“Victory and loss conditions” was an overly-narrow phrasing of what I was trying to use it to express, which is why I started saying “measurable feedback” a while ago at this point, after having been asked what my specific criteria were for a game. Texas hold ‘em has a goal, which is to have the strongest hand among players who haven’t folded by the time the final betting round is over. The measurable feedback is the contents of the remaining players’ hands. That’s how you know if you won or lost the hand.
So playing a game of texas hold 'em is playing a single hand ony by your definition? That is, you'd say that someone has won a game of Texas Hold Em if they win a hand, and their goal is just to win single hands, with no regard to how much profit they make on those hands? This is grossly at odds with how most people actually approach (what I'd call) the game. In a cash game people typically have the goal of winning as much money as possible and don't care about single hands, in a tournament people care about placing in the tournament, in a fun game people often just care about collecting as many of whatever is being bet as possibe.
So no I don't think you've adequately pointed out what the goal of Texas Hold em is.
The goal of chess is to maneuver the opponent’s king into a position where they are in check and have no legal moves they can make to get out of check (a position known as “checkmate”). The feedback is the board position and pieces/pawns remaining of each color. Chess players and scholars have actually developed a whole point system for this.
So if I win by running out my opponent's clock in any form of timed chess I failed at the goal of chess, even though people will say that I've won and I'll get the points for winning if I'm in a scoring system? If I'm playing Armageddon chess and force a draw as black, I've failed to achieve the goal even though I've won? Note that the FIDE, the internationally recognized body governing chess, uses a round of armageddon chess as the tiebreaker round in it's World Cup, so they clearly believe that it's chess even if you come up with a definition that doesn't include it. And then there are variants of chess where there is no check mechanic at all (so no checkmate).
No, I don't think "Chess" actually has a single goal, so is not a game by your definition.
Kill Alduin. The measurable feedback is provided by the context of the main questline. The game also contains a sandbox in which players can set their own goals to pursue, but the main goal of killing Alduin is always present, that’s why we say we “beat the game” when we get to that point. I can’t remember if Skyrim rolls credits after you complete the main quest, but that’s standard in most CRPGs, because completing the main quest is the standard goal of such games.
What determines that that is the goal of Skyrim? I sat down to play it a few weeks ago and didn't touch the main quest, and had no intention of completing it, so it's odd to tell me that was the goal of what I was playing. There are streams of people who do various Skyrim challenges where they play to achieve a specific goal, like 'kill every Jarl as quickly as possible', and even sites that track people setting records for speedrunning various non-Alduin objectives. There are people that mod the game so that the main quest doesn't automatically even show up, and play entire runs as a regular person in Skyrim.
You personally can have 'complete the main quest' as a goal, but it's clearly not the goal of everyone who sits down to play the game, and (like D&D) people routinely set their own goals, or play without a specific objective beyond 'enjoy playing'. So saying that it is the goal of Skyrim, which only about 31% of players have ever achived, is directly at odds with most player's experience of the (what-I-call-a) game.
I mean, it depends on the patch or mod. Arguably the Dragonborn DLC is another game from vanilla Skyrim, with its own goal of killing Mirak. But, if I install a mod that gives me higher resolution textures or something, no, that’s not a different game. That doesn’t affect the parameters of goal, restrictions, uncertain outcome, or measurable feedback. Very few mods change the goal of completing the main quest by killing Alduin. Some major overhaul mods like the Skywind and Skyblivion projects definitely constitute different games (or will, if they’re ever completed anyway).
Well, if you’re talking about games like Skyrim that contain both a traditional game and a sandbox, it means you’ve beaten the game and are now playing in the sandbox. If you’re talking about games like, I don’t know, God of War 2018 that are entirely or almost entirely linear but still allow you to keep playing after completing them… that’s still just making your own fun, comparable to sandbox play, but with a very small and limited sandbox, which is why games like this usually provide “new game plus” options (and God of War 2018 was initially heavily criticized for not including). If you’re talking about games like the mainline Pokemon games with dedicated postgame content, the postgame is effectively its own, smaller game you have to win the main game to unlock the ability to play.
So if I take this all together, it sounds like you're saying quite clearly that Skyrim is not a game, it's a collection of games and 'things that people would call games but aren't actually games by your definition' like sandbox mode. If I play DLC, I'm playing a different game. If I mod the game, I might be playing a different game, but it's not clear what the rules are for it becoming a new game. If I'm 'making my own fun' in what I'd call a game, I'm not playing a game by your defiition. The mainline Pokemon 'games' are not actually games by your definition, since they contain at least two separate games.
I don't see how one can interpret this in any way other than "Skyrim is not a game".
No, that’s just a game you’re cheating at. That’s why we used to call them cheat codes.
This is a tangent, but how are you defining cheating exactly? What part of Skyrim says explicitly that ' if you hit ~, then type 'tim' and hit enter' you're cheating at the game, and what enumerates which keyboard combinations count as cheating and which are just playing? If I install a mod that adds a 'story mode' difficulty where I can't die and play that, am I also cheating? What if I play a game like "Death Stranding" that has story mode where you can't die built in and select that, is that cheating? Normally when one talks about cheating in a game one talks about violating the rules of the game, but you're clearly using a different definition.
I don't see how playing a game according to it's rules consitutes cheating, and skyrim does not programatically prevent keyboard input or have a set of listed rules stating what keyboard input is acceptable and what is not. It's also really weird if inputting things into the game through it's controls is 'cheating' but installing files that change the way the game works (modding) isn't.
