What on earth does "video-gamey" mean?

[The Little Raven]

D'OH!

Obviously, it's been years...

That's cool, it's been a long time since I've needed 30 extra lives, myself. However, I just happened to be wearing my Konami Code t-shirt to work today.

 

[Stoat]

There's really nothing to argue about. You can think my opinion's wrong. that's fine. But you can't objectively prove my opinion's wrong any more than I can prove that yours is wrong. It's a waste of time to try.

Sure. Which is why just saying "4E feels like a video game." Doesn't do anything to further the discussion. It's equivalent to saying, "I don't like it, just because."

I've seen a number of folks throw the term "video-gamey" around regarding first 3.X and now 4E. Usually, I don't understand what they mean. For example, maybe two years ago, some poster kept saying that 3E's jump skill was "too much like a videogame." AFAIR, he never bothered to explain the assertion, and I could never get my head around what he meant.

Like the OP, I'm genuinely curious what folks mean when they make this criticism (and it's always presented as a criticism). If the answer is "It's a subjective opinion," that's fine, but surely there must be some basis for that opinion?

 

[pawsplay]

Sure. Which is why just saying "4E feels like a video game." Doesn't do anything to further the discussion. It's equivalent to saying, "I don't like it, just because."

No, it's not. Although it implies "I don't like it," it doesn't state that, or even say that it being videogamey is the source of dislike. And it's not "just because," it's a reason.

"D&D 4e seems less like what I'm used to BECAUSE the game play and aesthetics remind me of a videogame moreso than previous editions."

It's a perfectly logical statement, and although it cannot be proven, it can be supported with examples.

 

[The Little Raven]

If the answer is "It's a subjective opinion," that's fine, but surely there must be some basis for that opinion?

According to a post by Lizard over on RPG.NET, it's not the claimant's job to explain his opinion, it's the opposition's job.

 

[Scribble]

According to a post by Lizard over on RPG.NET, it's not the claimant's job to explain his opinion, it's the opposition's job.

man that would make writting term papers SO much easier! All you'd hav to do is state your thesis, and then the Prof would have to write a whole paper against it!

WORD!

 

[Rechan]

Actually, Baldur's Gate isn't particularly videogamey. It tried to stick as close to pen and paper rules as it could.

The things I think people (including sometimes myself) mean about it being more videogamey:

1) Everything is about combat now.

Please, tell me what wasn't focused on combat with the 2e PHB.

Or how about 3e? Craft and Perform checks? Really, that's not something to hang your hat on when you talk about non-combat stuff. "I make a sailor check to stay on my feet during the storm." "Okay." End of non-combat usage. Or, "I use craft (Armorsmithing) and my Craft Magical Items to... make a magical item revolving around combat." "Okay."

D&D has always been about "Killing monster, getting XP, get loot to kill bigger monsters." See: OD&D. Look at your character sheet; how much of that stuff is related to combat versus non-combat?

As others have pointed out: Utility spells, rituals, skill challenges.

2) I think the powers system draws a lot of these complaints. "More Abilities = More Fun"

You know what I think? Doing the same thing over and over and over, having perhaps 2-3 options, is "video-gamey" because in console games, you're only punching one or two buttons constantly.

This is even more evident when you have a fighter who takes Improved Trip and uses an improved trip weapon and spends every fight tripping and tripping and tripping. He's button mashing.

Hell, I would say that getting the right feats and items, "building" your character to be able to do one or two tricks is overtly video-gamey.

Not to mention that D&D has a "Health Meter" (Hit points), and that its "Levels" are pure Video Game stock; you kill enough monsters that you "ding" and all your stats improve? How is that not video-gamey? Hell, back in the early days of 3e I remember a "Diablo d20" book.

3) Agro control abilities. Meh.

As others have said, it's not "Aggro". It may be arbitrary mechanics to encourage monsters to do certain things, but video games do not have a monopoly on arbitrary gamist rules.

 

[mlund]

It plays too much like a video-game is lazy, vague, and dismissive short-hand. Site specific examples of video games and features that are exclusive to video games rather than general game theory if you want to make a valid point. Video games cover an extremely broad set of mechanics and implementations.

Catan Online vs. World of Warcraft vs. Knights of the Old Republic vs. Angband mark some huge gaps that lend themselves to generalization.

Heck, most of the early video games that built up into MMO games were straight rips from D&D and D&D-style systems. Of course, we've seen more revised released of Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior franchises then we've seen of D&D.

All this talk about aggro-control being "video gamey" seems extremely silly to me. For 30 years war games and RPGs have struggled with the innate problem of simulating simultaneous actions in turn-based games. When everyone is acting at once, people can react to one-another's movements, blocking one's path around say - the fighter - to get to the Wizard. In turn-based games people end-around the Phalanx all the time and head straight to the city.

Come on, people, the old end-around has been a problem for decades for everything from Diplomacy to Squad Leader to D&D 3.X to the latest-and-greatest edition of Civilization.

