What are Games?

The first seminar in our games seminar series – Friday 8th August.

The structure of the seminar and the following ones is

1. Each person names a good or bad game and the key reason why it is good or bad
2. A short presentation/talk about a topic in game design
3. Discussion around these

Good games

• GTA (console) – made to feel like NYC without being it
• Medal of Honor Airborne (console) – breaks a scripted game, drop in anywhere
• Braid (console) – Breaks all the rules and reinvents platforming
• Rock Band (console) – Satisfying to complete songs as a group, appropriate haptic interface
• Pig Pong (physical) – it gets trashed because it’s fun, good for small children
• Geometry Wars (console) – good to watch as a spectator
• Rolling Quartet (singing) – social, competitive, cooperative
• Pub Jenga (physical) – Simple, mental and physical, social, noisey
• Burnout (arcade) – Childhood fantasies
• Outrun (arcade) – Arcade experience, real interface, ie steering wheel, pedals, gears

I gave a brief overview of various academics’ definitions of games. Definitions are useful when we think about game design, not as an end, but as a means to think about what it actually is we are designing. What are the elements, what are the constitutive parts, what are the variables we have to play with when we build games. This is very relevant with the sorts of experimental games we create here at the studio, because often we are designing at the boundaries of what is traditionally called a game.

On the subject of definitions, Wittgenstein approached the plurality of language and the difficult of definitions in general, in his work Philosophical Investigations. He uses ‘games’ as his running example of a toothy problem in definition.