What is "gamist"?

[tomBitonti]

That definition of -ist helps not at all; gamist could mean someone who likes gaming, or who hates it.

Except that, for usual language usage (meaning, everyday talk), those meanings are the ones that most people will use.

You could preface a discussion with a qualifier, say, "A discussion of the term Gamist, as used by person X in their paper Y." Then you can have Gamist mean what X had it mean.

Otherwise, you are stuck with everyday usage.

I'd say, since the context of the initial question is the enworld boards, and folks here use Gamist in both the GNS sense, and in the everyday usage sense, that it would be fair to interpret the initial question as "Hey, enworld users, what do you usually mean when you write Gamist?" That provides room for both the everyday meaning and the specific GNS meaning.

TomB

 

[Janx]

When I use the term it's from the meanings I learned before Edwards and the Forgies started redefining them for their silly theory shenanigans.

Gamist: Focused on being a game. Mechanics and play are often strong abstractions, condensing many different elements into simple mechanics. Not because it makes the rules easier or fade behind some other element, but because it makes it a better game. Promoting pawns or lots of chess fiddle bit are gamist.

that sounds like a definition that fits the word.

A pawn converting to a queen when it reaches the other side is a gamist rule.

It doesn't simulate anything, because in real life a soldier who reaches the other side doesn't become a queen, at best it gets promoted to the next rank. If you lost your queen, the next highest ranking piece would be promoted to a queen in a simulation of a military structure.

It also doesn't tell a story (Narrativist?). At best, there's the story of how the pawn crossed the battlefield, but once it got there, there's little fluffery or explanation as to how or why it became a queen.

A gamist rule, therefore serves only the game and has little to do with simulation or telling a story.


That's my take, based on your definition.

I care not what the Forge or GNS actually says.

 

[prosfilaes]

Because they used it first. Don't move the goal posts.

They didn't use it first; as I established in my post, the word dates at least back to 1986 where it meant gamer.

You claimed he got to define the word because he made it up. You were wrong.

That's not exactly what I claimed.

Except that, for usual language usage (meaning, everyday talk), those meanings are the ones that most people will use.

Then they won't be able to communicate, since those meanings cover such a range as to be, as a group, meaningless.

In any case, that's an unproven assertion for "gamist" and easily disprovable in the general case. A Baptist is not one who baptizes; it's one who belong to a particular group of people known as the Baptists.

Otherwise, you are stuck with everyday usage.

You've failed to establish what that is. Looking at Google Books again, the hits for "gamist", after we've filtered out poly'gamist and friends, refer directly to Edwards or refer to Mäkelä (who used GNS theory). American studies: Volume 21 uses a gamist, simulationist, dramatist breakdown, but their definition of gamist seems pretty close to GNS theory's. One seems to use Gamist for a made-up fictional race or group. I see no evidence that what you call "everyday usage" has been used in print, outside two magazine references in the 1980s that used gamist for gamer and gamemaker respectively.

 

[tomBitonti]

Then they won't be able to communicate, since those meanings cover such a range as to be, as a group, meaningless.

In any case, that's an unproven assertion for "gamist" and easily disprovable in the general case. A Baptist is not one who baptizes; it's one who belong to a particular group of people known as the Baptists.

You've failed to establish what that is. Looking at Google Books again, the hits for "gamist", after we've filtered out poly'gamist and friends, refer directly to Edwards or refer to Mäkelä (who used GNS theory). American studies: Volume 21 uses a gamist, simulationist, dramatist breakdown, but their definition of gamist seems pretty close to GNS theory's. One seems to use Gamist for a made-up fictional race or group. I see no evidence that what you call "everyday usage" has been used in print, outside two magazine references in the 1980s that used gamist for gamer and gamemaker respectively.

Technically, "Gamist" doesn't mean anything. It's not properly an English word.

We can attempt to find a meaning by use of normal language constructs. We can look to specific (but non-standard) meanings per usage by specific groups. We can try to decide between several possible meanings by context.

But, you are correct: Because of the lack of meaning, without clarification, the word is useless (un-useful for communication). I would avoid using it.

As regards the original question, the basic answer that I can think of is, "The meaning depends on the context". Additional detail must be added to the question before a good answer can be provided.

TomB

 

[Umbran]

Technically, "Gamist" doesn't mean anything. It's not properly an English word.

We can attempt to find a meaning by use of normal language constructs. We can look to specific (but non-standard) meanings per usage by specific groups. We can try to decide between several possible meanings by context.

I think the classification you might be looking for is "jargon". "Gamist" is jargon. And, like any jargon, its use varies by community.

And you know, that's okay. People here seem to try to pooh-pooh on the use on this basis. Meanwhile, "hit points" is also jargon - the term means diddly outside gaming circles. Not all games have them or use the term, and in the ones that do, they're slightly different. But we seem to manage.

