[ videogames : ? ]

What makes a videogame different than a game?

Let me try to answer this question using paradigms. Games, then, are the paradigm opposed to videogames. This paradigmatic opposition can be expressed in the form: [ videogames : games ]. The apparent difference between videogames and games is “video”. On the level of the medium that a game uses, this analogy is true, yet, peel away superficial visual component and the distinction begins to blur together.

Is Scene It? a videogame because it uses videos? No, it isn’t, since this confuses the idea of a video, as in moving pictures, and interactive video. Scene It? relies on the player to operate the physical game-board and question cards, to which videos are only a whiz-bang addendum. When people play Scene It? they’re not actually playing with the videos, so the game is still a board-game. How about WordSquared or Words With Friends? These games took Scrabble and turned it into a social-media mobile-computer Frankengame. Both games still have game-boards similar to their source-game, but the application now oversees the rules and score. What about You Don’t Know Jack, then? This game goes even further: no game-board, and the game operates the questions for the players.



A better name for what we usually call videogames would be “computer games” or “computed games”. More precisely: “games in which a computer fully automates the entire system in which you participate”, but this is somewhat flatulent as a name.

Saying that these games are videogames in the same way that Modern Warfare 3 is a videogame feels wrong. The former could be played without videos—simply as quiz games—whereas playing MW3 without a computer or console would transform the game into something which it is not.

A different analogy provides a better understanding: [ apparent rules : hidden rules ]. In traditional games, the rules are immediately and necessarily apparent to the players, since they must act as arbiters. In videogames, the rules may be hidden from the player, since the computer acts as arbiter; the player may simply play the game without reading the rules.

Thus, quiz games can never be videogames because in order to play them you must know the rules. In a videogame, however, there are no rules. By starting Minecraft and putting a character in a world, you are already playing the game, regardless of whether or not you decide to do anything thereafter.