What Makes A Videogame & Does It Matter?
Following Mixtape’s release recently, I have seen some disagreement regarding it being called a videogame. With how broad the medium is for experiences it’s easy for me to dismiss those viewpoints as silly complaints over something that person is simply not interested in, but I still ended up pondering the question of what makes a game a game.
A wide range of opinions can be found in even small groups when it comes to asking people what is required to classify something as a game. Some examples I’ve seen;
- Visual Novels or dialogue-focused games being seen as comics/mangas/books and not “real” games (Doki Doki Literature Club, Disco Elysium).
- Anything that isn’t pure gameplay being seen as needless additions that don’t matter because “gameplay is king”.
- Walking Sims (Firewatch, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, What Remains of Edith Finch) dismissed for being “games where all you do is hold W/Up”.
- Some games being dismissed for not having “real/traditional gameplay” (Heavy Rain, Telltale’s The Walking Dead, Mixtape).
- Lack of failstates or challenges to win/overcome.
For myself I think the flexibility of what a game can be is precisely what makes the medium so interesting. I can find equal fun in the nostalgic trip of Mixtape’s narrative as I can in the high octane and deep combat system of Ninja Gaiden 2. I just want to have fun and memorable experiences made by passionate teams.
When sitting down and thinking about all of this I started asking myself the ultimate question of – Does the argument matter?
Does it matter if games do or don’t meet some arbitrary requirement to be seen as part of the medium of videogames? Is there a genuine use of pondering this question and what good do those conversation have other than allowing someone who likes to categorise items be happy that the correct label has been applied to the correct cereal box, so to speak?
Or, getting real deep into psychoanalysing myself, am I putting too much stock into a topic I should work harder at just ignoring? At which point maybe I should be posting to r/ mentalhealth haha. Some thoughts from others would be great to hear, thanks.