretty much the same stuff I've read a thousand times here. The part that he ignores is that while he claims that he uses "not a game" as just a tool for classification, the vast majority of people who use it don't use it like that. It's an insult 99% of the time and thinking that most of the people who were tagging Gone Home as "not a game" weren't also trying to undermine it is naive.

His dismissing of Gone Home, saying "homosexuality is nothing new in games", is also off. Sure, there have been gay characters in games before but Gone Home is unique in the way it treats its characters and how it tells it story. A large part of that is the game's scope. Human stories aren't exactly games' strong point but Gone Home is one of the few stories that operates on such a small scale. There's no saving the world. There's no monsters. There's no villains. It's a purely human story that is completely inconsequential to the world around it but to the characters within the story, it's the most important thing in the world. In the end, the gay part really has little to do with what makes Gone Home so special.

@kentonclay:

I don't think he's advocating a sliding scale or a sense of "real" and "not real." The latter would be pejorative that would contradict his point. I'm assuming on that front, he's simply advocating greater clarity in how we talk about video games, and to do away with such pejoratives and valuing.

I don't think he's against non-games, though.

That's a very, very real problem. I think South Park explored the hell out of this thinking a while ago.

I agree with the video about the somewhat hipocrasy of the gaming media, journalist or whatever you wish to call them , one point of contention is when they mocked people for the whole Mass Effect 3 thing , yet go out of their way to defend others (as what happened with Tomodachi life etc.) Also what I find funny is how they all aprasise Gone Home for the story yet they somewhat forget that the main character is a white heteronormative person (even if she is female) , a point of argument they make way to often in other games because it features a heteronormative white person as the main character etc.

Now the whole is not a game thing I dont care about that argument , but maybe because I dont find visual novels or interactive media as non games and really most people do use non game as a pejorative , lets not fool ourselves. But I think it was foolish of the people who got angry of that sentence and they themselves gave validation to the phrase.

But I do like that the non gaming media folks are fighting back (dont know if that would be the correct meaning I wish to convey , but I hope people get the gist) againts the journos , as I find them often to high of themselves and supposedly all knowing.

I disagree with the argument in the video, but I can see how he arrived at his conclusions.

Really the only thing I don't understand is how people still say titles like The Wolf Among Us isn't a "real game." It's the long awaited evolution of point and click adventure titles. I don't think anyone would argue that Beneath a Steel Sky or King's Quest aren't "real games," and yet for some reason the term is thrown out when something like Gone Home is released. I won't defend Gone Home; I abhor it for its failed potential and pretentious navel-gazing. As a story it fails, as a mystery it fails, and perhaps most importantly as an adventure title it failed. Yet I digress.

When people say Gone Home is "Not a Game" they are wrong. It is a game. It's poor game that's more interested in long wistful looks at the sea shore than forming any cogent point, but it's a game nonetheless. Games are defined by their interactivity and, for better or for worse, Gone Home is interactive. Just like Dear Esther, just like the Stanley Parable. I don't like any of those other games either, and for many of the same reasons I dislike Gone Home, but they do exist, and they are games, and to try and deny that is to deny any fact. It's pointless, contrived, and incoherent. For me, "Not a Game" is becoming shorthand for "I don't like this but I can't really explain why." It's an ignorant argument. That is to say, an argument based on and for the ignorant. I'd like to think most people are above that but, in this culture of soundbites and thoughts expressed in 140 characters or less, it's hard get too worked up about shit like "Not a Game" becoming a part of the gamer lexicon.

As far as the video's critique of "game journalism" I agree. Vehemently. There are a lot of self-righteous nincompoops around the 'net who seek sustenance in their echo chambers of twitter and reddit upvotes. Don't like an opinion? Downvote. Don't like the person expressing that opinion? Sic your followers on them until they're brow-beaten into conformity. Yet it's hard to get worked up about that, because all of that is just the manifestation of how human beings have always been. Might makes right, and in the digital age where might is determined by followers and notes and upvotes and facebook likes, it's hard to get a word in edgewise. After all, all this about who has the biggest megaphone, not who has the best argument.

