Notgames Forum

This topic is implicitly treated in many of the contribution to our forum. However, I think for us newbies it is valuable to get it summed up a bit.

So, what is the difference between a game and a not-game? As a matter of fact, in Swedish we cannot ask this question, because we do not have a word for "game". Everything is "spel" (cp German "Spiel") which rather corresponds to "play" in English (even if not totally so). Anyway, it is a word with very broad applicability.

According to Oxford dictionary,  game = diversion, amusing incident, an activity engaged in for amusement, contest played according to rules & decided by skill, strength, or luck.

So it is evident why ordinary computer-games are called games. The main aspect is the joy, the pleasure of playing, being skilful, win etc. 

A game is not a play. And a play is not a game.  You do not go to the theatre to see a game. Nor is a musical performance a game.  And in that case skill is not enough.  You may be a skilful piano player, but something more is demanded, your being able to communicate that mysterious something called ”music”.

So, by using the term not-game we (or at least I) indicate that we want to use the equipment used in constructing and playing computer games, but with that little ”extra” communicated, that makes it a ”play” – and, as the case may be – even a work of art.

In this case – as for instance with ”The Path” – you are not just playing the game, you play with and within the game.

This is my best summary of a vision and history of notgames:

Vision
Notgames is not a self-declared category of videogame experiences, but rather a project of sorts. It's a videogame development philosophy, a perspective or attitude that can be adopted by a game developer in the attempt to create an experience that explores new territory for videogames. That territory has a focus, which is defined as the territory not occupied by games in the formal sense of the word, i.e. structural elements like points, typical competitive win-or-lose gameplay, game-like challenges, etc.

Notgames looks to the vast, unexplored land of fictional, computer-based virtual experience and hopefully declares "Something amazing could be out there!" Then, like in Chris Crawford's dragon speech, runs triumphantly out the room with sword in hand. However, unlike Crawford, we are doing this together as a community. ;)

History
Let's start with the definition of a game:

This definition is intentionally vague as to the medium in which the system is expressed. That makes this system completely abstract. In that way, a game does not exist at all as something that can be physically experienced. Only an expression of a game exists as something that can be experienced physically. That fact creates a domino effect that I will attempt to guide you through.

Of course, most recently games are being expressed on computers through the medium of a fictional, virtual, and interactive system. I call it the unnamed medium, others the digital medium, others software art. The fascinating thing is that the expression of these games through this medium has grown in complexity along with computers themselves.

The definition of "game" I gave mentioned a system, and so scientists experimenting with early computers thought "What happens if I use the system of the game as the system of this new medium?" It was a simple conclusion, but the result was profound. It spawned an entire industry! Added to the arcade room next to pinball were cabinets with early computers in them dedicated to a single game each.

This means many peoples' first experiences of videogames were in the arcade, and they were glorious. Books have been written and movies have been made detailing the intensity of emotions first felt in the arcade. A caveat to this is that many of the first videogame designs were specifically meant for the arcade setting, where the game needed to take enough money from the player to remain profitable for the arcade. A fine balance had to be struck between making a game hard enough that it made money, but not too hard that the player stopped playing. Playing the game became a battle for not only a virtual score, but for the money in the player's pocket. This and other things created a bias toward arcade design that is still around to this day.

In addition, the first videogames ran on complicated and primitive computer machinery, the details of which were only understood by engineering-minded people. Creating an early videogame was a serious technical undertaking. That created a bias toward engineering that is still around to this day.

During all this time, society was having a hard time coping with not only this new medium in general, but also this new expression of games. Playing videogames was seen as an antisocial activity for geeks and delinquents. That meant only the truly dedicated stayed consistent gamers. And when some of them grew up enough to design games themselves, they looked back to the glory days of the arcade with fondness. This created a bias toward dedicated gamers that is still around to this day.

By now (1980s), computers had become cheap enough to make it into the living room by way of companies like Atari, Commodore, Sinclair, and many more. That led to explosive growth in the videogame industry. People could use their home computers to make their own games, and release them by hand or through a burgeoning book-like publishing industry.

The future was truly looking bright; more and more experimentation was being done. Computers were fast enough, and the public was getting large enough that game developers began to create magical, impressive virtual worlds and virtual systems as part of their game experiences. They started to explore themes and ideas beyond the shallower, geekier ones from before. It provided a glimpse of the potential that this new medium really had.

But then something horrible happened, before a breakthrough could be made.

Due to a myriad of causes, including rampant cloning of games, computer companies growing too fast, and a recession, the industry imploded on itself. Not completely, but enough to mame it for several years. Everyone - publisher and game developer alike - got more conservative. Many of them turned to sports, to digitizing boardgames, or back to videogaming's roots: arcade-like experiences for the dedicated core of players.

