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amen to this.

I think this is a good example of why I don't like Extra Credits. Defining "game" doesn't stifle the medium anymore than defining "movie" or "novel" does. The issue is that not everything that's interactive is a "game." And that's not to say that things that don't fall into the definition of "game" are bad. But by Extra Cedits's definition of "interactive experience" all Blu-Rays count, because I can interact with it. I can make everyone stop, go backwards, go really fast, etc. Sure, at no point can I be considered to have lost, but I can interact with it. To me, the only reason we're even having this discussion is because some developers have these experiments they made. Programs they wrote for story telling that don't fit "visual novel" but aren't "games." And the programs may be good in their own right. But the developers are scared that no one will be interested in them, so they try to lump it in with video games, because they already have an established audience.

This is also a thing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cyx6nWdFas

Jesus Lord this thread is alread getting wordy I don't think games need to have a failure state. Or, well, a "classic" video game will have failure states, but it doesn't have to have those. A game that is made to be played, with possibly some message behind it, will have failures states otherwise it's boring to play it. However, I also think the interactivity of games can be used for more artsy stuff as well; most of the time this is done very simply in little flash games. You could probably argue that these aren't real games and I wouldn't be able to deny that, because it's simply true; these art-games like Stanley Parable are not classic games that use reward and punishment for enjoyment. So I'm not even gonna argue about that. What I do want to talk about however is how these art-games for lack of a better word use the properties of games to give their message. This is something both classic games and art-games very very often do wrong. The story is told through cutscenes or big chunks of text that are just completely cut off from the gameplay. Games that do do it right are for example Braid and Spec Ops: the Line; large parts of their story is told during the gameplay, and because you take the actions yourself this makes the message a thousand times stronger than if they were just read to you. This is also why Antichamber is my GOTY and will stay in my top five for a very long time as it is a pinnacle of storytelling through gameplay. Apart from the little cryptic hints they give you, nothing is ever explained or told through cutscenes or text. And although Antichamber has very little story, the little it has is told with so much power that it left a much, much larger expression on me than anything I've ever played: (this next bit has spoilers for Antichamber)

I'm not necessarily trying to defend Gone Home here, but that's not quite right IMO. Many simple puzzle games have no failure state, just a "not solved yet" state. I was going to define game like Insectan, but XY has a point. Games do have goals, though, and rules you have to follow while completing those goals. Gone Home doesn't have a goal beyond a goal you could have in a novel or movie, and it has an option to turn the closest thing it has to rules off. It's not a great analogy, but calling Gone Home a video game is like calling War and Peace a CYOA book. It's similar, but it's missing a fundamental detail.

Not as far as I know. I havent seen the live version yet, should be on the PTS soon.     Also, for fun, I made a time lapse strip of the helmet as I went along: Enjoy.

I'm not necessarily trying to defend Gone Home here, but that's not quite right IMO. Many simple puzzle games have no failure state, just a "not solved yet" state.

I locked it because all the serious posts were intertwined with shitposts, and the serious posts tended to be directed at the shitposts which were directed at the serious posts and it became less of a debate and more of a clusterfuck of attacks.   Bit more on topic, here's some food for thought. You don't have to like it, but it's what came to mind the instant we were asking what a game was.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=blj91KLOvZQ