Dwarf Fortress, technically, is not a game. A game will have a winning and losing side or a win and lose condition. ...
Your (Eschar's) definition of "game" is both limited, and not well attested. A quick perusal of various definitions of what a "game" is have very few mentions of winning and loosing. I suggest you read over the
Wikipedia entry on "Game" for an initial start on some better, or at least more interesting and respected, definitions of what makes something a "game".
Some highlights:
French sociologist Roger Caillois defines a game as an activity that must have the following characteristics:
- fun: the activity is chosen for its light-hearted character
- separate: it is circumscribed in time and place
- uncertain: the outcome of the activity is unforeseeable
- non-productive: participation does not accomplish anything useful
- governed by rules: the activity has rules that are different from everyday life
- fictitious: it is accompanied by the awareness of a different reality
I'd say it's reasonably clear that DF qualifies on all of Caillois' criteria.
Greg Costikyan: "A game is a form of art in which participants, termed players, make decisions in order to manage resources through game tokens in the pursuit of a goal."
DF seems to qualify here.
Bernard Suits: "to play a game is to engage in activity directed toward bringing about a specific state of affairs, using only means permitted by specific rules, where the means permitted by the rules are more limited in scope than they would be in the absence of the rules, and where the sole reason for accepting such limitation is to make possible such activity."
DF usually qualifies here; one could make arguments that DF is vague on the "specific state of affairs" clause, but with a bit more abstract though goals such as to survive to the next caravan, to learn more about how DF works, to finally get a viable fort with an egglaying race, or whatever are as valid as conquer hell or build a 200' tall dwarf statue out of ice with lava running through it.
Chris Crawford defines a game by classifying a bunch of other stuff that are not games:
- Creative expression is art if made for its own beauty, and entertainment if made for money.
- A piece of entertainment is a plaything if it is interactive. Movies and books are cited as examples of non-interactive entertainment.
- If no goals are associated with a plaything, it is a toy. (Crawford notes that by his definition, (a) a toy can become a game element if the player makes up rules, and (b) The Sims and SimCity are toys, not games.) If it has goals, a plaything is a challenge.
- If a challenge has no "active agent against whom you compete," it is a puzzle; if there is one, it is a conflict. (Crawford admits that this is a subjective test. Video games with noticeably algorithmic artificial intelligence can be played as puzzles; these include the patterns used to evade ghosts in Pac-Man.)
- Finally, if the player can only outperform the opponent, but not attack them to interfere with their performance, the conflict is a competition. (Competitions include racing and figure skating.) However, if attacks are allowed, then the conflict qualifies as a game.
Crawford's definition may thus be rendered as: an interactive, goal-oriented activity made for money, with active agents to play against, in which players (including active agents) can interfere with each other.
Weirdly enough, DF is most questionable on the first criteria; DF was started before money was involved, and is
in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art ; one could make a case that earlier versions of DF were therefore art, and under that definition not a game. While I think most of Crawford's definition of a game is fairly good, I object to the initial exclusion of art-for-art's-sake from not only games, but entertainment, etc. (The definition is also a bit suspect when you get to such things as student projects (whether movies or games) for a grade, rather than for money; at the least I'd posit that it should be updated to "entertainment if made for a tangible reward such as money, academic status, professional advancement, etc.")
There are plenty of other definitions of what constitutes a "game", but I think you will find that DF qualifies under the majority of them. The primary exception is where the definers choose to define things that are done for the joy of doing them, or created for the beauty of the result, to be in some purer sense "art"; and DF is close to the edge there.
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Topic: Tiny Musing on the Nature of DF (Read 2748 times)