Computers, of course, grew more and more powerful, and videogames worlds more complex. Even the publishing industry grew more complex as Nintendo refined a publishing model that was able to grow out of the implosion of the early 80s. But the arcade-like roots of videogames remained as the industry was back onto a more healthy level of growth.

By the 1990s, videogames were advanced enough that the virtual worlds and systems being created for them started to resemble the complexity of worlds and systems in the real world. Another generation of gamers grew to love videogames for just this reason. Again, it was a glimpse of the potential of a new and powerful medium.

But the arcade bias, the engineering bias, and the dedicated (i.e. hardcore) gamer bias remained. These amazing worlds were often locked away behind competitive gameplay, behind puzzles, behind points and game-like rules. By the end of the 1990s, game developers and publishers developed a habit of spending all their money on engineering virtual worlds and complex game systems, so they had no money left over for researching gameplay not based on the now-ingrained biases inherent in videogames.

Fast forward to the late-2000s. The Internet allowed anyone to learn how to make videogames and to sell them in large enough quantities to make a living. Game development became accessible enough that more artistic game developers could make videogames. They saw the inherent biases evident in videogames, and caught a glimpse of the medium that game-like structures often seemed to obscure. They wanted to make videogames free from these obscurities. So they looked for like minds, and many of them found Tale of Tales.

Tale of Tales proposed starting a community dedicated to this goal, so those people joined. We invited others, and have slowly grown since then, but we remain a small and dedicated few.

Personally, I am hopeful for the future. Some in this community have found tremendous success and/or critical acclaim adopting a notgames mindset. Some of them are working hard this very second on finishing greatly anticipated games.

It's going to be an awesome 2012. :D

The name "notgames" does not have very philosophical origins. It was just a reaction to the obsession of the video games industry with rigid rules-based games. Obviously "game" can mean all sorts of things, but in a video games context, "game" tends to be strictly defined -along the lines of Salen and Zimmerman ("A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome.") This is how the word "games" is used in "notgames": an invitation to explore the medium outside of this rigid format. The reasons why you might want to do this and the goals you have as a creator can be many and differ from person to person.

Thanks for this excellent summary!
Since you both quote the same concise and abstract, but unnecessarily restrictive definition of ”game”, let me, just for joy, contribute another attempt at a general definition.

I found it in Jim Tompson’s  Computer Game Design Course, which I once read to get an overview of the field.  Starting with a retrospect on gameplay in general, Tompson quotes Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, from 1938:

Play is a volontary activity or occupation executed within certain limits of time and place, according to rules freely accepted but absolutely binding, having its aim in itself and accompanied by a feeling of tension, joy, and the consciousness that it is ”different” from ”ordinary life”.

And Tompson himself adds: This root definition of gameplay encompasses whatever game is being played, from chess to the latest digital game.

Nobody will have the last word on this. (I once made an inventory of textbooks in Opticks, to find a good definition of the concept of ”light ray”. Wisely, most of them avoided giving any definition. )
Pehr

Definitions are annoying because people use them to "prove" that something is not this or that. I have issues with Huizinga's insistence on the voluntary aspect of playing. But I refuse to interpret his definition as meaning that anything that is not done voluntarily cannot be called playing.

Though does Huizinga not use games to describe social customs and habits in the modern era, as well as jurisdiction?

He does. Which is why this insistence on the voluntary puzzles me.
Guess I should finally read that thing... ;)

I think it is because "play" belongs to the realm of "human freedom". As does art, I suppose?
Pehr

I don't understand the human concept of "freedom", I'm afraid.

It's quite interesting that there isn't a word for game in Swedish, at least to my English speaking brain. In design textbooks a video game will often be defined using game theory before introducing the concept of play. I can only advise you forget about the English game and concentrate on play.

You've lit a lightbulb in me that I can't quite articulate.

English might very well be the exception. In Dutch, game is spel and to play is spelen. Similar to German: Spiel and spielen. Even in French, game is jeu and to play is jouer -which is extra interesting because to enjoy is jouir.

The thing with the Swedish words here is that the concept of "game" is split into "spel" and "lek" (verbs spela / leka). Spel corresponds very well to Caillois' idea of Ludus, as in games with rigid structures, goals and winners, whereas lek has more childish connotations and signifies a more freeform style of play where it's often okay for rules to be broken. Think playing house, or any other kind of loosely defined activity that's more about the imagined situation and drama than about actually following the rules (hide and seek and tag also tend to fall in this category).

I could be wrong, but I feel that what we're trying to achieve here, oftentimes, is digital lek. A paidian movement, if you will. Which is a challenge mainly because of how computers love rigid rules (and because this has created a mental framework that it's hard to think outside).

