what is a video game

[Zomber_Jesus]

If the interactive movies are video games, are choose your own adventure books video games too? I want to be able to point to a book and say 'this is my gameboy'

[Ben]

daniel's definition of impossibility i think also fails to differentiate how a movie or a book isnt also impossible. you can read a book about a life similar to yours, and follow a character who makes different decisions than yours right? there isnt a choice, sure, unless youre talking about a choose-your-own-adventure, or the choice of stopping, or reading the book out of order. in the latter two cases, maybe you take the intention of the artist into account and say you cant do that

i think a "video game" refers explicitly to two things-

-a computer-simulated "environment"
-a predetermined set of rules by which the player achieves a goal or reaches an end-state

this still fails to separate an ebook from a videogame. it is a computer simulated "game" in which the player intends to scroll past each "level" (page) while experiencing a story (the book itself). the end state is the end of the novel, or the file. one can play with the predetermined set of rules by scrolling up rather than down, for example, without changing the "game" being played. the final destination example bumps into the same problem

[Ben]

Books are seen as a more "intellectual" hobby, compared to movies; and moreso than video games.

Yet, a video game can do everything a book can (i.e. give you words to read).  It can do eveything a radio can, and also everything a movie can.  And more! It has more power than any other medium.  However, despite all that power we (by which I mean the average joe) also expect video games to be "dumber" or more of "a waste of time" than books.  Are we wrong in our assumptions, or are we right and most developers do squander that power to make "wastes of time"?

i think that this has to do with intention of the artist. i feel you cant read a book without bumping RIGHT into the artist's intention. they are getting these exact ideas across to you via words. a film is the same except less so- you are being faced with similar characters and ideas but you CAN kind of zone out and have it play in front of you. a game is weird in that you can play it without giving a shit about what the intellectual content is. i play tons of games that are reduced, to me, down to the pure mathematics and mechanics of it and i totally forget about the... point. what princess am i saving, again? who am i? i just want to avoid the obstacles so that i can reach the end state. the end. this is how you CAN play it. the idea that games are "dumb" is cynical because it assumes that those that play the game are playing it in this way when there really is good, rich intellectual content present (sometimes)

as far as boundaries go, I'd probably say the most glaring problem is character development. in a novel, a character's personality is explored and explained over the course of hundreds of pages, (generally speaking) through exceptional and sometimes obsessively reviewed use of language. it is actually pretty difficult to read an entire novel without being somewhat emotionally invested in some aspect of it, whether you like it or not. in a video game, I think it is sort of an inherent, maybe mostly unavoidable problem for character's to be so complicated, simply because you have to build a story in a way that it is purposefully interrupted (repeatedly) by gameplay, loud noises, music, graphics, etc, thus removing the consumer from an emotional scene at the blink of an eye.

yes this is my thinking as well

[GeorgeBubbinzInSpace]

i had another one: in one of the final destination movies, you can... press a button on your remote to decide whether a character survives a thing, like a choose-your-own adventure. is this a video game?

intradasting. but I still think this goes back to my first post. I guess in this instance there is a sort of video game element added to the movie. so, what does it do for the movie? well, it makes it gimmicky horseshit right? because it completely takes the viewer out of the story/situation, you are purposely alienating the viewer. I mean literally forcing the viewer to stop focusing on your movie completely to press a button. who in their right mind is going to call final fantasy 14 a fantastic film for adding these elements to it? basically no one, because they expect different things from a movie. they expect intensity of some sort and immersion and most of the time, introspection. breaking immersion in a movie is cinematic suicide. even if this option were available in the avengers or iron man, movies which people generally enjoyed or had fun with, without expecting too much emotion or character development, I think it's fair to say people would have enjoyed it 100% less. so to answer your question, no. it is a movie with video game elements added. and it made the movie wal-mart bargain bin material.

however, games can clearly have excellent cinematic experiences built within them. but to be competent and introspective and original, it needs exactly the right creator. I think games of that quality will always be rare though, because of the restrictions of needing to be not only interactive, visual and playable, but also profitable. that silent hill game that was going to be made a couple years ago is a perfect example. it was more an interactive experience and fun BECAUSE it was so cinematic and visual. it kept you on your toes and completely immersed within the space of like, 100 square feet. so I guess tyler's right since it's possible video games CAN be a more powerful or at least exciting form of art, but I feel like ben chose two types of art that counter each other or are just different at the end of the day. video games will always be somewhat limited in story/character development and movies/novels will always be limited because they can't necessarily add video game elemtents without taking their reader/viewer completely out of the story.

[Zomber_Jesus]

That's assuming the game has a story or characters. Those aren't inherent. I also think that focusing on end-states and fail-states too much is a limiting factor. A video game doesn't have to be a challenge just to satisfy the criteria of 'being a video game'. It really feels like an arcade machine relic at some points. Simply experiencing a world can be enough, and loading a piece with puzzles / qtes / battles etc isn't necessarily a good thing for immersion.

[grue]

daniel's definition of impossibility i think also fails to differentiate how a movie or a book isnt also impossible. you can read a book about a life similar to yours, and follow a character who makes different decisions than yours right? there isnt a choice, sure, unless youre talking about a choose-your-own-adventure, or the choice of stopping, or reading the book out of order. in the latter two cases, maybe you take the intention of the artist into account and say you cant do that

i think a "video game" refers explicitly to two things-

-a computer-simulated "environment"
-a predetermined set of rules by which the player achieves a goal or reaches an end-state

this still fails to separate an ebook from a videogame. it is a computer simulated "game" in which the player intends to scroll past each "level" (page) while experiencing a story (the book itself). the end state is the end of the novel, or the file. one can play with the predetermined set of rules by scrolling up rather than down, for example, without changing the "game" being played. the final destination example bumps into the same problem

you are mixing two different arguments. one is the one I was making, which was

- What differentiates a video game from other games?

my point is that video games allow for impossibility in the sense that they are a means for you to play outside the constraints of reality. my point implies previous notions: that video games are games (interacting within a set of mechanics and rules) that you play. you go to video games, rather than other games, to fulfil criteria that for whatever reason you can't fulfil in real life

the second argument that you're making is

- What differentiates games from other media?

this is a much more complicated argument. there isn't a set definition of "game", for example, and the activity "play" is incredibly subjective. playing a game can be a chore and work, making it unfun. conversely, you can gamify your work to make it more fun. there are tricky thought processes here if you try to set clear boundaries between, for example, a movie and a game, because you're bound to find examples where one draws from the other's elements. this is because "play" is incredibly subjective, and "game" is a cultural activity that must be understood within context

[GeorgeBubbinzInSpace]

That's assuming the game has a story or characters. Those aren't inherent. 

yeah I kind of brushed over this in my first post when I said some of the best games are the simplest ones with little to no story or characters at all. I'm just saying I think it's a struggle that video games will always have to deal with, whereas movies and novels will not have those same limitations. there are exceptions to that as well though, I guess. some novels don't appear to have much of a story at all or it is so inaccessible that you might as well not bother. like finnegans wake or something. I'm just talking about the general differences and limitations both forms of media have, I guess.