Outside of twitchy fighting games, yes. Certainly if they're talking about RPGs. Controllers could work for a first-person RPG like DX or VtMB, minus the realtime combat and gun aiming, which sucks anyway. But what you'll get is rails, cutscenes, ABCD choices, and QTEs.
I Settle All Video Game Arguments, Part 2: What Is a Game?
According to the rigorous definition of Game that I will provide, creating "dank memes" IS a video game.
One of the painful things about being in the games biz for a long (LONG) time is that you see the same tedious arguments brought up and rehashed, again and again, by new generations. I am writing a series of posts to settle these debates once and for all.
No need to thank me. When I get the Nobel Prize, don't worry about sending the medal. I just want the money.
This time, I settle a question that has tormented academics and Mad On Twitter types alike: What is the definition of a game?
How This Tedious Discussion Started
When the Indie Boom hit, several games of the genre called Walking Simulators came out and achieved huge financial and critical success. I personally enjoyed many of them greatly. (Despite this, I still use the term "Walking Simulator" because I find it funny.)
When they first gained notice, a certain portion of the gamer community was angered by the acclaim for Walking Simulators, sniffing in response that they "Aren't games."
This is, of course, entirely the wrong way to phrase their complaint. What they should have said was, "These games, whatever their good qualities, strip away everything we value in gaming and don't give us enough hours of distraction for our limited dollars, and the fact they are being treated as the future and only thing of value in our medium fills us with resentment."
Whether you agree with that sentiment or not (and there's plenty to say on both sides), it is a statement you can actually debate on its merits.
But this debate, such as it was, was moot. Last I checked, Walking Sims (even really good new ones) are selling modest numbers and games where you shoot monsters in the face are still making billions.
So there was no reason to continue the argument ...
According to my rigorous definite of Game, this IS a video game.
But Then Academia Got Involved.
A lot of people go to college to study videogames, and some try to create advanced critical analysis of the form. Don't blame me. It's not my fault.
I studied theatre in college, which was a fantastic experience. When I was there, I observed that people new to an art form constantly try to attach firm definitions to everything in it.
"What IS a play? What is acting? What is a work of art? What is the explicit definition of joy? And beauty? Dude, my hands are HUGE! They can touch anything but themselves!"
Exercises like this are not useless. It's good, when you’re young, to spend a lot of time thinking about the nature of your art form. Then you stop, because you realize that the nature of art is a very slippery thing. Whatever rule you come up with, someone else will become awesome by breaking it.
Here's the deal with art: Your brain compels you to make a thing, then you make it, then people dig it or they don't. The end.
Despite this, otherwise sensible people still actually spend time trying to define a game. Google "What is a game" and marvel in wonder. It's really quite the thing. A whole bunch of definitions, none of them adequate, because they're all too broad or too narrow or too abstract.
So I'll settle the issue and save everyone a bunch of time. This is important to me because I'm working on a cool new indie role-playing thing now, and it'll be out soon, and I want to be sure I can call it a game so I don't get in trouble with the FDA or whatever.
According to my rigorous definition of Game, this is NOT a video game.
What Is a Game?
Consider the large, highly profitable genre called Hidden Object Games.
Here's how they work. The game says, "There's a squid on the screen." Then you find and click the squid. Then you do the same thing with a sandwich or a skull or whatever.
Is this a game? I mean, hell, I'm not 100% sure this counts as an ACTIVITY.
But it has to be a game. How do I know? Because "Hidden Object Game" has "Game" in the name.
So just clicking a few times makes it a game, and you have to click just to launch the game. Sooo ...
According to my rigorous definition of Game, this IS a video game.
The Answer!
If you're asking, "Is this a game?" it's a game. Sure! Why not? Who cares? It might be a good game or a long game or a bad game or a word processor.
Semantics arguments are lame. Argue about the content. What is a game is trying to do, how does it attempt it, how well did it succeed, and why? That's all that matters.
Wait. You Didn't Actually Define a Game.
So if you're hangin' out and someone starts to discuss with you what the definition of a game (or gameplay, or play, or immersion, or ludonarrative dissonance) is, do what I do!
Step 1: Nod sagely and adopt an expression of extreme concentration.
Step 2: Point over the person's shoulder and shout, "Hey, what's that!?"
Step 3: Activate the ninja smoke bomb you have in your pocket. FWOOOOSH!
Step 4: Sneak into another room.
Step 5: Talk to literally anyone else about literally anything else.
Problem solved!
According to my rigorous definition of Game, this IS a video game.
This Is Ridiculous. By Your Laughable Definition, Photoshop and Excel Are Games. That Is So Broad As To Be Meaningless! But What If You First Define Gameplay To Be ...
OK, you've broken through. My decades of experience have enabled me to have one simple, unquestionable test for how to peel apart interactivity for a productive purpose from interactivity for an entertainment purpose. First, you ... Hey, what's that!
FWOOOOSH!
As An Extra Multiball Reward For Making It All the Way to the End of This Mess, I Will Settle Once and For All the Question: "Are Video Games Art?"
No. Never. Don't be silly.
###
If you're intrigued by giant indie RPGs with cool adventures and epic stories, you can wishlist our next "game" on Steam. News about our work and random musings can be found on our Twitter.
Define RPGs. Are you talking about turn-based, party-based, grid-based... like Vogel RPGs? I know they have some keyboard shortcuts (improving in the last few years) but there's enough required mouse usage that it would be pretty fucking tedious to use a joystick emulating a mouse... unless you're really good at that.
So you would read a Vogel article has it been written in a different style? But why? At that point, who even cares what he thinks?
Cuphead, Cruelty, and Selling Unfairness to You.
Teacher, mother, secret lover.
