Maybe we shouldn’t go out of our way to say that we don’t consider some IFComp entries are games?
Whyever not? Some of the best-ever IFComp entries IMO have been non-games.
No, the problems would arise when entries aren’t IF. Not when they aren’t games.
Here I disagree. It seems like good practice to build a model (or a definition) based on your observations and your intuitions, and then test that model on new data. If the model produces questionable results then you re-tool. Linguists do this all the time — and lest we lose sight, this is a linguistic exercise. We are discussing the ontology of “game” to see where and how our personal definitions of the word agree, and whether a precise collective definition is feasible.
Linguists ran into this problem when trying to define language itself: what is a language and what distinguishes it from, say, a piece of music or a radio signal or pheromones or a dog’s bared teeth and growl. Then we apply the model to new data (eg, whale song or bumblebee dances) and say “does this meet our definition?” If our model insisted on a feature (like separate words) that wrongly categorizes something we intuitively accept as a language (an agglutinative language like Finnish or a polysynthetic language like Nahuatl) then we can suspect our model is wrong.
Several years ago, there was a big thread debating whether CYOA and Twine games were actually games or not. Many twine and Choicescript authors are disabled, LGBT, trans, POC or other marginalized authors who don’t have the resources to develop a graphical game or an extensive parser game.
This was around the same time as Gamergate, which was a campaign of oppression that started out against a Twine game and its author, and the whole thrust of gamergate was that Twine does not make a real game and the people who use twine (mostly women and LGBT, who they harassed) are not really authors or programmers.
I doubt you’re approaching this from that angle, but historically saying “this is not a game” has been used to harass minorities. So it’s not just an academic exercise.
The classic moment of decision used as an example is when the ancient Greeks were confronted with the proof that the square root of two cannot be expressed as a ratio of two integers, which was incompatible with their intuitions about number - and chose to discard intuition and go with logic. All Western thought arguably stems from that choice.
As far as I’m concerned, the if-archive can include whatever its owners wish it to. And indeed it has some things in it that aren’t actually IF. “Zokoban” is the first example to my mind; there may be others.
We can only consider the interplay between two axes of IF design - game-ness, and artistic intent, which for text is “literature” - if we can coherently explain what we mean by those ideas. IF as the community recognizes it includes things which are purely aesthetic and have no puzzle or challenge content, and it’s a key point that something which is a pure puzzle doesn’t seem to be recognized as IF. One axis is essential, the other is not.
Two of what I think are three essential defining aspects of IF are simply present in its name, and the third is implied: Interactivity. Aesthetic and artistic intent. Textual nature.
Has anyone ever tried to submit a non-fiction work as IF, do you know?
What does being LGBT or transsexual have to do with having access to resources? Who dares suggest that being non-white makes you less capable of crafting interactive fiction?
This thread is about design theory, not identity politics.
I’m glad you asked! There’s extensive research literature in this area:
Fair enough, I guess. I’d like to say, though, in case it wasn’t clear, that I’m not saying anything about parser vs. choice-based or any of the other “format wars” that have gone down at various times. There are great stories/games/you-name-it in every format.
This would be relevant if language were logic. Language is not inherently logical. The definition of what is considered a game is, at best, a logical model that purports to represent our intuitions about the word.
Here I thought sexual orientation varied across all ethnicities, economic statuses, and subgroups. It seems being poor and technically uneducated is somehow being associated with alternate sexuality.
To commemorate my becoming informed on this topic, I’m moving my picture of Alan Turing to the wall above my laptop, so that whenever I post to this forum I will remember how Twine is responsible for bringing sexual minorities into the computing community.
I don’t agree with your understanding of my statements, but it’s not important to me that we agree. I just wanted to make sure that any marginalized authors making games or people making linear/dynamic games felt loved while reading this thread, and I don’t feel a need on my side to continue this particular debate.
We construct logical models to better understand the world, not represent our intuitions of it - which are frequently contradictory, incoherent, and divergent from truth. We struggle to clarify our foggy and fuzzy intuitions into ideas that can be clearly understood and communicated precisely because of the greater value of rational thought.
Yes, we do that too — with things like physics and chemistry, which are extrinsic to human experience.
The difference is, “game” is a word we use to describe a bunch of things we made up, and we all have a different subjective impression what a “game” is. There is no Platonic “game” out there which we can test for.
It’s like the word “blue.” Light exists and we can measure its wavelength, but deciding which range of wavelengths encompasses “blue” is a cultural and linguistic process, not a logical one.
The neuroscience of vision, particularly of the structure of the retina and optic nerve, tells us a great deal about what “blue” is - even in cultures that have no way to describe it, research has demonstrated that the perception remains, and is inherent in our physiology. Likewise, red and green are complementary colors not because of any cultural decision but are objectively incompatible due to the structure of the human nervous system.
In any case, although it’s interesting that definitions of “games” vary so widely, only a few of those definitions are useful in the context of IF. It is very important that games which are not art cannot be IF, but art which isn’t a game can be. Keeping that in mind is critical to people attempting to author IF.
You’re still talking about wavelengths and physiology and objective measurements of reality. The definition of the word blue is arbitrary. You will not find its parameters carved on the underbelly of the universe.
Here is an article on color perception and language. Not all languages delineate “blue” in the same way.
Not all languages have the ability to refer to “blue” at all. The people speaking them still have the concept. The word is arbitrary, the concept isn’t. The idea is to make our use of words match our underlying concepts.
Any use of the word “game” which would permit it to apply to reading a book violates our everyday understanding of the term. It is clear by extension that applying it to IF works which permit their users to exercise no choice is also a violation. Ergo, some IF works may not validly be called games.
It is statements such as this that make me feel there is no further purpose to discussion. I don’t agree that there is, or will ever be, a definition of “game” that will satisfy everyone; even if there were, I cannot agree that there is any common purpose in manipulating everyone’s use of language to match it. Within the scope of the thread, I am increasingly unclear what this definition would positively contribute even supposing we had one.
Why would anyone care about satisfying everyone, particularly if you include hypothetical people? That’s neither logically possible nor desirable.
I can’t see how this could be true. They may not have a basic colour term for blue, but all natural human languages could say “the colour of a clear daytime sky”. I’d actually say it’s the concept which is missing. Blue as a distinct basic colour is not shared by all languages, and the English concept of “blue” collapses the distinction between blue and azure/cyan. We still have concepts for secondary colours, but we consider light blue a kind of blue, not a top-level colour in its own right.
Although languages can always find ways to refer to things they don’t have special names for, it’s not quite that simple. Cultural differences in color terms
As an example, considering orange to be a distinct color rather than a type of red is a relatively recent development in English. If you don’t have a distinct category for orange, you wouldn’t sort objects by color into an “orange” group.
Rationality in action requires incorporating the consequences of your actions into your behavior.
You don’t seem to care whether you hurt people’s feelings with an exclusionary definition of “game.” Pursuing a theoretical project at the expense of human happiness is not more logical, more rational, more reasonable. It is the opposite.
On top of it all, you’re not even right about the examples you provide. There’s nothing logical about excluding games of chance from the definition of “game,” or claiming that I somehow chose to die in the paper mill in Anchorhead umpteen times.
If you’re going to be unreasonable while wrapping yourself in the flag of rationality, if you literally laugh when people tell you who it is you’re hurting and why, then this thread isn’t going to go anywhere, and should be closed.