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[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Discussion topic: are "gameplay" and "interactivity" basically the same thing, or are there parts of a game which are interactive but not part of the gameplay, or part of the gameplay but not interactive?

Examples of things which are interactive but which may or may not be gameplay: is designing the appearance of an avatar (such as in The Sims or City of Heroes/Villains) gameplay? Is designing the stats and attributes of character in an RPG, such as Fallout or Baldur's Gate, gameplay? Is decorating your house in Animal Crossing gameplay?  Imagine that you could move the camera around in a movie -- as you can during the cutscenes of the latter Metal Gear Solid games -- that'd be interactive, but is it gameplay?

Examples of things which are not very interactive but which may or may not be gameplay: if you are talking to people in a town in a RPG, going from NPC to NPC and seeing what they say, but where you have no dialogue options, is that gameplay? Is moving a character around but not really interacting with anything (as in Knytt) gameplay? If you just walk around an area in Zelda: Ocarina of Time without fighting enemies or solving puzzles, just looking around admiring the way the sky moves or the feeling of moving Link around, is that gameplay? Does The Graveyard by Tale of Tales have gameplay?

My first thoughts on this is that "gameplay" is too vague to be a meaningful concept, and that most of the time what people mean by gameplay can be covered by the more precise term of interactivity, but on second thought it seems like there are interactive parts which are not gameplay or non-interactive parts which are gameplay, so gameplay could be specified as influencing the game state. Although there are acts which do not influence the game state (such as simply moving around and exploring) which feel like gameplay to me, so I'm not satisfied with that specification.

[Alex May]

I like the Wright Separation, as I've just dubbed it. I watched a TED talk by Will Wright where he talked about his games more as toys than games. I liked that but it made me think in terms of first principles: a game is a competition between two or more entities with a set of rules defining who wins and who loses, and rules governing the interactions between those entities. Tetris is a game because you can lose. I have never played The Sims but I assume you lose if your Sim dies. You can lose at Quake 3 if you kill your opponent fewer times than he or she kills you.

A toy has rules about interaction but removes the requirement to have a winner or loser: the element of competition is removed. Lego is a toy; kai's Power Goo is a toy.  Of course, most games involve game play, that is interactivity that affects whether you win or lose, but some are becoming increasingly toy-like, like GTA when you are not doing missions or as mentioned character customization where that customization is purely aesthetic. It's still interactive fun, but the competitive element is not present or is unaffected by it. By this definition, and by way of example, I would call Animal Crossing a toy, and indeed I know people whose brains actually malfunction when presented with it. Since there's no win/lose, they can't understand why one would play it at all.

I would like to see more products that incorporate toy-like interaction.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I think that separation has merit but it also has fuzzy borders. For instance, take Alter Ego, a game where you start out as a baby, make decisions, and grow up. You can play it in a browser here (and everyone should, it's one of the best games I've ever played): http://www.theblackforge.net/

Is that a game or a toy?

[Valter]

My thoughts on gameplay and interactivity:

gameplay is when you are accomplishing the purpose of the game. If you're playing Halo 3, and you're shooting bad guys, you're performing gameplay.

However, interactivity is extra features. These would be things that are not linked directly to the game but give more control to the user. Examples might be choosing armor and color configurations in Halo 3.

In other words, I see gameplay as, well, playing the game. Interactivity is more like things that help immerse you into the experience.

[Baba Brainchild]

haowan - What impact does the user's behavior have on your definitions?

If I load up Quake but spend my game time drawing pictures by shooting patterns into the walls, am I playing with a game or a toy? What if I play Animal Crossing with a specific set of goals that I've created for myself? If I fail to achieve my goals within the time limit I set for myself, is it still a toy?

Edit: Actually, let me see if I can phrase this a little better.

Super Metroid has a whole bunch of optional powerups that you can choose to get or not. The game encourages you to grab as many powerups as you can by giving you a completeness rating at the end, but ultimately, it's mostly up to you what you want to grab. If you do choose to get all the powerups, you can essentially add on victory conditions which aren't coded into the game. "It only counts if I get at least 90% this time through!" So you can hypothetically change the nature of the game by altering your own goals.

My question is, can adding or ignoring goals change toys into games and games into toys?

[Movius]

A game is a set of rules for a structured activity.

A toy is a physical object.

