Difficult Questions About Video Games...
...is the title of a project being worked on by Public Beta where get all kinds of people to answer a series of questions about video games, and then they make a book out of it, and everyone who participates gets a copy of the book. So I sent in my answers, and I thought I may as well post them here.

(Feel free to skim, its REALLY long).

1/defining videogames

Q. What is a videogame?
A. Well, looking at it etymologically, we can say that a video game (2 words for me) is a kind of game that's played on something like a television. I think that all video games fit this description, but maybe not everything that fits this description is a videogame. Most notably, there seems to be a tendency for people to seperate computer games from the video games that are played on consoles and arcade machines, even though many of the exact same games can be played on both platforms. I just finsished playing Indiana Jones and The Emporer's Tomb on my computer (as opposed to the identical version for the XBox). I played it on a 19" monitor, with a gamepad, while lying on the couch. Am I to believe that somehow I was playing a different kind of game than someone playing it on the XBox? Is it because the XBox version is played on an actual television? I have a video card in my computer, so surely my games must be video games too, no?
I think the answer is simply that the term "video game" has developed a connotation of childishness: kids play video games. Computer games have their own term simply because the older demographic that plays them doesn't want to say that they play video games. As for me, my love of computers is equalled only by my hatred for the word "computer" (we may as well refer to our fellow humans as "breathers"), so I refer to the games that I play as "video games", but I do so with more than a tinge of self-consiousness.
As for Furby's and AIBO, I don't think they are video games at all. Aside from involving visuals and audio, there is nothing video about them (and certainly, we can't expand our definition that much). They are toys. I don't know what self-concious adults call their AIBOs if not toys. Luckily, I don''t think there is enough comparable adult-toys to require their own category! Tamagotchis and other LED-based gizmos are a stretch, but I think their displays are TV-oid enough that we can include them without breaking my definition. I think they should be included (after all, would Gameboys ever have come about with Nintendo's classic Game&Watch series?).
I suppose there is also the matter of those novelty games that include video-tapes or DVDs, like the new Trivial Pursuit game. Its hard not to call them video games, although they're not what comes to mind when we talk about video games. I would call them an exception, since they don't really have any practical or useful connection to typical kinds of video games, and have no place in most discussions about video games, in my opinion.

Q. What is gameplay?
A. Gameplay is one of those words like "content" or "functionality" which is popular exactly because its definition is so vague that you can almost count on it being appropriate in any situation. I think that gameplay, as its used in articles and reviews, is simply everything about a video game that seperates it from other media, such as movies (a distinction that seems to elude many game developers who, I think, would rather be movie producers). Music, sound effects, characters, animation, plotlines, beautiful recreations of medieval castles - all these things can be found in movies and are, therefore, not gameplay. What's left are not so much things as questions: Can I easily control my character without having to think too much about the buttons? Do I feel like I'm in control of this experience? Do the decesions that I make matter? Is this challenging without being frustrating? As I get better at this game, do I feel a satisfying sense of mastery? Do I care whether I win or lose? Are there interesting things to do in this game? Most fundamentally: Is this experience more than just nice to look at or listen to?
I don't know if there are words that reflect the main ideas in these questions, and maybe that's why I can only define gameplay in terms of what it isn't. Gameplay is like a drawing composed of negative space; it is the wineglass between two faces in profile.


3/selling and buying

Q. What makes a game good value-for-money?
A. Well I'll say this: games that waste my time are worse less than nothing. So many games today are padded with really boring, repetitive action (nondescript mazes, endless fights with generic enemies) so that they can say "This game has 40 hours of gameplay" or some nonsense like that. When I was younger and had a lot of spare time, this didn't matter as much, as long as there was something interesting in the game. I think most kids are like that. Now that I'm an adult, I have other things that I want to do! I would rather be entertained for only 8 hours, than spend 40 hours trying to get to the 8 hours of entertainment. I think game developers are just starting to get that, and its going to allow them to open up the market to my generation, to people who grew up with games and still want to play games, but their time is more valuable now. On the other hand, I have friends who still play games just to kill time because they're bored. I'm just not one of those people.
Incidentally, I usually wait for games to hit the bargain bins and then pick them up for $10-$30. I just can't justify paying $70 for something that I might absolutely hate and can't return. I think that videogames are generally overpriced on release, but they tend to get marked down tremendously when they go out of fashion, so I guess the industry does a good job of catering to everyone in that sense, which is probably their best defense against piracy.

