Re: Skiffy Needs a New McGuffin for Xmas
- From: nebusj-@xxxxxxxxx (Joseph Nebus)
- Date: 21 Dec 2008 19:51:11 -0500
"Ken from Chicago" <kwicker1b_nospam@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Ah, then technically, it's not a game but a toy.
You play A game to win or lose.
You play WITH a toy just for fun.
Even solitairy games (including puzzles) can be won or lost (solved or not).
But you don't "win" or "lose" playing with toy dump trucks or model
railroads or dolls or sims (altho some sims have problems / challenges /
puzzles to solve in them that are gamelike).
At the risk of making a sweeping, arbitrary, broad statement
in an online forum, that's a dumb distinction. By this standard, the
Europa Universalis line of games --- in which you simulate the running
of one of 200 nations in the world from the Hundred Years War through
to the Napoleonic Wars, for the original; spinoffs focus on things like
1836-to-1936, or the World War II era, or 1066-to-1453 --- would be
*toys* if there were no Victory Points awarded and roster of the Top
Eight Nations in the world, but become *games* with their sudden
inclusion. This even though Victory Points are pretty near irrelevant
to the actual gameplay.
[ Footnote: 'Victory Points' or national ranking is relevant to
Victoria, more or less, since they're calculated in part based on the
prestige the nation acquires, and prestige confers diplomatic and
economic benefits which affect gameplay. On the other hand if you're
the United Kingdom and you're *not* a great power you're playing it all
wrong. ]
SimCity and Railroad Tycoon don't have particular rankings or
end conditions, so you would characterize them as toys; but how would
it be different if when you decided to Quit This Campaign For Good it
computed a score based on say) population, employment, stock value,
whatever, and ranked you against previous plays? Would this suddenly
change them from toys to games, when nothing else about the programs
is any different?
And note that in Railroad Tycoon you can, if you're good enough
(I'm not) take over all the competing railroads; by any reasonable
standard this has to be counted as winning. How does the fact you don't
have to play for that goal and that it could easily be no one will ever
reach it affect whether it's a toy or a game?
--
Joseph Nebus
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