When charming indie megahit Cuphead came out, I watched a ton of it on Twitch. How could I not? It's so pretty!
I wasn't planning to play it. I like to play one super-tough game a year, to show I can still game hard like the cool kidz. But I'd already played Bloodborne last year, and my aging heart won't take much more than that.
Then my wife got me a Black Friday sale XBox One so that we could play Gears of War 4 together, so I figured I might as well try Cuphead for real.
Because of what I do for a living, of course, all of the following analysis is being done to find ideas I can steal to make more money.
Yeah, Cuphead Is Really Good
It was a huge amount of fun. I played a lot by myself. A lot co-op with my teenage daughter. A reasonable amount with my 11-year old daughter. Turns out my kids can be serious hardcore "Die 50 times and keep at it!" gamers when the bad guys are saucy mermaid ladies.
What really struck me was how little watching the game on Twitch prepared me for actually playing it. This was because Cuphead constantly uses randomness (RNG, for short) better than just about any game I've ever played.
Ever notice how sometimes a character comes along and every fan artist must come up with their own take on it instantly? I think that's cool. (Link not entirely safe for work.)
The Deadly RNG
Just about every attempt against a boss in Cuphead plays out differently from every other try. It's not only the standard Dark Souls thing where each boss has a move set and it picks an attack at random and you have to react to it. (Though it has that, of course.)
The fights are also random in every other way they can be:
Timing of the Attack - A bull is about to lunge forward to attack. It rears back. Then the amount of time until it actually launches the attack varies. Sometimes it's instant. Sometimes it's a good long pause. And sometimes the wait is so long is throws off my timing entirely and I blunder right into the attack.
Timing of Attackers - Little fireballs run across the screen. Sometimes one jumps up at you. Sometimes the pause between leapers is so long that you think the game is broke and you get complacent and BAM. And then three go all at once. (which can be evaded, but it's a rare enough occurrence that the player won't have a canned response for it.)
Random Attack Sets - In a lavish display of developer effort, some bosses have entirely different skill sets every time you launch the fight.
Multiple Simultaneous Attack Sets - The mermaid has two sets of three attacks, one set from the air and one from the water. It picks one from each set and uses them simultaneously, for nine different attacks to react to.
Random Terrain - Two fights have you battle while leaping along moving, randomly arranged platforms. To avoid an attack, you need to very quickly evaluate the routes available to you and select the best one.
This boss made my daughter cry. I hugged her. Then I beat it quickly and she was mad at me. At least we're having family time.
The End Result
This is why watching the game doesn't convey the experience of playing it. You can't get through Cuphead with patterns. Well, some fights you can. But most of the time, you have to learn how the system works, practice with it, and perform within it, adapting fluidly to surprises as you go.
Sometimes the RNG hands you a really nasty situation, but the vast majority of the time the situation you get is fair and survivable. You just have to take in the situation, come up with a plan very fast, and execute it.
The brilliance of the design is in making a system with RNG that keeps the game unpredictable and tough but still fair. I think this sort of probability manipulation is underrated as a skill in game design.
Obvious Disclaimer For People Who Are Already Yelling At Me In the Comments Anyway
Obviously, a lot of gamers don't like high challenge games. A lot of gamers don't like missions they can fail. Nothing wrong with this.
Cuphead isn't aiming for the casual market. Most of the time, I don't either. I'm looking for ways to better sell to this market.
If you're trying to write a game that will appeal to every single person everywhere, you're probably already doomed.
Unfairness Is a Selling Point
In a game like this, the occasional unfair, unescapable death is a selling point. There are some gamers for whom such a situation doesn't induce a Ragequit. It inspires a determination to excel.
If I don't kill you occasionally, how will your accomplishments have meaning?
Playing the RNG In an RPG
Darkest Dungeon is another game with great use of randomness. When you take your party into a dungeon, you can get a run of savage bad luck. If things get bad, you can pull the ripcord at almost any moment, abandon your run, and save your group (with a penalty). The skill comes in constantly evaluating your situation and deciding when it's time to give up. If you can't do that, you will have a hard time.
I've always tried to have a lot of this in my indie RPGs. I write long games, and I want to make sure it's always interesting and unpredictable and there's a chance that things can go south quickly if you're not careful.
I give enemies large move sets and make sure that they can approach a fight differently each time. I use a critical hit system to make sure you can never get too complacent. Sometimes, enemies run for help, and it's random how long they'll hang around before they do.
(If you want to see this system in action, our new game, Avernum 3: Ruined World, is out at the end of January.)
Heck, the whole genre of Roguelikes depends on randomness of your adventure. You gamble your time and hope you get a situation you can survive.
Of course, video game accomplishments don't have meaning. My job is to create the illusion that they do.
What Is the Gain From this Randomness
Humans like to gamble, and we have loved gambling for all of our recorded history. Gambling doesn't have to be for money, and it doesn't need lootboxes.
The joy of gambling comes from the unpredictability, the increasingly rare life pleasure of being unsure what is about to happen. RNG in your game means bad luck might cause you to fail. Some people mistakenly think that this is a flaw, when it is in fact a great strength.
The ideal for my games is that, for battles of an appropriate level, there is always a tiny chance to fail. Similarly, for Cuphead, unless you're a completely superior player, there is a chance that an unexpected chain of events will outwit and defeat you.
When you lack a human opponent to provide unpredictability, randomness must serve this role and provide the surprises. This provides suspense and unpredictability. For a large portion of gamers, being surprised is a highly valued product that can be sold at a premium.
It's a leapy boi! Look at him go!
###
If you're intrigued by giant indie RPGs with epic stories and tough, unpredictable fights, you can wishlist Avernum 3 on Steam. It's out January 31. News about our work and random musings can be found on our Twitter.
