Dr. Mario's Retard Rehabilitation Program

Rabblitsu: "Being cryptic does not always mean you are a good story. Dark Souls is a game where cryptic and atmosphere work due to its circles and time displacement and erstaz history work in its favor. A game where you walk through a house does not work in its favor. Japan does those types of things very well, and zero people say those are 10/10 games...and they have HUGE STRIPPER tits and all that stuff. Gone home may be an 7-8 in an honest review..which should be praised (state of game reviews where EVERYTHING is an 8 notwithstanding), but it is certainly not a once in a generation game."

I don't think you understand that reviews are subjective and based entirely on the opinions of the reviewer. A GOOD review makes it clear to the audience WHY it got the score it did. If a consumer can read a review and determine whether the game is likely to appeal to them or not regardless of the score, then it's a good review. I wouldn't give Gone Home 10/10 in a million years, but then number-based scores have always been flawed and are slowly being phased out anyway. If you can find me a review of Gone Home that misrepresents the game or otherwise "tricks" people into buying it, then you'd have a legitimate gripe. But bitching about "How could this game get X when it clearly doesn't deserve more than Y!" is pointless busybodying. Go complain in the IGN comments section with the other butthurt fanboys.

Quaid: "Cook books aren't novels. Should they be taken out of book stores?"

There's a section for cook books in book stores, isn't there? They're certainly not among the novels.

Instead of dodging my questions with non-applicable comparisons, why don't you propose your solution to this "problem"?

Or are you suggesting things stay the way they are, Gone Home remains categorized as a "video game" for all practical purposes, but you personally know in your heart of hearts that it is not a video game at all. That's an entirely acceptable compromise, I suppose. Not much to argue about there.

Quaid: "I'm saying it's just fine to sell it on Steam or anywhere else that sells interactive digital media. Just categorize it properly. It's a (quite decent) digital novella, not a game. It's no less noble or entertaining, and categorizing it improperly is not fair to consumers who may be looking for exactly what Gone Home provides. Hell, one of my favourite experiences recently was this strange game where you just ran around an open field, with atmospheric music, as a space ship got closer and closer. Awesome. Not a game."

While I get what you're trying to say, I disagree on two fundamental levels.

First of all, I don't see how Gone Home doesn't actually meet the criteria required for something to be a video game. I played through it the same way I played through countless other games, and it satisfied me in much the same way many other games have. When I think of every game I've ever played, I have zero reason to put Gone Home in its own separate category. It's a unique game that subverts a lot of gaming conventions, but it's a video game nonetheless.

Secondly, the Steam description makes it ridiculously clear what kind of game it is: (Sorry, no spoilers in RRP)

"You arrive home after a year abroad. You expect your family to greet you, but the house is empty. Something's not right. Where is everyone? And what's happened here? Unravel the mystery for yourself in Gone Home, a story exploration game from The Fullbright Company.

Gone Home is an interactive exploration simulator. Interrogate every detail of a seemingly normal house to discover the story of the people who live there. Open any drawer and door. Pick up objects and examine them to discover clues. Uncover the events of one family's lives by investigating what they've left behind.

Go Home Again.
Key Features
A Personal Story: created by veterans of the BioShock series and the writer behind Minerva's Den, Gone Home offers the rich, nuanced details of one family's struggles to deal with uncertainty, heartache, and change.

An Immersive Place: return to the 1990s by visiting a home where every detail has been carefully recreated, and the sounds of a rainstorm outside wrap you in the experience.

No Combat, No Puzzles: Gone Home is a nonviolent and puzzle-free experience, inviting you to play at your own pace without getting attacked, stuck, or frustrated. This house wants you to explore it.

Fully Interactive Investigation: discover what's happened to the Greenbriars by examining a house full of the family's personal possessions, and the notes and letters they've left behind. Use your powers of observation to piece together a story that unfolds as you explore."


There's nothing misleading or confusing there. Anybody who buys the game knows exactly what they're getting. If you really think there are a lot of gamers having difficulty finding digital novellas because they're mixed in with other games, all that we would need is a "digital novella" genre. However, it doesn't seem like there are enough games in this category to warrant that genre yet. In any case, it would still be classified as a video game in the "digital novella" genre. Also, you can't just assume that everyone who wants that type of experience is going to share your opinion that it doesn't count as a video game. I would happily play another game like Gone home, but if I'm not able to find it because I'm not in the "non video game" section of Steam then things have just gotten more difficult, not easier.

