{"id":33,"date":"2019-12-30T14:38:10","date_gmt":"2019-12-30T14:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.usnh.edu\/creatinggames\/chapter\/weaknesses-of-definitions\/"},"modified":"2023-06-07T17:37:58","modified_gmt":"2023-06-07T17:37:58","slug":"weaknesses-of-definitions","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.usnh.edu\/creatinggames\/chapter\/weaknesses-of-definitions\/","title":{"raw":"Weaknesses of Definitions","rendered":"Weaknesses of Definitions"},"content":{"raw":"<p data-adtags-visited=\"true\">Which of the earlier definitions is correct?<\/p>\n<p data-adtags-visited=\"true\">None of them are perfect. If you try to come up with your own definition, it will likely be imperfect as well. Here are a few common edge cases that commonly cause problems with definitions:<\/p>\n\n<ul>\n \t<li><strong>Puzzles<\/strong>, such as crossword puzzles, Sudoku, Rubik\u2019s Cube, or logic puzzles. Are these games? It depends on the definition. Salen &amp; Zimmerman say they are a\u00a0<em>subset\u00a0<\/em>of games where there is a set of correct answers. Costikyan says they are not games, although they may be contained within a game.<\/li>\n \t<li><strong>Role-playing games<\/strong>, such as\u00a0<em>Dungeons &amp; Dragons<\/em>. They have the word \u201cgame\u201d right in the title, yet they are often not considered games (for example, because they often have no final outcome or resolution, no winning or losing).<\/li>\n \t<li><strong>Choose-your-own-adventure books<\/strong>. These are not generally thought of as games; you say you are \u201creading\u201d a book, not \u201cplaying\u201d it. And yet, it fits most of the criteria for most definitions of a game. To make things even more confusing, if you take one of these books, add a tear-out \u201ccharacter sheet\u201d with some numeric stats, include \u201cskill checks\u201d on some pages where you roll a die against a stat, and call it an \u201cadventure module\u201d instead of a \u201cchoose-your-own-adventure book,\u201d we would now call it a game!<\/li>\n \t<li><strong>Stories<\/strong>. Are games stories? On the one hand, most stories are linear, while games tend to be more dynamic. On the other hand, most games have some kind of story or narrative in them; we even have professional story writers that work on multi-million-dollar video game projects. And even beyond that, a player can tell a story about\u00a0<em>their<\/em>\u00a0game experience (\u201clet me tell you about this Chess game I played last night, it was awesome\u201d). For now, keep in mind that the concepts of\u00a0<strong>story\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0<strong>game<\/strong>\u00a0are related in many ways, and we\u2019ll explore this more thoroughly later in the course.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<span style=\"font-size: 8pt\">This chapter was adapted from <a href=\"https:\/\/gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com\/2009\/06\/29\/level-1-overview-what-is-a-game\/\">Level 1<\/a> of Ian Schreiber's <em>Game Design Concepts<\/em> course.<\/span>","rendered":"<p data-adtags-visited=\"true\">Which of the earlier definitions is correct?<\/p>\n<p data-adtags-visited=\"true\">None of them are perfect. If you try to come up with your own definition, it will likely be imperfect as well. Here are a few common edge cases that commonly cause problems with definitions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Puzzles<\/strong>, such as crossword puzzles, Sudoku, Rubik\u2019s Cube, or logic puzzles. Are these games? It depends on the definition. Salen &amp; Zimmerman say they are a\u00a0<em>subset\u00a0<\/em>of games where there is a set of correct answers. Costikyan says they are not games, although they may be contained within a game.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Role-playing games<\/strong>, such as\u00a0<em>Dungeons &amp; Dragons<\/em>. They have the word \u201cgame\u201d right in the title, yet they are often not considered games (for example, because they often have no final outcome or resolution, no winning or losing).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Choose-your-own-adventure books<\/strong>. These are not generally thought of as games; you say you are \u201creading\u201d a book, not \u201cplaying\u201d it. And yet, it fits most of the criteria for most definitions of a game. To make things even more confusing, if you take one of these books, add a tear-out \u201ccharacter sheet\u201d with some numeric stats, include \u201cskill checks\u201d on some pages where you roll a die against a stat, and call it an \u201cadventure module\u201d instead of a \u201cchoose-your-own-adventure book,\u201d we would now call it a game!<\/li>\n<li><strong>Stories<\/strong>. Are games stories? On the one hand, most stories are linear, while games tend to be more dynamic. On the other hand, most games have some kind of story or narrative in them; we even have professional story writers that work on multi-million-dollar video game projects. And even beyond that, a player can tell a story about\u00a0<em>their<\/em>\u00a0game experience (\u201clet me tell you about this Chess game I played last night, it was awesome\u201d). For now, keep in mind that the concepts of\u00a0<strong>story\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0<strong>game<\/strong>\u00a0are related in many ways, and we\u2019ll explore this more thoroughly later in the course.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 8pt\">This chapter was adapted from <a href=\"https:\/\/gamedesignconcepts.wordpress.com\/2009\/06\/29\/level-1-overview-what-is-a-game\/\">Level 1<\/a> of Ian Schreiber&#8217;s <em>Game Design Concepts<\/em> course.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"menu_order":6,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"class_list":["post-33","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry"],"part":24,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.usnh.edu\/creatinggames\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.usnh.edu\/creatinggames\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.usnh.edu\/creatinggames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.usnh.edu\/creatinggames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.usnh.edu\/creatinggames\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/33\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.usnh.edu\/creatinggames\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/33\/revisions\/34"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.usnh.edu\/creatinggames\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/24"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.usnh.edu\/creatinggames\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/33\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.usnh.edu\/creatinggames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.usnh.edu\/creatinggames\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.usnh.edu\/creatinggames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.usnh.edu\/creatinggames\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}