[Alex May]

I think that separation has merit but it also has fuzzy borders. For instance, take Alter Ego, a game where you start out as a baby, make decisions, and grow up. You can play it in a browser here (and everyone should, it's one of the best games I've ever played): http://www.theblackforge.net/

Is that a game or a toy?

haowan - What impact does the user's behavior have on your definitions?

If I load up Quake but spend my game time drawing pictures by shooting patterns into the walls, am I playing with a game or a toy? What if I play Animal Crossing with a specific set of goals that I've created for myself? If I fail to achieve my goals within the time limit I set for myself, is it still a toy?

Edit: Actually, let me see if I can phrase this a little better.

Super Metroid has a whole bunch of optional powerups that you can choose to get or not. The game encourages you to grab as many powerups as you can by giving you a completeness rating at the end, but ultimately, it's mostly up to you what you want to grab. If you do choose to get all the powerups, you can essentially add on victory conditions which aren't coded into the game. "It only counts if I get at least 90% this time through!" So you can hypothetically change the nature of the game by altering your own goals.

My question is, can adding or ignoring goals change toys into games and games into toys?

Yes, there is clearly a grey area where the definitions break down. In Super Metroid's case getting those pickups will indeed help you to win. A large part of playing with toys is setting your own goals in my opinion ("I'm gonna make a huge castle out of this Lego"). Let's look at Chris Crawford's ideas:

Computer game designer Chris Crawford attempted to define the term game using a series of dichotomies:

   1. Creative expression is art if made for its own beauty, and entertainment if made for money. (This is the least rigid of his definitions. Crawford acknowledges that he often chooses a creative path over conventional business wisdom, which is why he rarely produces sequels to his games.)
   2. A piece of entertainment is a plaything if it is interactive. Movies and books are cited as examples of non-interactive entertainment.
   3. If no goals are associated with a plaything, it is a toy. (Crawford notes that by his definition, (a) a toy can become a game element if the player makes up rules, and (b) The Sims and SimCity are toys, not games.) If it has goals, a plaything is a challenge.
   4. If a challenge has no “active agent against whom you compete,” it is a puzzle; if there is one, it is a conflict. (Crawford admits that this is a subjective test. Some games with noticeably algorithmic artificial intelligence can be played as puzzles; these include the patterns used to evade ghosts in Pac-Man.)
   5. Finally, if the player can only outperform the opponent, but not attack them to interfere with their performance, the conflict is a competition. (Competitions include racing and figure skating.) However, if attacks are allowed, then the conflict qualifies as a game.

Crawford's definition may thus be rendered as: an interactive, goal-oriented activity, active agents to play against, which any player (including active agents) could interfere one another.

Crawford also notes (ibid.) several other definitions:

    * “A form of play with goals and structure.” (Kevin Maroney)
    * “A game is a form of art in which participants, termed players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal.” (Greg Costikyan)
    * “An activity with some rules engaged in for an outcome.” (Eric Zimmerman)

Wikipedia disagrees with me that a game must have conflict but Crawford agrees (although I suppose it depends on how one defines conflict - puzzles are an interesting one e.g. is a Rubik's cube a toy because you can't lose, or do you lose if you give up?). Interesting about Will Wright's games there. Anyway plenty to think about there. When I dubbed it a separation I didn't mean to imply that interactivity must fall in one category or the other, hence my hope that more games could include toy-like interaction along with their game-like interaction.

[increpare]

gameplay is when you are accomplishing the purpose of the game.

This isn't alwasy set in stone, however.  To a lot of people, (as can be evinced from reviews in games magazines that have a 'gameplay' rating), plot overall structure, and overall pacing (as opposed to having all the game at the same difficulty).  It's very hard to set a line of the difference between the two.  

A significant thing for me at the moment is the line between gameplay and gameplay-mechanic.  Most obvious in strategy gaming: for me the gameplay of command and conquer is about 'build' 'buildings' and 'create' 'units' and 'conquer' the 'opponent'.  But there's the intermediary interface that makes it really about using a mouse/keyboard to interact with on-screen elements in a particular way that this point of view totally ignores.  They do seem to be two layers worth distinguishing (though they might be hard to separate at times...).

Baba, you make some good points.  I'm happy to allow people to toy or play with whatever they want, so yes.  Adding/removing rules and goals doesn't quite feel like a strong enough criterion for me, but  I can't feel what else is missing.

Chris Crawford's hierarchy is interesting and pretty meaningful.  Let me try some deconstruction...

1/2: Hmm.  He is implying here, possbly inadvertantly, that books and games and films are all produced for money rather than for creative reasons.

