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What's the point of gaming anyway?

Nutmeg

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So, I was reading the /shmupg/ on 4chan's /vr/. Lots of "entertaining" content as usual, but what struck me most was the discussion that started around the question of why we play games. I wrote a rough sketch of my thoughts there, but I'll repeat here in front of a better audience.

There are 5 ways we can design, enjoy or analyze games:
  1. As Skinner boxes. The idea here is the game should "reward" players, in a controlled manner, agnostic to the players skill, in order to get the player to continually spend their time on the game. The primary measure of success here is how much time players sink into the game, or how "addictive" the game is. Slot machines, free-to-play, and even games with other merits to them such as Diablo 2 are good examples of this approach.
  2. As mental exercise. Problems for the player to solve using basic motor skills, symbolic reasoning etc. The main metric here is the amount of outcome bearing decisions the player needs to make per unit of game time. Abstract games like Go and Chess, their computer offshoots in the turn based strategy genre, as well as arcade action games fit into this category.
  3. As pretend play. On this forum I've heard the word "simulationist" bandied about, which I think is equivalent. I guess the metric here is suspension of disbelief. Many cRPGs are designed with this in mind, Looking Glass Studios made this their explicit goal, and I've noticed it's part of the appeal of many weaker "strategy" games e.g. Crusader Kings 2.
  4. As artefacts of self expression. Similar to film, literature, music, art. This is the lens under which games are usually critiqued in public (sadly). I guess here what's important is the philosophical message and aesthetic spirit of the game. Very popular on this forum.
  5. As social experiences. What kind of social interactions the game produces. A very wide net.
1, 2 and 3 are antagonistic towards to each other. 4 and 5 are really extra-game, and are orthogonal to everything, hence I didn't list any examples, but it is possible to judge and otherwise participate in games only from those lenses to the exclusion of everything else.

I'm guessing most people here fall firmly into camp 3 to inform the actual game design (otherwise 1), but really most people here don't care much about gameplay, so really 4. is the main area of concern.

I am a camp 2 guy myself.

So what do you guys think? Did I miss anything? Did I fairly capture the spirit of this forum?
 

Silly Germans

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I was hired to kill time but so far i have not been successful despite my most earnest efforts.
 

spectre

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Game theory says that a game is something that happens as a result of actions made by at least two decision-making entities.
The game has a set of rules and the actions have a determined set of outcomes. Players may be more or less acquainted
with the rules and possible outcomes.

No matter how we dress this up, this is what it boils down to, and it may be useful in the coming discussion.
The most important bit is identifying what *isn't* a game.
It can get a bit tricky if we're talking about video games (single player in particular), the important question here is what (or who) is the other decision-making entity.
Usually it would be the game's designer or the AI designed by them.

With this in mind, the most important thing about games appears to be this - you should be able to make decisions, the decisions can be good or bad. It should therefore be possible
to fail in a game by making a bad decision. The important bit is that your decision will be evaluated in the context of decisions made by other players.
This would imply there is always an inherent degree of competitiveness in the game itself.

So, the original question appears to be thus - what is your main motivation to take part in a game?
- Do you enjoy the inherent uncertainty of outcome (seems to be the main point behind gambling)?
- Do you enjoy exploring the nuances of the game's rules, perhaps to prove the superiority of your decision making ability (the competitive aspect of gaming)?
- Or is there an educational aspect at play? A game which strives to reflect reality of a real-world activity can be used to practice and master such an activity.
- Is the game itself but a pretext to some form of social interaction?

I would leave "self-expression" out of games. I think this is a domain of art (or are we implying that gaming is an ersatz-art for people without artistic capability?).
I am also rather skeptical about the possibility to express oneself in a single player game, unless it's some form of auto-therapy.

My belief is that escapism plays a central role. The difference between gaming and other types of media is your agency (that action made by a decision-making entity I spoke of in the beginning).
Usually the consumed media is passive, while in gaming, you get to play the active part. I think this is what has kept me with games for all this years. Once you've known the appeal of being
an agent, or an actor, it's difficult to get back into a passive role. This paradigm is what I consider important when picking games that I like and consider to be worthwhile.
I can't enjoy a game that has no discernible rules, I can't enjoy a game in which the decisions don't matter, I can't enjoy a game where it's not possible to fail.
 

