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Jeremy Couillard's video games capture what it's like to be alive

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Re: Jeremy Couillard's video games capture what it's like to be alive

#41
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all your Sims die, is that not a failure? Harvest Moon has Steam achievements. (And a ‘best ending’ category on speedrun.com.) You could go on, but if those are the best you could think of, I don’t think it would be very productive.

Achievements are baubles and trinkets. They are neither necessary nor sufficient for something to be a game. And I don’t know if you’re aware, but a vast amount of Sims players use the game to build and decorate houses and then play out stories in them. The Sims dying is not. A lose condition, but the final page of their story.

Why not? You are aware that many ticket-redemption games reward the player with literal baubles and trinkets, right?

Just because many people choose not to engage with the mechanics doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

Re: Jeremy Couillard's video games capture what it's like to be alive

#42
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Achievements are baubles and trinkets. They are neither necessary nor sufficient for something to be a game. And I don’t know if you’re aware, but a vast amount of Sims players use the game to build and decorate houses and then play out stories in them. The Sims dying is not. A lose condition, but the final page of their story.

Why not? You are aware that many ticket-redemption games reward the player with literal baubles and trinkets, right? Just because many people choose not to engage with the mechanics doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

I never said they don’t exist, I said they are neither necessary nor sufficient for something to be a game.

Re: Jeremy Couillard's video games capture what it's like to be alive

#43
post #8

I'm a fan, but I wouldn't really call his stuff games. More like art that uses game tropes as a tool of expression.

What makes a game a game though? Do you necessarily need action and damage points?

In my view, which is mostly inspired by Huizinga's works, the game is a constructed set of rules. The main game is the culture itself, that branches into the great playing tree of humanity. The video games are not that different from any other set of rules, but they are interactive, immersive and self-governing/autonomous, which is an unusual set of qualities for a media.

Re: Jeremy Couillard's video games capture what it's like to be alive

#44
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those were present when Minecraft was first released to the public and wouldn’t be present for years.

So what? Maybe it wasn’t a game in 2009. It was blatantly unfinished at that point, so this is hardly an issue.

Before Minecraft became a game, what was it?

Re: Jeremy Couillard's video games capture what it's like to be alive

#45
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those were present when Minecraft was first released to the public and wouldn’t be present for years.

So what? Maybe it wasn’t a game in 2009. It was blatantly unfinished at that point, so this is hardly an issue.

All three of those things were added in Sept-Nov of 2021. By January 2021 the game had already sold >1 million copies.

It was absolutely a game at that point, ask anyone who played it. Being blatantly unfinished doesn’t matter, it would have remained a game even if he never ended any of those features.

Re: Jeremy Couillard's video games capture what it's like to be alive

#46
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those were present when Minecraft was first released to the public and wouldn’t be present for years.

Right, every single game was at one point incomplete

My point is that it was still a game before having those feature.

Re: Jeremy Couillard's video games capture what it's like to be alive

#47
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Maybe it wasn’t a game in 2009. It was blatantly unfinished at that point, so this is hardly an issue.

Before Minecraft became a game, what was it?

Exactly what it claimed to be: An alpha/beta test for a game.

Re: Jeremy Couillard's video games capture what it's like to be alive

#48
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? You are aware that many ticket-redemption games reward the player with literal baubles and trinkets, right? Just because many people choose not to engage with the mechanics doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

I never said they don’t exist, I said they are neither necessary nor sufficient for something to be a game.

Don’t dodge the question: Why not?

Re: Jeremy Couillard's video games capture what it's like to be alive

#49
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never said they don’t exist, I said they are neither necessary nor sufficient for something to be a game.

Don’t dodge the question: Why not?

I’m not dogging the question, it’s trivially answerable: many games don’t have achievement and are games nonetheless

Further, if you remove the achievements from games they continue being games. GTA without achievements is still a game. Remove the entire XBox and PS trophies system and all their games still remain games.

Re: Jeremy Couillard's video games capture what it's like to be alive

#50
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Maybe it wasn’t a game in 2009. It was blatantly unfinished at that point, so this is hardly an issue.

All three of those things were added in Sept-Nov of 2021. By January 2021 the game had already sold >1 million copies. It was absolutely a game at that point, ask anyone who played it. Being blatantly unfinished doesn’t matter, it would have remained a game even if he never ended any of those features.

This is a straight-up lie. Hardcore and the Ender Dragon were added in 2012, in the patch that would become 1.0.0. Score was added in 0.24_SURVIVAL_TEST in 2009 (https://minecraft.wiki/w/Java_Edition_Classic_0.24_SURVIVAL_...). Do you have any examples that aren’t outright fabrications?
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