2: What about a book with exercises, or one that asks the reader to think about certain things.  What about, heaven forbid, gamebooks?

3: By his definition, a rubiks cube is not a toy, because it ostensibly has a set goal.  In reality though, the goal is not usually something that people actively try and achieve, more a guiding philosophy

4: Well he himself acknowledged interpretative difficulties with this.  Even more than what he says though, it's be possible to treat a mostly inanimate level, if bastardly enough, as an active agent (IWBTG anyone?) 

5: Most racing games allow aggressive interaction between players.  The exceptions would be stuff where people are playing in parallel with no interaction between one-another (wii bowling, say).  Anyway, the distinction between outperforming an opponent/actively interfering isn't clear-cut at all.  If one kills someone in quake, one could think of one as having out-performed them.  Or maybe this is because, in deathmatch games, the distinction is blurred very heavily as the very objective of the game is to kill people, so the ideas of outperformance/interference possibly converge.

[increpare]

are games a subset of toys?

By this do you mean, 'are games played with toys'?

I think there's a lot of sense to this interpretation...

[increpare]

Another (sort of) distinction: One can play a game, or one can play with a game, as one would a toy.  (e.g. I rarely play pacman with the objective of progressing throug, for instance, I play it just to feel what it's like to play it: my desired experience is one level removed from the game objective).

ah yes, exactly! we've got it

So consoles are toys then, from this point of view, right?

(I'm tempted to suggest that not all games need involve toys, suggesting catch as an example: but even then one's environment becomes a sort of playing-field which could be regarded, somehow, as being a toy.  So I'm not going to say anything on the ubiquity of toys in game, then ).

[Klaim]

I would say...


Gameplay is a mix of Interractivity and Choice.

Notice the word gameplay occurs only for video games, not just games.

Now, if there is only choice, you can call it a game.
If there is only interractivity, you cannot, not without choice. Then you can call it "experience" or other thing.

And i think sandbox games are virtual toys : you do whatever you want with a provided virtual or physical set.

[lordmetroid]

The toy metaphor is fairly accurate in my opinion. A sandbox universe is obviously solely a toy. The concept called "game" is an abstraction you can build as an additional layer upon a sandbox. No matter how small sandboxiness that exist. For example, shooting the walls to paint in Quake is part of the sandbox of which the game takes place in.

You turn the sandbox into a game by regulating the characteristics of what counts as successful achievements. We can show concept to be true with a simple thought experiment. For example, lets say we have a game called "Ekauq", where the goal is to paint an image on a wall with your weapon and you have AI running around shooting you while you try to do that.

See how the game concept is totally arbitrary while the sandbox stays the same...

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Though I normally admire Crawford, I expect that even he today would disagree with his own definition -- he wrote that in 1983, and it was an attempt to deal with the games of 1983.

The reason I don't like that definition is that if you separate games into toys and games, it leads to a number of mental filters which don't let you appreciate the non-game parts of a game, and not to appreciate the well-balanced parts of a toy.

[Klaim]

Yes, the feedback of a toy is the same as the feedback of a sandbox: it is what you wanted.

A good example of sandbox well disguised are the Elder's Scroll games that allow the player to change the world and play exactly what the player wants if he wants, by access to the console and the editor.

[Lucaz]

What I always understood is that gameplay stands at one side as the mechanical part of the game, and at the other for the gaming part of the game, the things you do in it and what you can do it, while playing. So even walking around pointlessly wopuld be part of the gameplay experience. There are interactive parts of the game that aren't gameplay, such as character creation, or point distribution and alike. Those parts are to the game what preparing the board is to boardgames.

The separation between game and toy doesn't convince me when applied on video games. It considers that a game gotta have some kind of solid objective, and some active force opossing the player. From what I understand as a game, it would be anything that let's you play with it under it's own terms and rules. That means, all, or at least almost all, are games, not toys. But As Increpare said, you can use them as toys.

Another (sort of) distinction: One can play a game, or one can play with a game, as one would a toy.

