If they weren't called "video games", what would you call them?

Carholes

chusslewicks or flamgoodlers

No one has gone with Video Nasties yet, huh?

Thots

Vidgies?

Interactive video or interactive stories

games

Interplays is a good one. Brian Fargo and co were on to something there.

Vidya

Video James

In the next twenty years we might see the video part of 'video games' change since will be call seeing images by direct stimulation of optic nerves as video or holographic projections? Will we describe holographic Will pedantic people say videogames (on a screen) hologames (in the air) and optic-games (in the mind) are not the same? Should be all just called them moving visual images used to render games as - visual games

However, are not board games a visual games as well? Thus are we really talking about physical reality vs immaterial games? I think we are, there are physical games and then there are games not made from matter. Moreover, I think the best word to describe games that are seen & interacted with, but not made physically are incorporeal games.

incorporeal games.

I think video games is accurate for a lot of games but I do believe there should be a new name for games like Gone Home or What remains of Edith Finch or the interactive painting thing in VR. Games that don't have a Win or Lose or any sort of "game" aspect to them.

Visual Novels are an example of this. I don't think anyone mixes Visual novels in with Video games anymore. Interactive experiences, or something catchier, should be the same thing. A new category that can have new genres.

Virtual Interactive Digital Electronic Online Gimicky Advanced Modelled Entertainment Simulations

Bit of a mouthful though. Might need to find a way to shorten it...

@shagge: "joyboys" you win

Digital game? Complicated Binary Program?

Gideo vames

Luds, cause the best words come from latin

E-toys

Vidcons

Games.

Drugs.

@gnosislord: Yeah, I was thinking either "TV Games" or "Screen Games"

Interactive Bleep Bloops

Interactive digital entertainment

Visual Interactives with the intent that peoples would call them "VI"s, kinda like people say TV instead of Television.

Alternate etymology powers go!

So... you call films films because they were stored on celluloid film. By that measure, you'd probably call games "tapes" or "cartridges", depending on whether you're American or European (because, you see, consoles got big in the US, but at the time microcomputers using tapes got big in Europe).

You call them movies because, well, it's moving pictures. That's harder. You could call them "touchies" or "controllies", but that sounds dumb, so you probably wouldn't. Maybe instead, you'd got full metonymy and call them "arcades", "controllers" or "joysticks". Loads of people here going with "interactives", but that word didn't get thrown around at games too much early on. I guess it's not out of the question, but still.

What if it went the way of other art form? You call theatre "plays" and music "songs", so obviously games would be "programs" or "designs", right? In fact, in Europe they did get called "programs" for a while early on. That could have stuck.

And finally, there's books and book genres, like novel or essay. I guess there the generic would be really hard. The etymology of book is "document or charter", so I guess we're back at "program" or "tape", but the genres could be more interesting. You wouldn't say "I'm playing a program" as much as just say "I'm playing a FPS" or "I'm playing an MMO" and assume that the thing referring to the medium speaks of the physical object more than it does of the actual content it carries.

Did... did I take this too seriously? I did, didn't I?

Games.

Digicybers

I don't know...interactive media?

Computer board games.

Digital Interactive Media.

It's what i used to want to call heady story based games, like when comics got pretentious and started calling them graphic novels instead lol. Now they are all games and all comics to me. :-)

Electro-Nibs

Digital entertainment?

Elecreations (Ell - uh - creations)

Elecreational Sports

Hell-of (hella?) creations in these Elecreations.

Have you ever considered how dumb the name "movies" is. That would be like calling board games "boardies".

idk, maybe "interactives"?

interactive entertainment is what sony uses, and it seems fine but sounds too much like sports entertainment for me.

Intertainment?

And the US did too. That's what Atari 2600 was called. Home games pre-crash were called TV games. With the big crash (around the time of 2600 Pac-Man) I guess they wanted to do a little rebranding so they went to videogames.

Tech you play with. Playtecs?

I was going to say "interactive experience", but this is better.

Bufu casting simulator.

digital marketplaces

@frytup: I came into this topic with that word in mind and am saddened to learn I'm not the first person to think of it.

Spacewar-likes

art

Digital Games.

Murder simulators

game-like

(especially f2p, MMOs and mobile crap) because it's mostly a lifestyle, a second job, and the "meta" has taken over. Basically when the joy of play and novelty has faded and somehow you're still compelled to play, you are playing a game-like.

See, that's the mistake! We don't need a new collective term for games, we need a differentiation! Just like soda-pop has more common with a slow-poison that gives you diabetes, fat-liver, rots your teeth and sustains your addiction to sweets, it's really useless to lump it in with DRINKS. It's a fake value proposition and a trash-liquid that is best avoided completely, always. Just because you can drink something (or it is marketed as such) doesn't make it a drink, just because you can play something doesn't make it a (video) game.

Pewdiepies

my stories