TL;DR I agree and disagree with the video, and human beings are shitbags in general.

I think I'm gonna go....outside.

Dude's right. Also wtf spoilers.

Isn't Quina genderless?

Seeing the various gaming press people remark that they didn't bother watching or finishing the video is a bit of a bummer. I don't fully agree with his opinions of games journalism, but being dicks about it on twitter doesn't help anybody. At least Patrick remained civil about it.

Can't edit my post for whatever reason, I'll say "mostly" right; but I'd very much like the world if this guy was Pewdiepie and Pewdiepie was BillyMC.

I can barely find anything to agree with him on.

I paused to read his slides and his assertion that Gone Home is nothing innovative because homosexuality has been done before. Homosexuality and any deviation from the norm in video games has largely been portrayed as a flaw, villainous, a joke, an "other", or a choice rather than part of what makes a character a character. The two characters he highlights in the video are villains. It's kind of offensive that he writes what Gone Home does off because homosexuals exist in video games while not taking into account context.

This video talks about that. The guy is memey and the title is baity but having seen a lot of his stuff he is smart, does his research, and tends to know what he's talking about. I do think he's wrong about Saints Row 4 cause I remember fucking Pierce as a male:

I also took issue when he talks about the reviews. The reviewers admitted that the game got good scores because of it's story and emotional impact it had on them. Why is that a bad thing? He argues that consumers wanted something else from the game but if all the reviews stated that the story was what the game is being played for why is he putting some of the blame on them for consumer's purchasing it? Then he goes on about his own objective experience with the game and gets annoyed that people have been reviewing it higher than he wanted.

Then he starts acting paranoid scared that there will be more games of a genre or game type he may not love at the expense of other games. Even though a shit ton of games are coming out made for completely different audiences all the time. It's insane to believe that Gone Home and games of its ilk are going to create a situation where games won't be the way he wanted them. It sounds like he's afraid of not being in the majority anymore.

I do agree that the games press does go too hard when it comes to social issues. Sometimes blaming people or organizations that have done nothing wrong or made a mistake. However his slide about #numberonereasonwhy made me shake my head and sigh. He makes it seem like women are trying to make themselves look like victims expressly for profit rather than raise awareness of a problem in the video game industry, a discussion that wasn't being had except in small circles. A problem in all industries. There are people that do profit from stuff like this but #numberonereasonwhy had good intentions behind it and to say that people that advocate for less bigotry are bigots really irks me.

I can't edit my post but some of his other examples like Erica, Gracie, Quina, and Kainé are portrayed as jokes or others. And the discussion about Gone Home isn't about wether or not homosexuality and the larger LGBT communities are being portrayed. It's a small story about a girl coming to terms with her sexuality and being persecuted by those that don't understand. You may see that through the eyes of a heteronormative sister but that's not the point because the player character isn't who the story is about.

Also I meant subjective in my last post instead of objective.

Not sure I agree with his argument in regards to "what is a game", but I'm not going to pretend I wasn't nodding my head when he went after the weird, self-reinforcing culture of games journalism.

@sethphotopoulos: You can also fuck Gat and Matt as a male, the only one you can't "romance" is Keith David but that's as male or female.

On topic: I don't think Gone Home is a game because there's no failure state, there's no way to do anything wrong. You just kinda press WASD and you move around this boring house. Gone Home would have worked better as a book or a short film BUT OH WAIT it wouldn't have gotten the viral attention and praise it does, it would just be considered mediocre like it is.

A lot of people, including me, find the exploration a key part of the experience as it allows us not only integrate with that world but catch a lot of detail in the characters just by exploring the environment. A short story can't capture that unless you turn it into a list and a film can't capture it all completely because it has a time limit. This is something that can only be told the way it is as a game. YOU may find it boring but to a Hell of a lot of people out there they found it impactful.

