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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1899396" data-attributes="member: 3146">I don't think that level of reductionism is particularly insightful. One could just as easily say that success in a p&p/tabletop gameis defined by moving the right bits of matter in the right sequence at the right time (which should cover both making noises and rolling dice). However, I don't think that would be adequate basis to maintain that both monopoly and Amber are fundamentally the same.Not exactly true either. Even if you reduce the concept of game to the concept of a complex puzzle (which I think obscures very real and significant differences between, for instance Tetris and Baldur's Gate II), it's simply not true that the sequence of proper button pushing is determined ahead of time. Rather, the effects that button pushing can create are defined ahead of time. Unlike early games like Ikari Warriors, where the bad guys would come from a predetermined location and follow very simple instructions and a predetermined sequence of manuevers could potentially win the game (though, even then it's highly unlikely that the designers predetermined every possible sequence of button pushing that could win the game), a game like Tetris creates an environment that can be manipulated in preset manners, but itself is random enough that no preset pattern of button mashing could win the game. In games like Baldur's Gate II, it is almost certain that the designers did not even think of every possible combination, much less predetermine which possible button combinations could prove victorious.So, it's quite possible to come up with a solution that the designers didn't forsee. It's just not possible to do it with tools they didn't create. That's a significant difference. (It's not just limited to video-games either--the same would be true of board games like Axis and Allies or chess).Creativity and inspiration sound nice but it seems to me that the claim you're making about video games could also be made about board games like Chess or Stratego that also have limited input/output options. Even so, calling them puzzles would be a misleading. A chess master certainly engages in a very different activity than someone putting together a jigsaw puzzle.Even if you want to say that the limited AI (artificial stupidity) makes computerized versions of those games are more akin to solving a puzzle than to using strategies against a living opponent, I think that you've abstracted puzzle solving to a degree that it no longer makes sense to call it a puzzle. To me, it seems much more akin to playing against an uncreative and predictable human opponent than to solving a puzzle.They're a misrepresentation of Diablo as well.</blockquote>

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