Sheep Guarding Llama

Everyone has their own definition of what constitutes a “game” and, as one would suspect, philosophers have put forth their own theories as to what is and is not a game. I have long felt that there is a certain aspect of gaming that is often misidentified and included in many activities that are called games but I believe are not actually games.

I believe that in addition to whatever other definition one uses to define a game that the needed additional rule is this: To be a game an activity must have an outcome that can be directly affected by the player. That is to say, that the player doesn’t just choose to “play” but once begins to “play” can actually choose to change the final outcome. This can be defined differently by stating that in order to be a true game an activity must require that logic and reasoning be applied.

To further refine this definition it should also be included that the game should have within its affectable components enough complexity to disallow for any “perfect” play – at least by humans.

A fuzzy definition, I realize, but a useful one all the same. Chess, for example, is clearly a true game as the moves made by the players directly affect the outcome – the fundamentals of skill. It is further a true game because no human has memorized the “perfect” chess game or set of moves that can be duplicated blindly to guarantee a win or a “best outcome”.

Given that we know that Chess, Go, Age of Empires and similar games are, in fact, games let’s look at some examples of what fails to be a game – at least to me.

The Automatic Win/Lose: This artificial non-game is very simple. One of more players choose to play a non-game. Each player is then informed that they have either won or lost. This fails to be a true game because the players don’t really play – they simply learn of their results. This may sound like a silly example until you realize that one of the most popular game-like activities is in lotto and lotto-like gambling (slot machines, for example) where you pay to “play” and you are simply informed that you have either won or loss. There is some enticement in the fact that there is money to be won or lost but that is outside the bounds of defining this activity as a game. Many lotto dealers promote lottos that are automatic win/lose scenarios as games when the player has no ability to effect the outcome.

Many people may actually enjoy activities that require no though or effort and simply result in a win or a loss. It is not uncommon to find people who actually gravitate towards this type of activity but to call that activity a game would render the term game meaningless.

“Hello little children, would you like to play a game?”

“Yes, please!”

“Okay, you lose. Wasn’t that fun? Would you like to play again?”

As ridiculous as this seems the Internet and anonymous gaming has begun to show that players will happily cheat on a game whose only goals are to win or lose within the game itself. By cheating they are not actually playing the game but are simply attempting to get the system to provide them with a “You win” outcome. Prior to anonymous gaming opportunities this was generally assumed to be caused by a need to show superiority to others but now we have a very good opportunity to witness that the only real desired outcome is not actually winning at the game but being told that you have won. It is clear that “playing a game” is not a universally desired activity. The automatic win/lose is more desired than it sounds likely to be.

The automatic win/lose scenario can be applied to more complex systems that give the appearance of a game on the surface. A perfect example of this is the children’s board game snakes and ladders which originated in Victorian England. (It is commonly known under the brand name Chutes and Ladders in the United States.) This game has many of the makings of a true game to give the appearance as much as possible that the activity is actually a game. But it is not. The player has no affect on the outcome of the game (without resorting to cheating which breaks “the game”, refusing to play, stopping play, etc. which are often given as excuses for why it would still be a game.)

Snakes and Ladders (or Candyland or any other of a myriad of similar activities) serves as nothing more than a fancy covering over the automatic win/lose scenario by giving the impression of forward profess, introducing a built-in random element, having an official “name” and a board on which to play. It even has a set of rules. But in the end the players never make a single decision. The game simply starts, the rules are followed, no decision is ever made and a winner is announced. The game could be reduced to several players simply rolling a die and the highest (or lowest or closest to “3”) numbers wins. Activities such as Snakes and Ladders are simply game-like illusions designed to provide positive feedback to players incapable of winning a game where skill is involved and to teach game-like rule following and constructs to children too young to participate in real games.

The next category of activities crosses into a foggier territory – that of activities that have a clear set of “best practices” that guarantee or nearly guarantee the best possible outcome. The best example of this would be in the game of Blackjack or 21. The rules of the game are simple and the player can directly affect the outcome. However, there is no true allowance for creativity or strategic thinking in Blackjack. There is a well known and well defined basic strategy that provides a clear “beat outcome” over any large number of games. Any player who does not follow this strategy will eventually lose to a player who follows this strategy and the strategy is simple and can be learned by almost anyone in just a few minutes. Once this has been learnt even the most novice player on their first game is equal to the most seasoned player and the game is reduced to an automatic win/lose. On any given hand of Blackjack a random play diverging from the accepted standard best practice might yield a better outcome but this is an anomaly and over the long course of play will not continue to be a winning practice. It is a more complex illusion of being able to positively affect the activity’s outcome.