I also find a lot of people's reasonings for calling it "not-a-game" as arbitrary. They pick a thing it doesn't do and then say it isn't a game whilst creating narrow definitions for what a game is, can, and should be.

I find that Gone Home suffers from what a lot of games, books, tv shows, films, etc. suffer from. A lot of people like it, the people that don't like it see that it has a lot of people liking it, then the people who dislike it hate or try to undermine the game and its fans as much as they can because they end up becoming a minority. They do this by saying that fans only like it because it's "artsy" or they want to feel smart. I haven't seen much criticism of the game that hasn't eventually become a fan bash. Similar to what you did at the end. I think that's where most of the criticism of the critics come from. I'd be ok if you didn't like it or even hated it but to claim that others liking it are crazy, up their own ass, want to feel special, being tricked by hype, etc. is kind of a dick move.

Neither of these are true, of course a good short story is immersive and very much like exploring something. The fuck does a time limit have to do with anything? There isn't one and there's plenty of films longer than Gone Home. People rewatch movies all the time and notice additional details.

This would have been a better video if it had focused on the games journalism echo chamber and used Gone Home as the example, rather than the focus. As other's have pointed out, the condescension and outright hostility that some writers seem to have towards their readership is becoming a larger issue.

I think part of the problem is that we are on the second generation of games journalists, and unlike the first, they grew up as the people they now hate. They grew up on internet message boards arguing over Nintendo and Mario, and it seems like they have made a conscious decision to de-legitimize and distance themselves from that culture. It gets said a lot, but this is an industry that still has a lot of growing up to do.

I mean to the degree of searching through every detail the game lays out for you. Watching a movie you are limited to details being further away with no focus on them. The mise en scene is incredibly important in a film and I'm not taking that away from that form of media. In prose if you were to write everything that was in a room that would turn into a list. The descriptions given in prose is usually kept to the most pressing and succinct details that would give us the sense of an environment. Of course writing is a lot less restrictive so you can be grandiose and expansive as long as it's beautifully written but that's not a short story at that point if you are going to describe everything with such pinpoint accuracy. Gone Home lets you explore all that stuff on a deeper level. All mediums have their pros and cons and video games allow for intractability which is what I think works in Gone Home's favor.

Like others, I'm not really interested in arguments over what constitutes a "game" or not, and Gone Home in particular is, despite the extreme simplicity and straightforwardness of what that game is, still a "game" to me, but when it comes to criticism of the press itself, @grantheaslip and the rest pretty much nailed it.

I think it's a really weird and kind of petty thing to dismiss Gone Home for, so in that respect I agree with you, but oftentimes I've thought to myself "Would Gone Home still have been so widely praised if everything else about it was the same, but it was a straight romance at the center of the game instead?" It's an argument that's impossible to win, of course, because the only way to know would be to basically be God, but if I'm being honest, I really doubt it would've been held so high if it didn't have something that makes everyone feel nice and progressive for enjoying it.

I do kind of see his point about the journalism aspect but everything else had me going "naaaaaah".

I agree with you and then I don't agree with you. I do believe that Gone Home wouldn't have had as good a story if it was a straight romance at the center of it. I do whoever think that making Samantha a lesbian and her lover a girl you open up more story telling possibilities than just a "teens in love!" story. She has to come to terms with who she is. A lot of the early notes that she is hanging around this girl that makes her feel strange. She feels like she shouldn't like her friend the way she does. Eventually they do get together and it feels triumphant because it feels earned and it means the character grew. Then you have the parents who can't understand who she is because of their ignorance. There's more to play with than a straight couple. It's like saying "Beloved" wouldn't be as good if Margaret had been white. Of course it isn't, you change what the story is about.

I'm warning you: you're fighting an uphill battle by citing Game Theory.

I'm sure 4chan must love this guy.

