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What does Videogamey mean to you?

Again, the multiplicity of meanings is immaterial- many perfectly good words have dozens of definitions, like "run."

I am running home.
My computer is running.
The Times runs an article about the Oktoberfest next week.
I am running this operation for 4 years now, but I've never seen a guy running that fast.

It is usually clear from the context what definition of run we mean.

But the only context we have when you say "This RPG feels videogamey to me", we are still at the point where we have all this multiple possible interpretations.
 

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And has any 3Ed fan convinced you that 3Ed isn't videogamey? It doesn't seem so.

I just wanted to say that biggest difference between cRPGs and ttRPGs is number of options and freedom you get from a living DM-moderated game. (Though I DM. I want to play, but there isn't anyone else ...) There is no way, short of invention of artificial ingelligence, a cRPG could even get close. So, for me, term "videogamey" used to denote uninutitive level of rules abstraction in game doesn't make sense. There are video games with varying levels of rules abstraction. That means that there are more and less "videogamey" video games.

Call of Duty is a shooter. Simple game. Yet it has less levels of rules abstraction than any ttRPG. It's less "videogamey" than any edition of D&D.
 

"I don't like Nutella because it is hazelnutty."
Funny, I always considered it "chocolaty", which is why I prefer Nusspli, which is more hazelnutty.
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People don't have to ask what it means- they know its a referent to video games. Greater specificity just starts pointless arguments.


Videogamey is broad, not vague.

There's a very sensible reason to be more specific. It is that you're not thinking of every video game yourself. Celebrim earlier in the thread at least specified which video games he's thinking of, and while the ones he used don't make me think of 4e any more than other editions at least he's not being vague about it. Saying it's "videogamey" leaves you open to ridicule, since I suspect you'll find it hard to explain why 4e D&D is like Microsoft Flight Simulator. Which is unquestionably a video game, so not being more specific is equally capable of leading to pointless arguments.
 

There's no real consensus on the term "gamist." That could be another 15-page thread.

Indeed. And yet, it is still a useful term.


RC

-----

This conversation entire reminds me of:

'You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,' he said almost sadly. 'Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read some of those pieces that you write in The Times occasionally. They're good enough, but they're translations. In your heart you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?'

Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, sympathetically he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:

'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.'



RC
 



Videogamey...
Electronic games that adhere to a design have reasons for having (or lacking, or supporting) features that aren't related to the user's enjoyment. This could be due to budget limitations, platform limitations, time constraints... but it can also be associated with the game's "image" or function. This isn't bad- it's a reality.
A big problem many electronic games have (obligatory IMO), is that the designers and developers confuse form/function/purpose. By form, I mean what the product is in a general sense. Function is how the game is supposed to work. Purpose is the objective of play. When developers confuse purpose with form, they fail to recognize the underlying reasons for why people are using their product. This opens up the possibility of making a product that is superficially similar to the form of other games, but may not have the same appeal *cough*Dante's Inferno*cough*.
Confusing function with purpose opens up the risk of overemphasizing the reward parts of a game to the detriment of the excitement of the user. Using a super awesome mega attack stops being so super and awesome after the hundredth time or so. Instant gratification is less satisfying than achievement.
Confusing purpose with function is pretty much the worst in my view. It's being unable to see the big picture in what and how a game is played. It would be like saying the Indy 500 is about going in circles.
So, yeah, "videogamey" is associated with what are in my mind the unappealing aspects of electronic game design. Since alot of the issues that give rise to these problems don't exist in PnP RPG design, my calling a PnP RPG videogamey is in fact a very negative statement about that system.
 

To me, the term 'videogamey' is a perjorative term usually meaning 'childish'. I think you usually see the reference from older fans who lived through the earlier bloom of arcade video games and first generation consoles: games then were extremely simple and repetative, and were very much lacking when you looked at D&D. There was pattern memorization and... that was about it, really.