An example. Simcity is called a toy by some, and it's said that it has no objectives or goals. But really, it has. It's a game about building and managing cities, and there isn't anything else to do. You can fail at making a city that works, so you can be good or bad at playing SimCity. So even when it doesn't give you a goal, it has the implicit goal of making and managing a city, the specifics of the goal are made by the player. Even if you decide to destroy a city, that's the way you personalised the goal of the game. But you use it as a a toy when you play renadomly, pressing wathever stuff you see, throwing disasters just to see how much you can destroy.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Yes, that's true -- using the Crawford-haowan definition, one would be forced to conclude that Sim City has no gameplay. Which isn't true at all, as anyone who has played it knows.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

Crawford wrote that definition in the first book about computer game design: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_Computer_Game_Design -- I had the year off by one, it was written 1982, although it was actually published only in 1984. I recommend everyone read that book by the way, it's pretty great, and he's even offering it free now as a digital download. The examples used in the article were just some Wikipedian applying the definition to modern games. Although Wright is a friend of Crawford so when Wright describes Sim City as a toy he's probably borrowing Crawford's use of the term.

I don't think the player of Sim City is making up the goal to make a good city, because making a good city is the whole point of the game. Players can differ about what exactly their goals are -- some can go for large population at any cost, others can go for a green city with no crime or pollution and pretty gardens, and the gameplay would differ slightly -- but the goal is still to make a good city, with basically similar gameplay no matter what one's goal is. No matter what kind of city you want to build, you still need to place down those R's, I's, and C's and keep them balanced, you still need to avoid problems like crime and pollution getting out of hand, you still need to manage your taxes to keep your people happy and your approval rating up, you still need to give electricity (and in latter versions of the game, water) to your city, you still need to strategically place police stations and fire stations, and so on -- so the "green city" or "high population city" goals are still 90% similar in their gameplay.

[Thorst]

SimCity just seems to be not a good example for a toy, because - like you said - there really are implicit goals which judge the users actions... like in Sims too.
(so, they are sandbox GAMEs?)

Sim City fits your characterization of a toy.  Balancing the zoning and all that is just how the game works, not any sort of challenge.  Consider that a baseball's weight implicitly judges your ability to move it.  Relationships between gravity, mass, etc. are to a baseball what relationships between pollution, electricity, etc. are to Sim City.

It is no more possible to fail at Sim City than it is to fail at a baseball.  Remember, I am talking about a baseball, not the game of baseball.

The only way I see to interpret Sim City as having a goal (ignoring the partially pre-built cities) is in trying to deduce the game's mechanics in the same way a physicist might interpret a baseball as an implicit challenge to discover gravity.  But, does anyone really play Sim City that way?

[Alex May]

The goal I see in Sim City is in not going bankrupt. Expansion is driven by the city's needs, but as long as you have a city (or village even) that earns more than it spends without you interfering, then you're not losing. The city might fluctuate as the population reaches its limit for your city size, then people get pissed off that you're not expanding, and leave, and the cycle begins again, but you're not under any more pressure than that. There are loads of other things that make it a game though, like disasters. I agree it's not strictly a toy, but the free-form game play makes it feel like one in lots of ways. But I think that most games incorporate both strict game play elements and either explicitly add in extragameplay interaction or exhibit it as a result of those game play rules.

[Melly]

For me, it's the ruleset, goals, win/loss conditions that define gameplay. Take soccer. Soccer has a strict set of rules and win/loss conditions, and while the players are bound by that ruleset they're playing the game. The moment they move away from the ruleset (instead of playing proper soccer they just start kicking the ball around for fun) they stop playing a game and start playing with a toy (the ball).

I guess we could see the game part of a videogame as the ruleset, the win/loss conditions. If I'm playing Prince of Persia and I'm going through the game to reach the end of the story, to beat the final boss, I'm playing the game. If I stop doing that and merely start jumping back and forth through the levels for fun without caring about the major goal I stopped playing the game and started playing with a toy (in this case the platforming mechanics).

That works, at least for me. The gameplay would be the ruleset imposed over the player, telling him how he'll 'win' and how he'll 'lose' (even without the possibility of loss, just having a win condition is enough). Any of the game's mechanics can be made into a toy if the player doesn't feel like following the gameplay. In a RTS, a toy could be trying to draw words using the units, or just press buttons and open-close menus for the heck of it (think a very young child).

Of course you can create your own ruleset and make your own game within the mechanics, like two teams in Quake 3 competing to see who performs the most beautiful rocket-jump ballet. That would be a game as long as the players adhered to their own made-up rules. If a person jumps and bounces around a level for no reason other than the enjoyment derived from doing so they're toying with the videogame's physics engine.

For me that seems to work well. If a videogame has absolutely no sets of rules, nothing that say how you can lose or win, I think we can safely say there's no gameplay in it, only interactive mechanics we can toy with. We can still create our own rulesets, and thus our own gameplay, but the game itself doesn't come with them.