I agree with both you and Grant on your points. Though Gone Home is, at its core, a very simplistic and short experience, that experience still qualifies as a game. There are certain rules of progression that it abides by, even if, based on the video's attempt to define game, there is the absence of explicit challenge.

The video is much stronger in its stance on game journalism, and actually hit upon a number of notes that I've wondered about myself. The established games press inhabits what amounts to a feel-good echo chamber where even reasoned dissent is at best ignored and at worst attacked. The responses to Patrick's tweet highlight this quite nicely (if that's really the word to use). And the slides brought up in the video do offer other questions that are valid yet left largely untouched. For example, I had no idea that Hanako Games existed until this video, and I have never seen the views of anyone involved in the company, whether it be regarding female representation in development or in games themselves, explored in the press. Patrick seems content to keep inviting Zoe Quinn on the morning show and linking to Sarkeesian's videos in Worth Reading, but female representation goes well beyond a few prominent voices and should be explored with a greater sense of diversity if and when possible. Otherwise, limiting that depth of discussion to a few "key" figures in the industry like Quinn and Sarkeesian ultimately just become more voices in the echo chamber, no matter how insightful they may be.

@hailinel: Essentially every online group that considers itself "special" but no one on the outside cares/knows they exist will behave in a circlejerk fashion. This is most prominent in elitist circles in MMOs; but it happens in other games and on forums (Something Awful being the most apparent case) and of course with "games journalism" (as well as with actual journalists and most film critics). Most moderators on basically every forum I've ever been to behave like this as well and a sports blog I visit occasionally has all day circlejerking all the time. It's some weird notion of superiority in the absence of relevance. I can respect it if there's a good deal of humor and self deprecation involved but usually it's just annoying and makes you care even less about their collective point of view.

I've been sort of peripherally part of some of these groups for over 10 years and I still don't really understand why that happens; some sort of fear of external viewpoints. I usually just seek objectivity unless there's trolling to be had.

I will echo the sentiment that the segments about "games journalism" are far and away the most salient parts of the piece. I find the entire "defining what is and isn't a game" discussion wholly uninteresting, so I won't touch on that, but I feel like he hits the nail on the head when talking about how many writers in the industry tend to vilify people who disagree with them. I think this is a huge problem facing not just games, but the internet as a whole. It's increasingly tough to avoid well-intentioned people who push worthwhile agendas (for example, better female and/or LGBQT representation in games) while simultaneously labeling everyone who doesn't think exactly like they do as a bigot or as close-minded. Discourse becomes far less interesting and valuable when we stop discussing the merits and demerits of viewpoints and start to fall back on namecalling.

It's just what happens when people form groups. The group becomes a cultural island.

@video_game_king: I understand how that works in reality, but online theoretically everyone should be accessible and they are accessible so they sort of develop a heightened anti-outgroup sense that wouldn't exist in reality because there's no one to keep out as it were. Outside of basic schooling there's really no situation in a person's life where they can't just walk away from a problem or avoid whomever they please; but you can't do that on the internet so you take solace in (effectively) groupthink I guess? Granted it doesn't explain the rampant elitism that almost all of these groups exhibit.

@fredchuckdave:

I'm not entirely sure I understand. There's still all sorts of pseudo-willful isolation going on on the Internet. I think Metal Gear Solid 2 predicted this kind of thing, albeit from a differently sinister perspective (toward the end, with the Patriots spiel).

@video_game_king: There's no actual isolation though, there's no real security on the internet other than not participating. Assuming you're in group A and you share some sort of relationship with Group B, it's completely impossible to entirely avoid members of Group B; so instead of just ignoring them or never hearing/seeing them you're forced to run into them from time to time. This leads to vehement dislike from either side, and whichever side is "exclusive" for some reason or another (doesn't even matter what the reason is) looks down on the other side. In our case this is the games writers and their incredibly numerous "readers." GB was founded on the notion that the community was an integral part of the proceedings, but that isn't really the case anymore is it?

