Browsing the net I stumbling on the on this:
http://www.raphkoster.com/2012/07/06/two-cultures-and-games/It is basically a Raph defending that trying to figure out a theory that truly describe games is a worthy effort and not something that excludes things. For instance the comparing of certain games to power-point slides pop up again. I do not really agree with this at all and even think this hardcore "Games is X" is harmful. However that is not really what I want to discuss.
Further down Jonas Kyratzes makes reply to this with views that I pretty much share. However, and this is my point here, he always says that he hates notgames. Which seems so weird to me, because Jonas have been doing notgamey like stuff for 10 years or so now (many of his stuff resemble what people on these forums having been doing). He writes:
Ah, but you see, I find the idea of “notgames” infinitely idiotic and completely alien to everything I’ve ever wanted to achieve as an artist working in the interactive medium. It’s not like film and theatre, it’s like pseudo-artistic European directors (fictional in this case, but such types exist) claiming that their movies are “notfilms” because they are unlike what Hollywood produces.
What I find most striking of this is that "notgame" is referred to (at least in my mind), as genre. Raph Koster also makes a similar statement:
But people in games ARE engaged in a process of understanding games better, and many of the things they are learning are outright absent in notgames. Notgames do not have NP-hard problems or common brain hacks at their central core. Games do. Notgames do not involve the mastery of abstract systems of relationships. Games do.
He even uses the term to make a case for his own beliefs. He also suddenly seem to know a lot about Notgames...
I think this is a bit bad and might be miss-communication and/or wanting it to be what they believe. Notgames has from the start always been a
challenge,
a movement. Did it not even say so on the front page of notgames.org (not seeing it now)? The intention has never been to be a label for the public, but something for designers of videogames to rally up behind. At least I never expect online stores to have a "notegame" label. Or am I alone in thinking like this?
I do not really care if anybody hates with the notgames initiative or think it is a sucky idea. I am just a bit worried that it might for some reason alienate people that actually agree with the movement. I am also a bit afraid that notgames will become a genre, because the word is so exclusive. I mean I see no problem with making a notgame that does contain the mastery of NP-hard problems*, and I hate for it to be used as specific as Raph does. As I see it, all of us are simply gathered with the idea that games can be made without having many of "essential" elements that is such a widespread wisdom in the industry.
So, should be think about changing something or am I just worrying over nothing?
*In simple terms: problems that are hard to solve, but easy to see when the correct solution is reached. Making music a sort of np-hard problem for instance, very hard to come up with a good tune, but when you do, you know you got it. Basically any creative endavour is np-hard, difficult to produce but easy to enjoy.