@Hugo: "Lek" would be more descriptive, yes. Radically different works would/could be made by resetting the mindset. At the same time, as I am arguing in my Wrong? thread, there may be some things to gain from actively opposing 'game design' by intervening/contradicting/displacing the player and his agency in more formal(ist) games. Then again, that is hardly what everyone wishes to do. Dear Esther, for example, is in no way a 'game'. Yet, it is hardly "lek" either. Without getting into ideology or too much opinion, I believe our community has lots to gain from the simulationist stance towards games: create a world/system that is entirely open, as best as we can. Then again - as I am arguing - this is impossible on other than a very small scale.

Hugo, what word would you use in Sweden for playing theater or playing an instrument?
In English, Dutch, German and French I believe it's the same: play, spelen, spielen, jouer, but it sounds like in Swedish lek might be more appropriate?

Those things are 'spela' in Swedish.

I'll admit, I'm an ignoramus when it comes to languages but why don't these languages just borrow the words "play" and "game"? English borrows words all of the time and it seems to work ok. Idk.

We do! At least in Belgium, and Holland too, I think, this gives us an advantage. Contrary to English speakers, we do have a special word that only means "videogame". This word is the English word "game", which by no means is a synonym for the Dutch word "spel".

Like Michael I was intrigued by the stress on ”freedom", so I have spent some time studying Huizinga’s book ”Homo ludens”, from 1938, to find out what he meant. It was not altogether easy to follow his line of argument, but this is how I understand it.

To begin with, we need not worry about the terminological issue, because H. does not primarily speak about games. He focuses on the mere activity of playing.  It does not matter what or with what we are playing, but that we are playing.  

Playing is different from other activities, such as going, eating, working, sleeping. We know what is meant by: ”Now it is time to stop playing and go back to work!”  or  ”Don’t play, please be serious!” or ”I didn’t mean to hurt him, we were only playing”.
To play is not to work, not to be serious, to do things that are not meant to be what they seem to be …  But what is it then?

H. notes that playing is not exclusive for human beings, animals also play. It seems to be a general characteristic of living cretures. Something basic in our existence. We do not need any excuse for doing it, we do not need to ”explain it”, it is just a matter of fact.  But we have reason to try to characterize it – and ask ”is there a point with it?”

H. had studied the development of human culture in a historical perspective.  To him it had become evident, that people, especially in earlier times, made a difference between playing and the doings of ”ordinary life”.  They now and then sung and danced and put on fanciful clothes, and were joyful – despite the fact (or perhaps rather because of the fact) that their ordinary life was hard. Full of necessities, tasks, duties, work to earn their living. Having to tackle the brutal forces of the material world, in order to survive.
In relation to this ordinary world, the world momentarily entered in playing was experienced as a realm of freedom.  You played not because you were forced to do it but because it was fun.

The freedom in playing is the freedom of Homo Ludens (the playing man) from the rational domination of Homo sapiens (the rational man).

Playing spontaneously shapes itself into periodic patterns of movement. Rythm, balance, harmony, enhance the joy of playing. Certain shapes become favorites, you memorize them in order to be able to repete them. They get individuality and a name. In that way a ”game” is born and taken up into tradition.
The defining ”rules” of a game are freely invented, i.e. they are not dictated out of any necessity. They may imitate traits from ordinary life, and get their flavour from being ”faked”. They are only valid within the confined region of space and time, where the playing occasionally takes place.  It is a fun in itself to follow rules, and introduces a moment of tension in the play.  It is important to keep to the rules, because of the fragility of the illusionary virtual world conjured up in playing. Breaking the rules means a flip back to the ordinary world. Because of that you are a ”Spielverderber” if you don’t accept the rules. (To Huizinga, playing is first and foremost a social acitivty, involving serveral people, as players or as spectators of the play.)    

So, playing – at its very essence -- is an unnecessary activity, freely chosen, without purpose, unproductive, irresponsible, completely irrational. Is it then not just worthless, a waste of time?  
Well, since the nineteenth century there is a tendency to look upon it that way, H. says. The element of play has been pushed aside under the influence of the industrial revolution with its idolatry of work and production.  And this is regrettable, since playing is essential for the existence of human culture. In his historical studies H. finds that almost all cultural habits, conventions, institutions, have in their early stages of development been ”played”.  They need this space of freedom to grow and establish themselves, before entering ”the ordinary world” and being taken for granted as belonging to our cultural inheritance.

You don’t play in order to survive, but in order to give meaning to life.  Playing introduces meaning and beauty into life.