In games where it was a critical flaw, game designers have been trying to spot-weld some sort of fix into the system - and it usually failed. I remember weird machine gun rules with Squad Leader and Overwatch Tokens in Warhammer 40K. Attacks of Opportunity were a step in the right direction in 3.X, but they still fell short. Marking by the Defender Class is an upgrade of the Attack of Opportunity principle from 3.X - it does not alter the "A.I." of the "Mobs" like a modern MMO ability would. Instead it presents a reactive physical threat from the Defender character that the Monster (played by the DM) has to cope with and make decisions around.

That level of reasoning and motive is beyond what MMORPG logic is capable of. That's because 4E is D&D, with a Dungeon Master supplying the motivations, personalities, and priorities of the monsters and NPCs in a responsive and adaptive fashion.

- Marty Lund

 

[WizarDru]

I'm not trying to use some secret code when i say that.

I'm not trying to obscure the issue. It's not some "sloppy shorthand".

I mean exactly what I say: 4.0 feels and plays like a videogame. It's not a value judgement. It's just my opinion about the game. If you like videogames then it's a good thing. If, like me, you don't, then it's not a good thing.

Therein lies the rub, however: saying it plays like a video game is a terribly imprecise statement to folks like myself, who have been playing video games for longer than we've been playing D&D (in my case, over 30 years). Is Wizardry a video game? How about Wizardry VIII? World of Warcraft plays significantly differently from Viking, even though both have leveling up procedures, combat moves and an item and gold system. God of War is a video game, but I don't think it plays like D&D very much. Call of Duty 4 has a leveling and perks system along with weapon choice and Mass Effect features NPCs, skill trees, leveling, quests and even alignments. Why even Soul Calibur II featured a quest mode with different weapons and the ability to improve your weapons over time.

Even just limiting ourselves to the RPG and action RPG realm, we have games as diverse as Knights of the Old Republic, D&D Online, City of Heroes, Okami, Resident Evil 4, Final Fantasy and Penny Arcade: On the Rain Slick Precipice of Darkness. To a video game fan such as myself, claiming that D&D plays like a video-game is so imprecise as to not really hold a lot of meaning. To you, it may be very obvious what you mean...but without knowing what YOU think 'plays like a video game' means, the phrase lacks any sort of clarity to a general discussion.

If I say that D&D feels very 'literary' to me, what information does that convey to someone who doesn't know me? Does it mean I think it's very verbose? That it presents storytelling like a novel? That it simply evokes the mood of fiction I like? that it's overly intellectualized? The term 'video-gamey', like the term 'anime', is a loaded term that is usually used as a derogatory, but without enough detail to lend it weight. It is a stand in for 'art' or 'pornography', in that the viewer knows it when he sees it, but the definition is often very subjective, making it hard to use as a classifier.

The funniest thing about it is that we have this conversation EVERY SIX MONTHS, but with a new edition, suddenly 3.0/3.5 stopped being "video-gamey" and 4e appears to have taken it's place. My .sig reference comes from a previous discussion wherein the label was applied to 3e. And I still maintain the truth of it; most video games garnered many of their core underlying concepts from D&D.

This is not to say that I don't think the claim has merit; I do. Just like 3E made me think they'd incorporated stuff from GURPS and HERO, 4e is clearly influenced by the success of systems like WoW and other MMOs. I personally don't think that makes it play like a video-game (any more than having hit points does, for example), but that's a subjective opinion.

I just simply think that without having a clear definition of what 'video-gamey' is that we can all agree upon, it's not a terribly use label. YMMV.

 

[Gallo22]

This has been a drum I've been banging on for a while. Heck, I did that whole Anime Challenge thing in my sig precisely for this sort of thing.

All of these so-called criticisms - animey, video-gamey, board-gamey, card-gamey whatever - are sloppy short hands that only serve to obscure any point you are trying to make. The terms, in and of themselves, are so vague that they can mean anything you like.

I remember some time ago being able to apply the term Pokemount to Shadowfax and then watch the head explosions of the Tolkien fans.

If you have a valid criticsm of a game, make it. There are lots of things you can criticise in any edition. 4e is certainly not immune to that. But, relying on vague, overwrought terminology that clouds the issue doesn't actually serve any purpose other than hot buttoning a topic and turning it into yet another edition war.

Instead of saying, "X edition is video-gamey" (after all, this is hardly a new criticism), refer specifically to those elements you don't like. If you find the concept of aggro distasteful, talk about that. If you think there is too strong of a focus on combat, say, "I think X edition is too strongly focused on combat" rather than trying to score points on the Internet.

I have a valid criticsm...It feels like a video game! Nuff said.

 

[Rechan]

To a video game fan such as myself, claiming that D&D plays like a video-game is so imprecise as to not really hold a lot of meaning. To you, it may be very obvious what you mean...but without knowing what YOU think 'plays like a video game' means, the phrase lacks any sort of clarity to a general discussion.

This, with a bag of chips.