[geeks] Games, was Re: Ubuntu partition on Bootcamp Mac?

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

On Tue, 31 Jul 2007 20:30:42 -0700
Jon Gilbert <jjj at io.com> wrote:

> I said this in another post too, but NWN was *intended* as a game  
> (dungeons and dragons). 

Intent doesn't define what things are.

SL might have been intended as something else, but it has a lot of game
elements, even by your own definitions.

SL has goals, you can win things, it can be a virtual sandbox, you have an
avatar otherwise known as a player... it has an awful lot of game elements,
some of which you defined yourself, to not be a game.

The funny thing here is that no one would be picking on you if your response
was a level headed statement along the lines of: I view SL as more of a
simulation than a game, and if you had been willing to acknowledge the
blindingly obvious game elements it has.

If you had done that and left out the leet speak and the rabid defensive
stuff, probably no one would have had much to say about it.

This mailing list often operates like a pack of wolves, but they rarely
attack anyone who doesn't walk into traps of their own creation.

> Though you can hack it to not be used as a game, and just be used as a
> virtual environment. Second Life is a virtual environment, where on the
> other hand, it can have a game in it.

This is just talking about the content.  It didn't default to having game
content, so you don't view it as a game.

Game engine, simulation engine... no real difference.

> A $100 million military simulation is not a game. What makes it a  
> game? It's not intended as a "pastime" or "amusement" activity. It is  
> not a competitive contest between players. What's the point of  
> calling it a game, other than to annoy people who know what that word  
> means?

Why don't you ask the creators, designers, programmers, and the US military,
all of whom call it a game, all of whom occasionally play with it for fun.

While you are at it you can ask the Pentagon why they installed it in a war
gaming center that says "War Gaming Center" on the sign out front.

You are trying to draw arbitrary lines in the shifting sands of an industry
that creates games and simulations and sells each as the other every day of
the week.

How about Harpoon?  Was that a game?

Before you answer, keep in mind that the US military paid for a lot of its
development, used it for training, and paid later to have it updated, and the
company that wrote it made a larger version customized for their use.

It was marketed as a game, but was otherwise nothing but a smaller version of
larger military simulators (which as I said, the government calls games).

Go ahead, make the arbitrary call: was Harpoon a game or a simulation?

Really, it isn't a big deal, it's just interesting to see people try to split
hairs in situations like this.

Oh, and for the record, I have spent hours playing with expensive military
simulations, playing to win, competing with others, having a ball, and in
some case I made money from it, or at least someone had to buy me dinner.

One of my friends in college trained in Apache simulations.  They used to
play with them for hours if they could get the time and sign up for it.

But, of course, it wasn't a game...





-- 
shannon           | An Irishman is never drunk as long as he can hold onto 
                  | one blade of grass and not fall off the face of the earth.