Edit: Obviously the community needs to exist but they don't really have a direct relationship with the staff (except possibly @rorie), and their existence is not causally related to anything in particular other than liking the product.

The site he wrote it for was actually founded by 4chan 'alumni' in the wake of the ME3 debacle, speaking as someone who was there to witness the events that led to its creation.

It's been a dismal experiment, to be honest.

Not physical, though, but I imagine ideologically, there is. Once you're a member of the games press, you can't become a member of the readership, too. It don't work like that.

In this, it sounds like we're in agreement. A very basic form of elitism (or something resembling that).

If that was the case, then it was always destined to fail.

Like usual, game journalism is to blame as our ever-insecure source of outrage and controversy.

I don't even agree with him - Gone Home is most definitely a (shitty) game - but he really hit the nail on the head with this. There's a self-perception problem that increasingly emanates from a lot of the community that writes about games "professionally," and it's repeatedly leading us into puerile debates like these.

@fredchuckdave said:

I'd argue even that is pushing it. Remember TNT and how everyone on staff groaned whenever a member of their community dared to use voice chat during the games? Hell, their treatment of TNT in particular is one reason why I find this "community focused" Giant Bomb people talk about to be weird. It was a livestream that was ostensibly focused on the crew interacting with the community, and yet they tried mighty hard to avoid interaction whenever possible.

To touch on the broader discussion here, I think a wider issue is recognizing the humanity of other people on the Internet. I don't mean in the Klepek way of "let's all be nice to each other," but in a very real and fundamental understanding that there is a person on the other end of this communication. In face-to-face conversations you're confronted by a person. You see that the opinion is attached to a human being, and it leads to a softer interaction or, if not that, at least an attempt at understanding. When the human element is removed and all this becomes text on a page, it's a lot easier to dehumanize the person you're speaking with. To lump them all together as some "other." I know I've been guilty of that, and I'm sure any honest person would admit to the same.

I guess I'm saying that this is what happens when people no longer interact with human beings but with words on a screen. I highly doubt Patrick would've sicked (?) his attack dogs on that one developer who didn't want to talk to him if that developer had been more than a twitter handle, for instance. That takes a startling lack of empathy to do in person, but when there is no visible human presence to empathize with, it becomes much easier to see dissenting views as "others" or, perhaps worse, some subhuman, savage horde that desperately need your enlightened opinion.

And @video_game_king is totally right; MGS2 called this from the jump. No fact ultimately exists because nobody is wrong, everyone is right. If you're confronted with a "truth" that does not fit into your world view, well, just mosey onto a corner of the Internet where it's conveniently absent. It's echo chambers and white noise, people with megaphones trying to yell louder than their neighbour for whatever end they desire. Perhaps I'm rambling, but I'd like to think I'm not the only guy here who doesn't see how tribalism has reared its head in the age of social media.

But is this not the humanity that the video warns about? That critics are too soft because they associate a human face with the game? Perhaps the human sense must be tempered with decorum. Still, anything to de-establish the echo chamber of aggression that the Internet oft resembles.

@video_game_king said:

I think what you're referring to is the closeness with which developers and journalist often associate. It's definitely been off-putting with how chummy they seem to be, and while that's understandable from a professional perspective it gets worrisome when your friends make two good games that you review and mysteriously the third (and bad) entry lacks the same. I'm not saying it's purposeful, or that it's even conscious, but yeah, it's definitely bothersome.

What I'm referring to is a more generalized sense of discussion. I'm not talking about video games and game journalists in the strictest sense; more on what I see from every corner of the Internet I visit. It's not just games or games journalists, this behaviour is everywhere. The Internet is the greatest tool humanity has ever developed, and yet it's also brought to bare how utterly tribal we still are. When we're removed from social cues and basic human interaction, it's incredibly easy to see how we insulate ourselves so that only pleasant topics (to us) are discussed, and that only supportive opinions are heard. In real life, in real human interaction, we cannot close out the dissenting voices so easily. We could, theoretically, just walk away from the confrontation but that is frowned up because of certain unspoken social contracts. Perhaps it's telling that we as a species seem to revel in our ability to shut the world out?