Nutmeg

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spectre It's interesting you mention uncertainty of outcome and the active/passive relationship.

Slot machines are uncertainty of outcome appeal taken to the extreme conclusion, and I would categorize them as very passive.

The only decision the player is making is stop or continue. Game theoretically, stop is the only correct decision, so it's not very interesting as a puzzle.
 

Nutmeg

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I fail to see the connection in both cases, so I hope you can explain what you mean.
Well, I consider "fun" to be a non-answer, almost philistine, bordering on sarcastic. If fun is the point, then just rephrase my question "what about games makes them fun?" and then proceed with the discussion.

Anyway out of the 5 things I listed, only 1 really requires periodic dopamine release, which is what "fun" is. You can have a very interesting puzzle (2) or a very believable abstract simulation (3), or a deep artistic message (4) without necessitating dopamine release in the participants. Their brains might do so, but it isn't the goal. 5 is just kind of the other thing people into "fun" like to do.
 

Mexi

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An escape for me. Reason why I love RPGs. Just let my mind shut off and get into the world and the characters. The kind of shit I have to deal with in the real world makes a great escape.
 

GhostCow

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To see anime tiddies

That seems appropriate coming from someone who's avatar looks like the head of a dick.

Funny story about why I picked this avatar:

I have a friend that hangs out with a lot of degenerates. The worst of the worst kind of people you'd meet at anime conventions. One of them is this lesbian chick who got super triggered the first time she played a Shin Megami Tensei game and ran into Mara. She started reloading her save after each time she fought him so that she could kill him over and over. Ever since then Mara has been the most hilarious video game character of all time to me.
 

Alex

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I fail to see the connection in both cases, so I hope you can explain what you mean.
Well, I consider "fun" to be a non-answer, almost philistine, bordering on sarcastic. If fun is the point, then just rephrase my question "what about games makes them fun?" and then proceed with the discussion.

Anyway out of the 5 things I listed, only 1 really requires periodic dopamine release, which is what "fun" is. You can have a very interesting puzzle (2) or a very believable abstract simulation (3), or a deep artistic message (4) without necessitating dopamine release in the participants. Their brains might do so, but it isn't the goal. 5 is just kind of the other thing people into "fun" like to do.

Fun is the right answer. Fun is the point of all play, which encompasses games and computer games in particular. How fun is achieved is the issue at hand, and simply saying fun doesn't tell you how to do it, but if your idea of a good game isn't based on what you, or at least the people who are going to play your game, find fun, you have missed the point with it.

The comment about skinner boxes (whatever that is) is silly and I can't imagine anyone actually positing that as a point in a serious manner. Even people who waste their time and money with slot machines don't think the game should reward them for spending time in them, but do so because they believe keeping playing is going to be rewarded. However, basing your game on that doesn't make your game good, clearly. It might make it lucrative, but even if that was all you cared about (and it shouldn't be), you still would need to make your game fun to make people play it.

Your comments about point two turn us toward a very common and important aspect of games; namely, that they are challenging. Having fun with a game involves learning (or at least training), and the most commons and easy way to do that is to give challenges to the players. As the challenges are overcome, the pieces of the game fall together, the player becomes able to do better in the game and is better able to face newer challenges. This learning process is, I think, synonymous with fun, and while many games don't focus on this and still manage to be very good, it is always an important part of the game; so much so that the specific type of challenge the game provides will determine the genre (strategy, action, first person shooter, etc).

Point 3 is not crucial for a thing to be a game, but it is an important part of some game types, including Adventure games and, in particular to our interests, RPGs. Having a context and imaginary world associated to the game can make the action much more interesting even for other genres, however, and it actually blends together into gameplay in actual tabletop RPGs (and some other similar game types as well).

The self-expression thing is negligible in a single-player computer game, since the computer can't really react to it. Some games try to make it seem like this matter, but without other people playing, it is impossible. The only self-expression there is the one the designers had. And while that is important for the quality of the game, it is hardly the point of it all.

Social stuff is part of how many games develop during play, and it can actually be very important if the game makes team-work crucial to gameplay. But again, hardly the point of gaming itself.
 

Valky

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Fun, but since you think it is a non answer, then the point is to release happy goodfeels chemicals in my brain as I engage in the cathartic interaction of playing a video game.
 

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