D&D on the other hand was a complex undocumented mess that required you to spend hours of non-game time on prep time: building and stocking dungeons, new monsters, new spells, new classes, new rules to cover every imaginable situation. Rules for swimming, rules for jumping, rules for hand-to-hand combat. With early D&D, it really was expected that the players and especially the GM do a fair amount of 'homework' as well. Your early adopters mostly came from two or three camps, really: the science nerds, the engineering nerds, and the computer nerds. All of whom thrived on structure, definition of minutia, and imposing rules on a chaotic world.

Honestly, many of you probably can't imagine the detail to which some of this was taken unless you pour through some early issues of Dragon or White Dwarf.

It was also a crapload of work. Most people don't like work as a rule, so the generations of gamers that came after the early adopters looked askance at all the minutia early DM's were very much into. People that were frustrated with the unclear inital rules but also were not going to put up with reading page after page of rules on how to conduct a seige, with stats for each type of seige engine used in a particular historical period.

There comes a time in every hobby when the early adopters look down on the people that come after. They were the fore-runners, they usually had to do a lot of extra work that later generations decide simply is not worth the time and effort. The latter generations invent new ways of achieving the same result that usually don't involve nearly the amount of effort, either in terms of actual work or of participation.

So, you get a split: the early adopters for whom system mastery was key, and the latter groups who have little or no need to master the system, because those same groups have already streamlined it and smoothed out all the bumps. Consecutive generations smooth out further bumps. The early adopters look down on the latter generations with, literally, that whole 'we walked to school in the snow - and liked it' attitude. They look at the simpler, clearer rules or the attitude that we simply don't need rules for fifteen different types of polearm or sword that all vary from each other primarily in weight or something, and feel this kind of slow burn.

They put in all this work and now it's just being ignored in favor of something much simpler, regardless of the fact that simpler might simply work better. Children like things that are simple because that's all that their limited minds can comprehend. Put that together with many early adopters who are convinced that D&D is for those with superior intelligence, and you're going to get a lot of accusations of simpler play being only for those who can't handle 'real D&D'.

'Videogamey' simply puts a convenient face on it, as they lump in the idea that video games spoonfeed content to children who can't handle reading rules and making the effort to spend nights in the library looking up coin weights from the fifteenth century because God knows D&D's coin weights are just completely out of whack.
 

Indeed. And yet, it is still a useful term.


RC

-----

This conversation entire reminds me of:

'You haven't a real appreciation of Newspeak, Winston,' he said almost sadly. 'Even when you write it you're still thinking in Oldspeak. I've read some of those pieces that you write in The Times occasionally. They're good enough, but they're translations. In your heart you'd prefer to stick to Oldspeak, with all its vagueness and its useless shades of meaning. You don't grasp the beauty of the destruction of words. Do you know that Newspeak is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year?'

Winston did know that, of course. He smiled, sympathetically he hoped, not trusting himself to speak. Syme bit off another fragment of the dark-coloured bread, chewed it briefly, and went on:

'Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.'
So the discussion is Orwelly? Or Big Brotherian? :p

A little more seriously - the attempt to avoid the term videogame is not to limit the abilities to communicate, but to improve them. To clarify what you are saying. Newspeak is all about removing badungood words so people cannot express rebellous thoughts commit thought crimes.

Newspseak would be saying that you can only use "videogamey" to express your dislike of an Roleplaying Game, thus making it impossible for you to desribe what exactly is wrong with it. The thought crime would be saying: "I don't like a system with pre-packed combat actions like powers, as they tend to limit creativity as people only try to use the powers given to them, instead of imagining themselves in the situation desribed in the game." A little more wordy than necessary perhaps, but it also explains why Newspeak might prefer "videogamey" as a term - our person in question is now restricted from describing the game as related to "creativity" and "imagination", two certainly ungood terms that might give the population ungood ideas lead to thought crimes.
 

Into the Woods

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