94
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2026
94 points (100.0% liked)
Games
21286 readers
75 users here now
Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
Rules
- No racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, or transphobia. Don't care if it's ironic don't post comments or content like that here.
- Mark spoilers
- No bad mouthing sonic games here
- No gamers allowed
- No squabbling or petty arguments here. Remember to disengage and respect others choice to do so when an argument gets too much
- Anti-Edelgard von Hresvelg trolling will result in an immediate ban from c/games and submitted to the site administrators for review.
- Can't read Colon Syntax Emoji? :skill-issue:
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
When minecraft first came out there was a big discussion online and offline about whether it was technically a game. There was no ender dragon or netherworld or 'bosses' to speak of. There were no objectives, quests, storylines... All you do is mine and craft. There's no way to win or lose or any ingame reason to play beyond mine and craft.
I mention this to say that trying to define a videogame is a fool's errand
Diogenes, holding up a floppy disk containing the 1993 "Interference" scene demo (by Sanity) for the Amiga:
"Behold, a video game!"
Ninja edit: holy shit, someone captured it for YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWYRIV8YVdk
This is the same machine whose platform died off because its absurd network-of-coprocessors-driven-by-an-MC68000 (or 68EC020) meant that it couldn't run Wolfenstein 3D for shit, let alone Doom
I think it's a game
early minecraft or the uninteractive music video?
Everything
i don't understand how you hope to ever have a productive discussion on or think nontrivial thoughts about a category with no boundaries.
just be anti-noun at that point.
I'm just not interested in deciding what a game is or isn't.
but you do something to delineate between Heat and grand theft auto. between tetris and some toy blocks.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I think Minecraft can nurture creativity in a similar way to Lego, and that it fits perfectly into the genre of 'sandbox game'. Elden Ring is a game for sure, with a great world, but I find the combat too dull for me to bother exploring the world.
I was always on the team of 'everything is a game who cares' so yeah for sure.
Is lego a game, though? More of a craft
i would say instead that there's room for other kinds of art that might use the same interfaces that aren't games but they're still valid pursuits. A virtual tour of a museum where you move the point of view around in 3D space like an FPS probably isn't a game but it draws on game literacy for the interface and you could sell it on game consoles.
a box of lego isn't a game but you can play a game with it if you invent objectives and constraints etc.
There's a whole genre of game called "walking simulator " where this is exactly the gameplay maybe interacting with a button or something
i'm aware, you can simplify even more though and have all the points of interest available from the beginning and no tracking of what you looked at and then it's much more clear that the thing i'm talking about isn't a game at all and isn't presented as a game.
a slideshow isn't a motion picture, but nobody is weird about it. nobody would try to claim 50 still images you click through is a movie and nobody would smear a presentation by saying it isn't one.