Dr. Mario's Retard Rehabilitation Program

Well, Gone Home is easy to categorize as a video game. You control a protagonist in an environment with a purpose.

Not sure how you came to that conclusion. You play Kaitlin, home from a trip abroad only to find the recently moved-into house empty. You explore the house for the purposes of both learning about your new home and to figuring out where your family is. You are given a fully realized, three dimensional home to explore that looks genuinely lived-in (although the fact that the family just moved in allowed the developers to cut some corners, which is clever). It makes sense for you to be searching the house, both within the context of the character and the (implied) goal of the game.

When you start up the game for the first time, you hear Kaitlin leave a message to her parents explaining that she'll be arriving after midnight and doesn't need to be picked up from the airport. When you start the game, you are informed that it's after 1am. The first thing you see is your travel bag on the floor by your feet with your name on it. The only items in your possession are your passport and your boarding pass. On the door to the house there is a note addressed to you.

It's a pretty clear setup. And, even if by chance you initially assume to be an unrelated party, when you find postcards from yourself, learn more details about the move and how this is actually your first time in this house and learn more about the family it becomes pretty clear that you couldn't be anyone else but Kaitlin.

I actually took a bunch of screen shots of all that before I remembered I can't post images...

Wait, there is a "video game' where you just go around reading shit in a house? Fucking hipster nerds too good for books now?

OK then, so as I said, you control a protagonist in an environment with a purpose.

Is that not enough?

Itzena_sl said:

So what's your opinion on the Visual Novel genre?

Click to expand...

Weird weeaboo shit.

It is "Controltheprotaganistinanenvironmentgate" thread now.

Quaid: "Well, if the definition that we are gonna use for game is 'you control an avatar in an environment', then yes, I suppose Gone Home fits that criteria.

I still don't believe that is an adequate definition of a 'video game', but I'll agree to disagree."

I agree, that's not an adequate definition of a video game. There are lots of games that don't feature a specified protagonist. But putting you in someone else's shoes with a goal to achieve and the tools you'll need to achieve it is an extremely common game trope. That's why it's easier to identify whether something is a video game or not than it is to come up with an all-encompassing definition of what makes a video game.

Here's what Wikipedia says:

"A video game is an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device."

And if you click on "electronic game", you get:

"An electronic game is a game that employs electronics to create an interactive system with which a player can play."

That's actually pretty close to the definition I gave. "An interactive system in which a player can play" is telling because it basically says if you're playing it, it's a video game. There is no implication that elements such as fail states, competition (vs player or the game), or even "being challenged" (whether that's your reflexes, your coordination, your puzzle-solving skills, your lateral thinking, etc) are requirements for a video game.

Now you can argue that these definitions are designed for the layman and do not do an adequate job of explaining what video games actually about, and I might agree with that. But then you're entering the subjective zone where what YOU think makes a video game isn't necessarily what someone else thinks makes a video game. You can say "this is not a game because X", but if you just made up "X" because "feels", then it's obviously going to be debatable. Besides, I repeat that you have yet to give me any practical purpose to making this distinction (at least, any purpose that couldn't just as easily be served WITHOUT making said distinction).