This may seem tangential, but you can tell me if it's related; think about how many people use online delivery services like Amazon to avoid shopping in public spaces. Think of how Brad on the Bombcast constantly rails against having to put on pants and go out into the world to buy things. Just to buy things. I'm not picking on him, but this attitude is becoming more prevalent and it does worry me. This idea that contained, isolated life is somehow better for its lack of human interaction. I'm a bit of a misanthropic jackass, but even I understand that basic human interaction breeds empathy. It seems counter intuitive to me that an insulated life is constantly being promoted and conflict is constantly shunned. I know I'm rambling now, but I think that's at the heart of it.

Outside of tribalism or empathy, our culture currently dictates that conflict is a terrible thing and that it should be avoided at all costs. I find this particularly strange because conflict is essential to us. We need conflict. We thrive on it. Without it we're, well, we're what we're talking about right now with endless echo chambers and circlejerking.

This is not to say, of course, that circlejerks and tribalism has never existed before now, but what makes it worrying is that there was always reality to balance it out. You were confronted with dissenting views, with different opinions on a daily basis before. Your ideas and your values were constantly challenged and yet, in this era of social media this is no longer the case. Ideas and values are just like muscles; without training or better, without conflict, they atrophy. Ideas and values become black and white good/bad binary values. There's no room for depth when there's no conflict. No conflict means no challenge, and no challenge means no reason to think with any depth about your ideas, beliefs, values, or even why you have them.

I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say at this point. In any event, thanks for getting through the wall of text.

@oldirtybearon: I know it may seem like rambling to you, but these last two posts of yours really were excellent and I say this to encourage people to read them. Perhaps it was a bit tangential to the presented topic, but I think it attacks the core of all these issues and was really great to see articulated like this.

I've never been much for social media for pretty much those reasons, to be honest. I mean, say what you will about these forums, but there is still at least conflict, on a regular basis. The conflict that we need to be able to stay grounded, and grow, and not get caught up in our own bubbles; I like that conflict.

I like when people have to participate in a back and forth, and when that back and forth is uncensored. I don't like seeing people preach, and walk away. I don't like seeing people on Twitter snicker amongst themselves. I don't like it when you see people literally ban entire comment sections and prevent any direct feedback from them that could challenge them in any way. I don't like it when Brad posts more on Neogaf than his own forums. I don't like when my grandparents just watch Fox News all day. Fuck, I don't like that I've gradually gravitated farther away from being able to form friendships with straight people because it's just easier to talk and relate to other gay dudes, because I feel like I'm creating a distorted image of people in my head and damaging my own ability to relate to others.

Forcing individuals to face each other and beat two opposing opinions together is so vitally important for the health and productivity of basic fucking human interaction, and we're losing that. The increasing ease with which a person can withdraw into themselves and their own self-reinforcing circles has been sort of shitty. It's been detrimental to our politics, it's been detrimental to discussions about gender and sex issues, it's been detrimental to the health of this very website, and it's sure as shit been detrimental to the trust between the general audience and the games press.

@marokai said:

To not sound pithy (and because I'm running on three hours of sleep here), I'd like to add that you're both correct, at least from my perspective. I can't really add much more to this discussion because we're veering into shit I know nothing about. I would love to see other individuals here pick up the slack and explore this a little more in depth, however. I think we - not as a community, but just people - often dial ourselves in on the relatively small things that effect us. At the end of the day the subject of whether or not game journalists are an insular, often incestuous tribe (they are), or whether they lord it over their readers/followers (some do) is, I think, missing the broader implications for this societal shift. You could probably blame some of it not just on soundbites like Twitter, but also on 80 hour work weeks and other societal pressures to keep pace with our culture. I don't think there's some man behind the curtain, and I don't think this is an intentional consequence of things like Twitter (which is essentially post cards on the Internet).

