Hello!

[God at play]

I mostly agree with Michaël.  Passage embraces large parts of the game structure.  It uses game rules to express meaning about life.

Game players understand that points are equivalent to success.  Passage uses that as a symbolic message about life.  Game players understand that treasure chests hold rewards.  Passage uses that as a symbolic message about life.  And so on.

Almost the whole game's meaning could be expressed in a board game.  And because of that, it's certainly a game.

I do agree that it's a powerful experience, though!

[Michaël Samyn]

To some extent, though, I feel that because Passage uses the game form for another purpose, it ceases to be a game, or at least "just a game". Much like the sculpture below, by Miro, cease to be a chair.



There's still a chair there. The sculpture could not exist without the chair. But the sculpture is not a chair. It's a sculpture that uses a chair to generate meaning, aesthetic pleasure, etc different from the pleasure, comfort, etc that a chair might bring.

One distinction, however, is that you can still "play" Passage. While I don't think that they would let you sit on Miro's chair (but that may only be for practical reasons: sitting on the sculpture might damage it, playing a digital game does not affect its condition).

[JordanMagnuson]

See, I'm not even sure to what extent we're disagreeing here, because we're not discussing whether Passage is a game, or is a notgame, but to what extent it is a game, or not: I think we all acknowledge that it employs some elements from games, but the question is whether it deserves to be categorized as a game, or not. 

I just think it's more helpful to call Passage a notgame than it is to call it a game, just as it is more helpful to call the creation above a sculpture, rather than a chair. One could call it a chair, and argue at length as to why it is a chair, because of how it shares characteristics x, y, and z with chairs. But to do so would ignore the very important distinctions that set it apart from most chairs.

Also, I feel that whether you can "play" Passage (as a game) or not is very much a subjective distinction. I've played Passage multiple times, but it has never once felt like a game to me, nor have I felt like I was "playing" it, so much as experiencing it.

I agree with both of you (Michaël and GaP) that Passage employs structural elements from games. I just think it is also missing key structural elements that games typically posses, and for that reason I see it as more of a notgame than a game.

I'm sorry if this discussion is too semantic/semeiotic for you Michaël... my intention is not to be focused on irrelevant semantic details, but rather to increase my understanding of the interactive medium, and the nature of games and notgames by examining a concrete example, like Passage (I think it would be cool to have a thread dedicated to such "concrete" discussion of particular games/notgames -- would it be okay to start a thread like that, or would I be burned at the stake? ).

I value your input greatly, and I think we agree more than perhaps is clear... I think our disagreements may in fact be mostly semantic, but that realization can only come about through having discussions like this one.

[Michaël Samyn]

As you may have guessed, I have no interest in categorizing Passage. And I don't want "notgames" to ever have a nature. Notgames should be a design attitude, not a category. And Passage was definitely not designed with a Notgames attitude. I have spoken with Jason Rohrer enough to know that this is not where his interests lie. I think Passage was an honest attempt to express something through game rules.

[ghostwheel]

Notgames should be a design attitude, not a category.

Too late.

[Michaël Samyn]

Notgames should be a design attitude, not a category.

Too late.

No no. Too early!

When more socalled "notgames" are produced, I think it will become clear that they cannot be captured by a single category.

[God at play]

See, I'm not even sure to what extent we're disagreeing here, because we're not discussing whether Passage is a game, or is a notgame, but to what extent it is a game, or not: I think we all acknowledge that it employs some elements from games, but the question is whether it deserves to be categorized as a game, or not. 
...
(I think it would be cool to have a thread dedicated to such "concrete" discussion of particular games/notgames -- would it be okay to start a thread like that, or would I be burned at the stake? ).

Yeah, I see what you're saying.  That makes sense.

The "concrete" discussion section would be Reference: http://notgames.org/forum/index.php?board=11.0

I ended up posting about some games I thought were notgames, and discussed why.  I kinda went in circles a little, but it was helpful in formulating some of my recent ideas about videogames in general.  Sometimes you just have a wander.

[JordanMagnuson]

As you may have guessed, I have no interest in categorizing Passage. And I don't want "notgames" to ever have a nature. Notgames should be a design attitude, not a category. And Passage was definitely not designed with a Notgames attitude. I have spoken with Jason Rohrer enough to know that this is not where his interests lie. I think Passage was an honest attempt to express something through game rules.

