I was editing the settings file for the project and decided to get playful with it and actually make it part of the essay.
Just look for the settings.ini file in the game's folder :)
Don't be shy and use this bulletin board in any playful (or non-playful) way you can think of! We can play (or not) this itch page if we set our minds to it!
I'd agree with the ideas that you throw, but the only clear example I see are sandboxes. Those fall right in the terrain you expose, nothing to do until someone comes in and starts playfully messing arround with the environment.
But then, there's the opposite extreme. The videogames where the range of rules is so closely set up that adding or removing rules is clearly a different challenge. Here I include, well, the vast majority of commercial videogames that are desing to be understood and played as a videogame: usual platformers, commercial shooters, typical fighting games... I'd really have troubles in those cases moving the "videogame" identity from the software to the human experience of interaction with said software.
Does this makes sense? If so, why you'd say it is more difficult in that case?
Hi! Thanks for the reply!
I believe new videogames can be born from changing the rules of existing software designed to be a videogame.
For example, DOTA (the famous MOBA) was born from heavily changing Warcraft III's rules and was later developed into a standalone software designed to feature those custom rules. Moreover, DOTA 2's rules were modified once more to create the famous Auto Chess, eventually becoming its own standalone version when they developed software that specifically played by those rules.
I also think in GTA5 roleplaying servers, or Minecraft game modes designed by users. Speedrunning and No-hit runs also feel like their very own genre, which looks to go beyond the rules imposed by the software to play in a specific way and accomplish their own objective (new rules, new objective: new game?).
Of course, you're still using that software that was designed to be a specific videogame to play in a different way. However, it still embodies the idea of the videogame being what happens when a human uses some software to play a particular game, not necessarily the intended by the creators of that software.
It is remarkable because, if we restricted ourselves to the word _games_, i'd instictively buy this. Recovering the very same example from Andar, where one person has thought of some rules over google maps, it is so natural to say "Hey, lets play _a game_, I'm going to drop you somewhere and you have to guess where you are".
Games happen continously with almost every piece of our environment. The components of a game are designed to be part of a game in the smallest of the cases, the only pure intentional part are the rules and predispositi(n of the players. Heck, we have "coche amarillo" as a game and it i'd be very difficult to argue it was not. Playing arround is instinctive.
But then theres board games. Board games are boxes that contain elements and a rigid instruction set you are supposed to follow, and thats the board game. If you intentionally alter it, i feel it falls into the "hey, lets play a game" area, but with thr elements of a board game. It is our inherent push for messing arround making its thing.
I have mainly 2 problems in my own proposal.
A) Games is too broad, and it includes both 1) closed-preagreed games like tackle, dodgeball, volley (?) and whatever we can recognise, and 2) the result of whoever messing arroud with an element of their environment, as that proto-geoguesser we were talking about. I need 2 words for this or I feel I will be going arround in circles. But i dont have them.
B) Videogames are much more than games. Unlike boardgames, where narrative is kind of an excuse for the players to interact and engage with the gamey part, in videogames this balance is all around the place, and they are videogames nonetheless! (as if i had to even say this 馃槄). And not just narrative, but only of their components too, including the gamienesa.
Videogames are (amongst many things) environments, so as people who transit them become more used to being there, they'll tend to create games. Sandboxes inherently use this, proposing a rulebook that lacks abstractions so that players can make their own almost from the very start.
I think this is my core point, that actitude of creating games is just taking the videogame (or its elementa) as an element for building a game on top, and this actitude may be taking in consideration for designing the videogame, therefore im not sure that is _a videogame_...
But maybe this is not as usefull... definitions are fun on themselves but they are more interesting when they are usefull, and im not sure if im reaching somewhere... what do you think?