Q. Why do you buy videogames?
A. As opposed to what? Pirating them? Pirated copies of decent games are usually missing a lot of high-capacity content like movies and music and it really diminishes the experience of playing the game. I really have a hard time believing that these versions of games cut considerably into developer's profits. I think the only people playing pirated games of new releases are the ones who absolutely can't afford to buy them anyway.

4/playing videogames

Q. Why do you play videogames?
A. Mainly because they'r fun and entertaining. Also because they are facinating as a medium. I find all kinds of games interesting and I find it especially interesting to watch the development of a whole different kind of game. Its interesting to see new techniques develope and to see what works and what doesn't and why, and to ask questions like these ones!

Q. Where do you play? How often? For how long?
A. Everywhere! In almost every room of my home, on the bus, waiting rooms, public parks, boring social gatherings. I try to restrict myself to an hour or so at a a time, although I've been known to play for several hours straight. I go through phases where I'm really into it, then I'll lose interest or get fed up with the state of the industry and I'll focus my time on other things. Then later I'll come back to it. I've been sick for several months as I write this, and I spend a lot of time at home so I'm playing a lot lately and really enjoying it.

Q. Why is playing videogames fun?
A. That's probably the hardest question for me. I find it interesting that a lot of people (myself included) complain when they die and have to do a large portion of the game over again "Oh no, now I have to go through that all over again". Wait a second, isn't this supposed to be fun? Shouldn't doing it twice be twice as much fun? I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is more than fun involved in getting someone to keep playing a game. There's maybe a sense, however false, of accomplishing something, of making progress, and everybody likes to feel that. Its like knitting, but without the sweater at the end, which is maybe exactly what a culture needs when it decides that its no longer worth it to knit a sweater instead of just buying one.
But personally, I like my games to be fun, but I'm not sure what that is. I don't know why anything is fun.

5/playing with videogames

Q. Can you cheat in a videogame?
A. Yes, but its different because the rules of video games are different from the rules of traditional games. Rules have to be enforced in traditional games. For instance, in sports rules can be broken at any time, at which point other rules are put into motion that say what to do about it. Rules in video games don't need to be enforced, because the game is the rules. The code that the game is made of is just a big list of rules, and they represent the reality of the game. They restrict the very actions of the player the same way that the laws of physics restrict people in the real world. As long as they are in effect, they can't be broken. But they can be taken out of effect, by changing the lines of code, or "hacking" the game. So this isn't cheating in the usual sense of breaking rules, but in a new sense of remaking rules, and then following those new rules.
In an even muddier shade of grey, there are the "cheats" that are built into games by the developers, that are activated either by entering special words, or by doing certain things in the game that "unlock" them. In these cases, the developers are basically creating a set of rules (code) that allow us to cheat, which seems like a contradiction. How can you have permission to cheat?
I think what both of these actions have in common is that they violate the intended spirit of the game. When developers create games, they (hopefully) meticulously manage all kinds of seemingly insignificant details in order to create a very particular kind of experience. I think that anything that violates that intention in video games is what we call "cheating". I think that even when developers build cheats into a game, what they are saying is, "Okay, we're going to give the permission to do this, but you need to understand that you will no longer be playing the game that we developed, and if you don't have fun, then its not our fault". I think that calling them "cheats" is an easy, shorthand way to get that across.
Which is not to say that this kind of cheating is neccesarily wrong. I think with single-player games, cheating is a very personal thing. The only person you can really cheat is yourself, so you just have to be honest about why you're cheating and whether it will make it a more or less enjoyable experience, and I think everybody should be able to make that decision. I have a friend who doesn't like to "play to win", so when he plays games, he uses "cheating" as a way to create new ways of playing a game, and he's very creative about it sometimes. What he ends up with isn't really what you'd call a "game", but I think it does really embody the idea of "play" more than most video games do. I think that it really highlights the potential for video games to allow people to make a more custom tailored experience.
I also think cheating is important because video games still cater to a particular kind of audience. That's a big difference between video games and movies. If you buy a movie, you are gauranteed to see the entire thing. Video games, on the other hand, aren't usually designed to be beaten easily by just anyone. I always imagine non-gamers buying these games and bringing them home and realizing that the challenge that the game poses is just way beyond their level of skill. They just wanted to have some fun and try something new, and now they're faced with an insurmountable challenge, and there's no way to anticipate this by looking at the box. So they've put their money down and now they're not getting any entertainment for it. They don't get to see how the story ends or anything. I don't think that's fair, but if the player can make himself invincible or have unlimited bullets or whatever, at least they can get through the game. It may be a hollow victory, but its better than no victory at all!