 

[1Mac]

I actually don't think that's true. "Simulationist" is frequently used to mean "gritty or modelling/trying to model closely the real world" - or even just "having fiddly, granular systems intended to inject a feeling of verisimilitude" - and "narrativist" can (be intended to) mean "playing mainly in amateur dramatics mode, speaking and expressing 'as the character'" or "following a GM-scripted story, either via player acquiescence or by player "choices" only giving the illusion of real choice". None of those are the meanings ascribed by GNS.

They kind of are though. It's what I meant by the common definitions being "congruent"—not "identical"—to the more jargon-y GNS definitions. GNS simulationism is about internal consistency in the game world, which are enhanced by granularity (solid rules for social conflict are more consistent than the GM winging it) and real-world realism (unless we have a setting- or genre-specific reason to believe otherwise, we tend to assume the game world functions like the real world). Likewise GNS narrativism is about interacting with dramatic themes, which lends itself to "getting in character" in a way the other modes don't (as an aside, your second definition sounds a lot like railroading, which I've never heard described as narrativist).

Now, imagine a gamer who really likes the tactical wargame aspect of D&D. A player who loves working on optimizations, who likes playing with the fiddly-bit rules at runtime - the player for whom this sort of rules-focused activity is a form of play they actively enjoy. When this player sets down at the table, he or she is not really worried about the plot of the session, or whether there's a reasonable monster ecology - the player is there to get to the fight scenes and kick some monsters around.

This is also congruent to GNS gamism, which is about accomplishment in the game world. The player plays to be an awesome monster slayer; that's a gamist goal in the Edwards sense. The fact that he uses system mastery to achieve this is an interesting but tangental issue, and the rules don't have to be at all chess-like for this to be true.

A "gamelike agenda", to use my preferred word choice, would be if someone like you describe also insists that the rules be more like chess, or WoW, or any other game, for the express purpose of pulling him out of the game world and reminding him he is playing a game. That would be very strange, and at any rate incongruent with the GNS sense of gamism.

 

[1Mac]

Well, other than that my personal experience suggests to me that it's extremely hard to impossible to address more than one agenda at the same time,...

Important tangent: This much more limited claim is what GNS theory actually purports. It does not claim that no one or no game can express more than one stance. If a game or player tends toward certain stances—gamism, for example—, then that player or game can be described as "gamist", but that doesn't mean the game can't have simulationist elements, or that the player never makes a narrativist decision.

 

[Umbran]

Important tangent: This much more limited claim is what GNS theory actually purports.

Depends on what you read.

Theories, not being sentient, can't actually purport anything. People, writing about theories, can purport. In a sense, there is no single GNS theory - there's the agglomeration of writings about the ideas by various authors at different times, and the entire collection is not entirely self-consistent.

I have seen writing by Edwards asserting that a particular gamer really, deep underneath, really only has one stance - Not just of the moment, but in general - and any other stance they *seem* to take is merely a misunderstood attempt to achieve their One True Stance.

Did Edwards always say that? I dunno. Probably not. Let us assume that the more flexible one came along later. Shall we take the later one as the "real theory"?

Well, by that logic, we should take his most recent thoughts on it as the "real theory", right? But, he *abandoned* GNS, in favor of The Big Model. That indicated the "real GNS theory" is that GNS theory isn't the theory to use!

Somewhere, we pick and choose bits and call it "the theory". But we may not all pick the same bits.

 

[Balesir]

Important tangent: This much more limited claim is what GNS theory actually purports. It does not claim that no one or no game can express more than one stance. If a game or player tends toward certain stances—gamism, for example—, then that player or game can be described as "gamist", but that doesn't mean the game can't have simulationist elements, or that the player never makes a narrativist decision.

Yeah, I know that, but one of the problems is that the "theory" has become "whatever anyone has written about GNS", and that covers a lot of noodling and simply unsupportable stuff. You have to deal with this stuff as the general "public" envisage it when talking about it in public - which makes it, like much of science, not really worth discussing in public.

Even the "one gamer really prefers one agenda" idea was really just an supplementary speculation - and one that I think is bunk since I know I can really enjoy at least two. The usefulness I find in the classifications, myself, is that it allows me to identify what agenda - what "sort of fun" - I might expect out of a game going in. This sort of "self management of expectations" I find helpful.

Well, by that logic, we should take his most recent thoughts on it as the "real theory", right? But, he *abandoned* GNS, in favor of The Big Model. That indicated the "real GNS theory" is that GNS theory isn't the theory to use!

Well, the "Big Model" is a superset of GNS - i.e. it includes GNS as a (fairly small) part of it, so I don't think that's really true.

 

[Umbran]

Well, the "Big Model" is a superset of GNS - i.e. it includes GNS as a (fairly small) part of it, so I don't think that's really true.

My understanding of the Big Model is that this isn't true. He reuses a few concepts, yes. He also reuses many terms, but redefines them. Ultimately, what is in the Big Model is *not* GNS as it was stated prior to the Big Model. It is at best yet another variant of GNS, and to my eye a rather strong departure from GNS, when taken in the Big Model's context.

Your interpretation may vary...