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this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2024
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In terms of description, what should we call a toy that is a digital product? If I said to a friend, "I played a paper doll toy on my PC yesterday," I would just get a ton of follow-up questions.
Or what about, "I work at a development studio that makes toys for release on Steam"? Confusing. Are games that force a retry (like Prince of Persia: Sands of Time) toys or interactive fiction because losing isn't really an option? And does a definitive answer actually matter? Would it even be respected by an audience? Is doing the dishes a game?
I think there's room for movement within genre and media, especially when it comes to something interactive.
The terms are just my own, so i wouldn't expect them to make sense yet without explanation.
As i said many things blur the lines, just like you point out. The goal of these terms isn't to put up barriers, but to make it easier to talk about the differences between things. My goal is to point out the core of interactive experiences can be fundamentally different from a game, and using that term as an umbrella for everything can create false expectations. Does that make sense?
Prince of Persia falls solidly into the game definition for me for the record. It has challenges, rules, and while the loss mechanic can be rewound, it's still a loss mechanic. You don't have to load a game for something to be a loss, in other words. A loss simply means the player has been given feedback that what they did is incorrect and they can't succeed at the game or challenge by doing what caused the loss.