A slightly more complex example of this same phenomena is the popular board game Monopoly. In Monopoly the player has the ability to make many choices throughout the course of the game but, once again, there is a basic strategy that, once applied, is the best possible chance of winning. Beyond holding to this simple strategy the game, once again, reduces to nothing more than an automatic win/lose scenario. Any divergence from the accepted strategy of Monopoly is, basically, voluntarily losing or lowering the chance of winning. Intentional losing is not a part of accepted gameplay in normal gaming situations – it is the same as not playing. A player intentionally throwing a game of chess is doing so to create the illusion of a game while actually providing an automatic win/lose.

Most activities that people traditionally identify with games, in my opinion, outside of the very traditional games such as chess, draughts, go, etc. generally boil down to a simple situation as simple as a die roll determining win/lose outcomes while providing players with the impression that they have worked hard, thought carefully and managed to outperform their opponents. Most people are not good at games and this randomization with skill-less winning situation provides a sense of accomplishment when no work, skill or thought has been applied.

Perhaps the widespread popularity of automatic win/lose or known best approach games of chance is one of the best examples of modern society working very hard, even subconsciously, to reward mediocrity.  We want everyone to feel that they can win a game even if it is just an illusion.

You may wonder why I am so adamant about what constitutes a game.  The answer is simple.  I never want to spend several hours of my life “playing a game” that is nothing more than a random chance of winning or losing.  Where is the fun in that?  There is no challenge (not there is a “little challenge, literally there is none at all), there is no skill, there is no “trying hard” or careful strategy.  I have no concept of how an activity which involves no input whatsoever from its participants can ever compete with actually doing nothing or, better yet, taking part in an interactive activity such as a game.  Activities such as this are one of the ultimate wastes of time known to man – few activities can utilize so much time while engaging us so little.  It would be better to take a nap because at least then you have rested.  Additionally, activities such as this are designed to, commonly, produce one winner and multiple losers.  Not only does one person seem foolish for feeling that they have accomplished something by being happy to be told that they won but several people have to feel as thought that have failed because they have “lost” even though the activity is nothing more than random chance.  Overall, it is designed to produce bad feelings while accomplishing nothing.

At the turn of the century (that is, in 1899 – the LAST century) I think that few people would have guessed that photography would become a significant form of art or that recorded music would mostly displace performance music as the core of the musical arts nor would many believe that future forms of media such as television and cinema would become part of the core literary and dramatic traditions rivaling books and performance theatre for their importance to the collective consciousness of society. Children today can no more survive without being able to reference Star Wars IV: A New Hope, The Sound of Music or Schindler’s List than “1984”, “Watership Down” or “To Kill a Mockingbird”. Movies and television have entered the literary mainstream and are here to stay.

After a century of passive media and entertainment effecting our views and opinions of what constitutes literature today we are beginning to see the emergence of another literary form – the video game. Unlike books, movies, theatre or television video games are not passive but are active literature – literature in which the reader affects the story whether simply by moving it along or by changing the potential outcome of the story. I am not suggesting that society is ready to accept video games as significant media but this change will come and it will come quickly.

Different genres of video games will, of course, be viewed differently. Adventure and Console-style Role Playing Games already often cross the line from a pure “game” into the solid realm of interactive literature. Storylines have been growing and becoming more and more involved since the late 1970s beginning seriously with text adventure and later with graphical adventure games such as Infocom’s Zork and Sierra’s King’s Quest. Games began to tell stories and included engaging characters and situations. Video games rapidly began to take on the role of fiction with the addition of “reader” interaction. No longer is the reader simply an observer but a participant in the telling of the story.