Concerning the arts, it is evident that music and dance, as performing arts, are most closely related to playing. They are more or less born out of the joy of playing. So is poetry, H. says.
But painting, sculpture, architecture do not belong there. Because they are essentially dealing with the material world, struggling with matter, giving it form. It cannot be a completely ”free” activity. Whereas playing essentially deals with the immaterial world, and its values, and that is the reason for its quality of total freedom.

I am not ready to accept that conclusion, without qualifications, I must admit. Maybe this is a suitable point where to leave the issue for discussion in our forum.

I like that...

I don't understand why such an emphasis is placed on rules.  The idea that the ruleset is the basis of a game or of play is an adult intellectualization of something that is really freeform at its root.  Obviously video games require a ruleset or else the computer can't run the experience, but play in general does not have that restriction.  The example of animals is a good one - you can't make me believe they are adhering to any ruleset other than their own nature.  Also, the way children play is often very freeform. They just run around with their Transformers or their Littlest Pet Shop animals or what-have-you and act out whatever scenarios strike their imagination. 

Thank you, Pehr, for the summary.
I know I'm a bit allergic to dichotomies. So I remain sceptical about this distinction between ordinary world and play. But maybe that's a contemporary phenomena. Maybe it's only recently that this "serious" world had been functioning like a game. Or maybe I simply don't take life as such seriously enough.

Ah yes, this is an important insight into why the computer reduces the need for an abstract rules system. The virtual world on a computer is not fragile at all!

The computer takes the burden of keeping to the rules off of the player.

Except for bugs…
And design oversights that lead to exploitation…
Nevertheless an important distinction: regular games are broken by the people who play them while computer games are broken by mistakes in the rules (if we can refer to the entire program as a set of rules).

Board games can have bugs in the instructions as well. But I assumed we were speaking in ideals.

I see this as another way to explain the lack of a magic circle.

As I see it, the rules come in when you get so fond of some improvised pattern in playing that you want to be able to play "the same game" at later occasions. Of course you may just remeber it. Taking down the experience in terms of some "notation" is a step towards developing it into a work of art.

 
I agree.  Personally I would rather see a bit of playfulness in everything we do – more or less, as the case may be. We are capable of consciously being at the same time in the fictitious worlds of media and in the ”ordinary” world, or switching between. Normally without experiencing this as a problem.

Perhaps Huizinga deliberately emphasizes the difference between play and not-play in order to make his idea clear. In practice he usually speaks of ”an element of play” in various contexts.
Moreover he has the perspective of a learned historian. And he speaks mainly of playing games as a social, collective activity. Folk dances, contests, festivals and whatever.

Playing a single person computer game is more like sitting somewhere peacefully reading a book.  With MMORPGs the social aspect (with its rules of behaviour) becomes important for the experience.

The fragility at issue is the fragility of the illusion, i.e. the experience of being in that virtual world, you are invited to visit. It can easily be demolished by a critical attitude – or critical comments from somebody standing beside you, when you play.  Or by a sudden pain in your eyes, reminding you that you should perhaps do better leaving the computer. 
 
After all you are looking at a computer screen with a changing pattern of colour areas. Your perceptual imagination helps to make this be experienced as an object world, in which you move around, and where there are things you can confront and manipulate. 
Playing the game presupposes an acceptance of this illusion.  Accept it as it was intended. Ignoring all defects and shortcomings, all the cues that inform you that it is not ”real”. This acceptance is voluntary, or at least should be so. If you are manipulated into a passive acceptance, you will not contribute anything out of yourself. Playing will not be a kind of dialogue, which I think it should ideally be.

When I think about it, you are intuitively right. Play is essentially rule-breaking. The very function of play is to oppose the conventions, habits and rules of ordinary life.  So it is paradoxical to speak about rules as something characteristic of playing. 
But I think there is also an inevitable process involved: how free play successively turns into an ordered activity, finally being established as a set of strict rules. Which means that the element of play has been, in the end, eliminated. 
Then you have to start up anew, being playful, breaking rules.  As when the joker is introduced into an all too formalized card game!  The joker is just the card that breaks the rules the ordinary cards are obliged to follow. And it makes the game more fun and irrational.

I guess I see games as being a subset of play.  Ultimately play is freeform, and it is expressed naturally.  If you accept the idea that play has evolved to serve some purpose, you could say that play leads to a discovery of rulesets, whether they be the rules of the environment or community you live in, or, as you grow more sophisticated, of logical systems (this is where games as such start to be created).  While I think this does happen, I don't really believe that 100% of play can be assigned such an ultimately utilitarian function.

I feel like one of the things we here are trying to do is to reintroduce the innocent freeform play to gaming, and maybe that's one reason it's been so challenging; since the tools are so rigidly rule-bound, they are working against us to a certain extent.