Maybe social media is just highlighting what was always there, but I am a little worried that when the backlash comes to all of this (and I mean all of this kind of talk - both in games journalism and social justice issues in general), the pendulum is going to swing far too hard in the other direction. Anti-Feminist sentiment is heating up. Things like the Mens Rights Movement are gaining traction (mostly because all the hooting and hollering by crazy feminists made people wonder what MRAs have to say that needs to be silenced so badly), and "politically correct" behaviour in general is becoming more discouraged. I don't know if this is good or bad, but I do think the hard swing into "no reals, only feels" went too far. I want to be optimistic and say that as a culture we're trying to get back to some middle ground. A place where realism is appreciated, and that frank discussion can be had based on merit and not whose flag you fly (or more cynically, how many oppressed groups you've allied with).

Another post full of ramble, but I find it intriguing that a lot of these special interest groups have been co-opted by middle class-to-affluent people of, I hate to say it, usually Caucasian persuasion. Perhaps that's another reason these things have no bite for me. I'm not hearing complaints or cries from the source, but from a wealthy middleman who hocks social progressiveness to go along with that iPad 5. Or whatever it is now.

I've already criticised this video plenty in my NeoGAF post about the Steam tagging system and Gone Home, but yeah not much to get out of this and he even is misinformed on why Jeff Gerstmann was fired. Not by publisher pressure (which is a common thing to threaten removing advertising dollars), but by the new management and advertisers at that time in Gamespot. Who were then removed and after years, Giant Bomb decided to merge with Gamespot.

It's pretty easy to claim something isn't a game if you make up your own definition for the word. The definition I was taught in my first game design class was that all you need in order to be a game is an objective and a set of boundaries. All of the games that have been given the "Not a Game" label fit into this particular definition. In the end I think this just boils down to the stupidest semantics argument.

And what's wrong with that? You'd have to argue against the validity of this definition, not against definitions themselves.

@video_game_king said:

I think arguing over the proper definition of a word crosses a certain line where the initial subject is no longer relevant to the discussion, the new subject of the conversation is language. We're not learning anything about games at that point, we're arguing about prescriptivism.

@hunter5024: Arguing about definitions is the height of academic discourse and pedantry.

*waves loose fist in international masturbation motion*

Awesome video, thanks for sharing it.

@grantheaslip: I enjoyed reading what you had to write and agree with you. Interestingly, Patrick also agrees with you - a few days back he commented on a social media director's firing for defending Donald Sterling by saying "He tried to have a conversation that was too big for twitter". A good point, and maybe we should stop trying to have big arguments about twitter posts.

As regards the video, I'm going to risk getting into this pseudointellectual circle-jerk because I like talking about language. While I'm not the sort of person who gets worked up about things being 'games' or 'not games' there are several reasons I don't like his argument.

1) He claims that the misuse of the language in this respect could lead to under-informed purchasers. And yet, he demonstrates by using the word 'visual novel' that sufficient language exists to convey what Gone Home is without wading into the game/not a game debate
2) I actually like his definition of game. I think it holds a lot of water, and he makes a reasonable distinction between a 'game' and a 'toy'. However, I'm not sure that 'video games' and 'games' are actually overlapping terms, because there's no such thing as a 'video toy'. I think that the common definition for 'video game' would be something along the lines of 'any form of interactive entertainment presented through a visual electronic interface' or something like that. No one would think that Encarta encyclopedia was a game, but if you had the exact same interface and it was about the world of Myst instead of the real world, maybe they would.

So in summary, no one should care about this issue, but even if they did, both sides have reasonable points no one is going to change their mind. Therefore, even if you care about it, there's no point in having an argument.