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Message: <blockquote data-quote="1Mac" data-source="post: 5861511" data-attributes="member: 48998">He's using character behavior as part of his definition of "gamist", so the fact that there happen to be characters in RPGs is not incidental to the definition. If I'm talking about different guitar tunings, you can't tell me I'm talking about guitars but not strings*."Democracy", or "nihilism," or "French cooking" are all concepts, and while I agree that there is some leeway in how these terms can be used, there are still some limits; otherwise they'd be useless. An autocratic democracy is oxymoronic (Lord Vetinari's "One Man, One Vote"), while "French cooking seismology" is nonsensical.Understandable, as I was focusing on the specific and not the general parts of the competing definition. So to generalize, let's try: Gamist- a design element that breaks immersion by reminding the player they are playing a game. When the OP in the thread I linked to talked about gamism as "abstraction" that "separates the player from their character," it sounds to me as though his problem with gamism is that it breaks immersion. When people say that 4e is very well balanced but is too gamist, I hear them say that as a game it works great, but that the visibility of the balanced mechanics make it harder to get into the game world (which by the way is a totally valid design concern that I am not at all criticizing). I hear them say this, but it clangs against this other common meaning of the word that has nothing to do with too-visible game mechanics. I get that people don't like Edwards, and I don't ask that anyone accept him. But even if you don't, there are still a lot of people that find his terminology useful, and there's no reason to impart different meanings when there are other unambiguous words that have the meaning you want. It's about clarity, awareness, and in a small way, respect.*When flailing for an analogy, the first thing I saw was a guitar. Sorry if the analogy lags.</blockquote>

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