Disclaimer: I know I’m dredging up a long dismissed argument from 10 years ago, and discussing it in all the same tone as people did back then, despite everyone having moved on. My core thesi…
there’s a lot of things we call “games” that kinda aren’t games either, but we’ve gone full circle and “game” became the prestigious signifier in some places so you get people trying to go “not a game” (derogatory) and then you have people defending that as “yes a game” (supportive) when not giving ground to reactionaries is more important than the more correct “not a game” (positive) where we validate and uphold interactive multimedia projects that don’t have rules or objectives or score on their own merits.
Kinetic Novels, 3D scans of museums, simulations, etc all have their own merits and don’t need to be “Games” to be valid, just as games in some gestalt whole don’t need to be “Art” to be valid.
there’s a lot of things we call “games” that kinda aren’t games either, but we’ve gone full circle and “game” became the prestigious signifier in some places so you get people trying to go “not a game” (derogatory) and then you have people defending that as “yes a game” (supportive) when not giving ground to reactionaries is more important than the more correct “not a game” (positive) where we validate and uphold interactive multimedia projects that don’t have rules or objectives or score on their own merits.
Kinetic Novels, 3D scans of museums, simulations, etc all have their own merits and don’t need to be “Games” to be valid, just as games in some gestalt whole don’t need to be “Art” to be valid.