You might be right that we use the term "video game" as a catch-all for all kinds of interactive digital entertainment, but I honestly don't see how that's a problem. It's an incredibly flexible medium, and we don't need to divide it into ever-smaller pieces every time someone tries something new. Considering how many games feature elements from different genres and how the lines that separate one genre from another are blurred all the time, saying "a video game isn't a video game if it does/doesn't do X" will only create confusion, not reduce it.

Let me put it another way:
"I played an interesting game called Gone Home the other day" would become what? "I played an interesting digital novella called Gone Home the other day"? But you can't "play" a novella, right? "I interacted with an interesting digital novella called Gone Home the other day" is awkward and cumbersome beyond words. What then? "Read"? "Experienced"? Again, this arbitrary distinction only increases confusion. It just seems to me like you're trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

What's the name of that "open field" game you were talking about, by the way? Sounds interesting.

Quaid,

I get what you're saying and I agree with much of it, but the solution is not to create a sub-category of video games that are "NOT video games". The solution is just better categorization of games, which, to be fair, has ALWAYS been a challenge.

Steam is actually acknowledging the flaws inherent in a "this game = this genre" system by allowing users to apply tags they consider applicable to games they play. If your fianc? searches tags like "visual novel", "story rich", "interactive fiction" and the like and reads the descriptions to get an idea of what kinds of games they are, it's likely she (or you, if you're a gentleman) will be able to find several games that would appeal to her. (Just a heads up, a LOT of it is anime style and I don't see a way of excluding tags if you want to avoid certain things.) There's indie/RPG Maker stuff like To the Moon and Always Sometimes Monsters, but there's also point & click adventures like Monkey Island and the like. While a lot of these games may include fail states, I'm sure a lot of them are pretty forgiving in that the punishment for failing is minimal.

The problem with separating games like Gone Home from the rest is that people like me who consider them all part of the same family will end up missing out on the stuff that I consider "video games" that others don't consider "video games". Which raises another question: How do we decide where to draw the line? Obviously not everybody sees eye to eye on the subject. How can you come up with a distinction that someone couldn't legitimately point out as arbitrary when Game X or Game Y doesn't fit your standard?

Edit: Sorry, didn't realize you were talking console exclusive.

Stacking
Dear Esther
30 Flights of Loving
The Last Express
Braid
some Telltales games
L.A. Noire (includes "skip this" option for car chases and shootouts)
Journey
Flower
Masq
The Sam & Max games
Analogue: A Hate Story
Antichamber
The Secret of Monkey Island (excepting if you try to stay underwater more than 10 minutes)
Fl0w

Should all of these not be considered video games? Now I haven't played all of them, it is possible that you'll find some way to identify what can happen in the game as a "fail state". But that brings up another issue: Is "fail state" just a "yes" or "no" thing? What if you can't die, but there are multiple endings that range from "worst ending" to "best ending"? What if you have a rewind mechanic that allows you to undo any mistakes at the press of a button? What if the rewind mechanic is automatic?

I consider a game like "Long Live The Queen" less of a video game than "Gone Home". In the former I know that whatever choice I make in this text-based, illustrated with still pictures "survival/queen simulation" game is simply going to toggle a value in the background on or off, or otherwise add/subtract a value from one of my variables which may or may not have an effect on a later choice in the game. It's a really complicated choose your own adventure. With fail states. Now with Gone Home, even though the game was much more simple, I actually felt like I was exploring someone's lived-in house. I was immersed in an experienced where I wasn't being fed information, I was the one in control of finding it on my own. I was driving the progression of the story through my actions and my ability to infer information, and I really liked that. And I guess I'm not a literature critic, but I found the story to be genuinely engaging and I felt propelled to continue just to learn more. The game offers no rewards other than more random house shit to look at, and it was more than enough to keep me going. Triggering someone's intrinsic motivation impresses me a lot more than feeding someone extrinsic motivation. Also, I never once felt like I wasn't playing a video game, whereas for Long Live the Queen I often felt detached from what was happening. I was flipping switches on a giant switchboard and pressing a button to get result X out of 2428.

Besides, couldn't we just include a "no fail state" tag/genre that would be great for people like your fianc? (congratulations, by the way) while not alienating people who are NOT actively trying to exclude certain types of titles from the list of games they enjoy?