Adventure games, whether text, graphical or illustrated with games such as Arthur: The Quest for Excalibur, clearly lead the way in creating a position of literature within the video game arena while the bulk of video gaming leaned towards the trivial action oriented games popular on consoles such as the Atari 2600 or the Nintendo Entertainment System. Much of this would change, however, with the release of Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior in the United States) and the launching of the “Console RPG” or “Japanese RPG” genre.

Unlike traditional Role Playing Games, or RPGs, which have translated poorly to the video game format a console RPG is a more linear style of game that is closer to an Adventure game but incorporating some traditional RPG elements. Console RPGs lend themselves very well to deep storytelling and complex character development within the video game framework. Console RPGs may, in fact, surpass earlier Adventure style games in their ability to develop characters and provide deep story telling.

Recently the more traditional RPG genre (that is, non-linear RPG style play rather than linear or near-linear Console RPG style) has begun to benefit from the ever increasing computational powers of the computer or game console as well as the ever expanding budgets of the gaming industry to begin to move into the “video game as literature” category. The principle example of this within the RPG genre at this time would be Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Console RPGs began in earnest in the late 1980s and throughout the 1990s began to explore complex stories and persistent worlds that stretched from game to game. Today video games in this genre will often stretch towards and even exceeding one hundred hours of game play providing an opportunity for a depth of story competing with that found in traditional literature while not treating the reader as a passive entity. This complex and deep story telling combined with active reader involvement is giving us today and is promising to provide in the future for a new literary tradition that is dramatically more significant to its readers.

Electronic Gaming Monthly, a major US video game industry publication, said this about Final Fantasy VII – the quintessential highly linear console role playing game – “Square’s game was … the first RPG to surpass, instead of copy, movie like storytelling”, and that, without it, “Aeris wouldn’t have died, and gamers wouldn’t have learned how to cry.” Final Fantasy VII was one of the first Console RPGs released on the Sony Playstation coming out in 1997 and defined the state of the art in video game storytelling during the era. More recently, and also from Square Enix the successor to Squaresoft who made Final Fantasy VII, on the Playstation 2 is Dragon Quest VIII which does a magnificent job of pulling the player into the game world and telling a very traditional fantasy adventure tale while doing so in an entirely new way that makes books seem almost obsolete.

Will video games of the future, perhaps in the next fifteen to twenty years, rival modern fiction literature in its ability to educate, to stir to action, to bring to tears, to move, to motivate, to thrill, to drive? Yes, I believe that it will. And I believe that video games will become an increasingly important part of our collection cultural experience and, as such, will be an important part of educational curriculum just as traditional literature is today. I do not expect and certainly hope that video games will not displace traditional media but see them taking their place within the pantheon of literary forms.

I have long argued that the legacy telephone network was on its last leg.  It no longer serves any real purpose.  It is expensive both for end users and for the telephone companies.  The quality of phone calls, in my personal experience, has been inconsistent and only on par with VoIP.  I have heard many people make the argument that they are willing to pay the much higher fees for legacy, powered, copper based telephones because they provide the extra reliability of having their own power so that they continue to work even when the power goes out.  A valid argument, I guess.  This assumes that the power continues to be available for the phone which is often, but not always, the case when there is a power outage.  And it also assumes that you are willing to pay those high fees instead of getting a nice Uninterruptible Power Supply for your VoIP which is just a one time cost of less than $100.  A nice UPS could last through several days of having no power – long enough that you would want to have a generator anyway.

In this day and age when a huge percentage of the population uses only cell phones or VoIP phones or some combination thereof for their normal phone usage there is little argument for needing expensive legacy phones anymore.  However, the option will soon be gone as Verizon (and presumably other last mile common carriers shortly) has begun to dismantle its last mile copper network as it rolls out it fibre based FIOS service.  This is an obvious move as fibre has far less restrictions on it, delivers more services to the end users and saves money both in maintenance and in power consumption.  Fibre is far better for the overall economy and the environment as it consumes vastly less electricity to support – as long as shared infrastructure regulations keep common carriers with access to the fibre infrastructure from monopolizing the market.

The Internet is taking over.  The Public Shared Telephone Network (PSTN) is over.  For many of us, it is a distant milepost in the rearview mirror.  For some it is just an inevitable shift as the old copper system becomes too expensive to support.  But one way or another, legacy telephones are done.  The faster we move on the sooner we can deal with other challenges.