Q. Who are walkthroughs and FAQs for?
A. Well, ME for starters. I think they're for most people. I think there's almost always a point in a game where a player will just totally miss something important, or fail to understand something about the game and have to look it up in a walkthough. Games are different from other media in that way as well. If you miss an important detail in a movie, you can keep watching the movie and maybe you can fill in the gap with other information, or maybe you just have an incomplete understanding of the movie but you enjoy it anyway. But if you miss something important in a game, sometimes you just can't move forward. The action just stops. So its important that people can look it up, because developers are still not always good at communicating these things to the player. Maybe you're supposed to climb a wall, but the wall just doesn't look like it can be climbed because it wasn't designed well, so you don't even try to climb it and you're just stuck. That's not good, and its not fun, and unless developers find some way to prevent that, walkthroughs will be important.
And of course, what I said about cheating applies, where it helps novices, who maybe aren't accustomed to the kind of thinking that video games require. They can use a walkthrough and still get some value for their money, and understand more about video games in the process.

6/forwards and backwards

Q. What will Videogames become?
A. I see single-player video games going in two directions. On the one hand, there are games that are narrative, that tell a story, and this story may become less linear or offer unique perspectives on the story, but mostly serve the same purpose as traditional narratives. I think right now, people get really excited about games like Grand Theft Auto 3 because its "just like a movie", but obviously it is not the goal of any medium to be "just like" some other medium. I think that the video game industry needs to figure out what is has to offer the art of storytelling. I think that what we call video games has the potential to evolve into a valid artistic medium, but in order to do that it has to offer some unique incentive to attract people with real artistic vision. We talk a lot about the negative psychological impact of video games, but it doesn't seem to occur to people that video games must also be able to have positive psychological effects on people, to teach lessons and new ways of thinking, the same way that other mediums do. Violent stories are just easier to tell!
The other way that I see video games going is in the direction of simulation, where the player has a world to interact with, and a story is also told, but it is a story written by the player, in the same way that your life is a story written by you. But most people can't write interesting stories, so these games will not be neutral simulations (I don't think there is such a thing). They will have the elements of interesting stories written into the game, waiting to be uncovered in a way that will be unique for each player. The simulations will be designed to make it more likely for interesting things to happen. We can see the beginnings of this in open-ended games like The Sims and in things like tactical strategy games, where there are a lot of variables and the action can unfold in unexpected ways. But there aren't a lot of interesting things happening, unless they are carefully scripted, which brings us back to the games I mentioned earlier. The only way that we can conceive of a story is as a series of events that happen one after the other. When game developers create stories like this, they are usually very reluctant to give any real control of the story to the player because then the carefully crafted story might be ruined. I think in the future, a different kind of author will emerge, for a different kind of story, one that is more a collection of possibilities, interesting things waiting to happen. I think this will be the product of a future generation of developers, people who have grown up immersed in the concepts of computer programming from a very young age, and the totally non-linear thinking that comes with that. Only when this kind of thinking is second nature will people be able to craft stories that don't try to bind the player's will to old-fashioned notions of what a story is.