Looking back over this discussion, I'm not sure what my point was regarding Passage. I certainly am not trying to say that we can or should put it in a box, which is evidently what came across, so I apologize for my failure to communicate.

I'm not sure how we got into a discussion on whether it is a game or is a notgame, as I'm no more interested in categorizing it for the sake of categorizing it than you are, Michaël. Going back to my very first post, the reason I brought Passage up to begin with is simply that it had an impact on me, and helped me see how we can achieve beautiful things by breaking with traditional game design, which seemed (at the time, anyway) related to the notgames idea.

The "concrete" discussion section would be Reference: http://notgames.org/forum/index.php?board=11.0

Thanks GaP: I've been looking over those threads.


**********************************

As an aside, I think you're absolutely right, Michaël, that the notgames idea is most useful as a catalyst for creation and change. I think that could be said of most ideas: they are most useful in so far as they are practical and energizing. Once we start using ideas to categorize and "explain," and chop up the world into neat little boxes, we're in danger of losing a lot of what's there. Losing the experience, as it were, to preconceived and stale categories of our minds. So I agree with your focus, and I'm glad that you keep reminding us of it. I agree, when you say in another thread, on playing games/notgames, "What is important is whether we enjoyed it or not, whether we found it meaningful, beautiful, innovative, inspiring, etc." All that being said, I don't think it's possible for notgames to remain only a design challenge, and not a "category," as nice as that may be.

Forget about notgames for a minute, and categorizing a particular interactive experience, and let's just talk about how we understand things as humans. We experience things with our senses, right? And if we're really in touch with our senses, and really "unpolluted" we may be able to get a very clear impression or feeling when we experience something. But without any kind of vocabulary or grid or categorization we can't understand that experience very well. I am not saying in the least that our solution to all of this is putting Passage or any other interactive creation in a box! I'm just saying that as human beings, we understand this way: by language, vocabulary, grammar, grids, categories. The problem, as I've already said (and  I think you agree?), is that as soon as we apply ANY of this to our experience, we lose something of the experience itself. This is the classic issue Buechner describes so well in A Sacred Journey: as soon as we call a tree a tree we gain some understanding about the world and about ourselves, but we also lose the thing that the tree was before we labeled it a tree!

What I'm trying to say here is that I don't think that this quantifying business is quite as simple as you make it out to be ("don't do it!"): I don't think a category-free, label-free utopia exists, because for some reason as humans we really do need these things in order to understand and think and develop. I think the challenge is, once we have all our "great" categories etc., to somehow get back some of that pre-category experience that we had. Maybe it's a cycle: we make categories, then we need to break them and blur them; then we make new ones, and the cycle repeats...

Of course none of our categories and quantifications are "real"--I absolutely agree with you on that (To say x is a game, or is a notgame doesn't reflect some kind of primal reality). But our lives are chock full of them nonetheless--heck, our whole language depends on them. That's not to say that we should try and exacerbate the problem--just that we're thickly entangled in it.

So I think notgames will become a category, if it's not already, and I don't necessarily think that's a terrible thing. People will consider notgames as a category not because they are trying to be evil, but just because they are trying to think about meaning and games, and what's possible. About what's impacted them, and what hasn't, and what can be done, and how one experience is different or similar from another. Because that's what we do, as humans interacting with our world--all I have to do is look over the posts in these forums to see that.

Just my 2 cents.

[Michaël Samyn]

I accept that we use language and categorization as ways to understand the world. It's an efficient way to quickly judge a situation. But I also know that when we spend more time with many things that we first recognized as fitting in a certain category, they often escape that category and become something more meaningful and less definable. We even often feel disappointed if something turns out to be exactly what we expected, and nothing more. Categories are useful for quick assessments but can easily be abandoned when given more time.

I'm not against categorization when it comes to interactive art, videogames, etc. I just feel that it's too early. That categorizing these things already now is almost like dismissing them without even having had the time to explore them. I would like our options to remain open for a while. Thinking of interactive entertainment and art beyond the game format feels like opening a door to a whole wide world. I don't want to define -or even know- what is in that world just yet. I want there to be things that I didn't expect. I want the potential to be explored. And when we have found some things, then maybe we can start making categories. Let's just wait a little bit first, and explore a bit more before we do.

[JordanMagnuson]

I'm right there with you Michaël: as I've already said, I absolutely agree that categories can be applied too quickly, and I appreciate your continued cautionary words.