some of the most fun ive had with games have been playing with them. wether its messing around with it's physics or it's mechanics. garry's mod is a game that's meant to be played with and used to make games to be played. many arcade games dont have an objective unless you count not dying as one. a game doesn't need to have an objective it just needs to give some sort of control to the player.
I challenge you to name an arcade game that doesn’t have an objective of scoring points or knocking out the other guy or just surviving as long as you can. And I see Garry’s Mod more like a deck of cards; the cards themselves aren’t a game, but what you do with them, the rules you make up about using them, especially with other people—it’s a game engine, a vehicle, not a game itself.
Anyway, Outer Wilds is one of my favorite games, partly due to the exploration and discovery of the story and mechanics, partly due to having my spaceship clip something at high speed and deciding to fly out and repair it while trying not to drift off into space or get inescapably close to the sun. None of which matters in a game where flying into the sun is an effective solution, but it’s heckin fun
i mean if this game added a leaderboard and a timer would that really make it any more of a game? i wouldn't say that's a real objective since if there wasn't anyone else that played that machine its non-existent. its not an objective the game tells you to do or pushes you to do like in outer wilds, its just a goal you set yourself, you can just ignore the score and the game doesn't change. however if there was some sort of unlock behind it then yeah.
I did say "unless you count not dying" however I don't see this as a real objective and I submit "Superflight" as evidence. although there is a scoring system in its regular mode there is a Zen mode with no scoring system, in this mode dying has no meaning other than you fucked up. it sets you back to the beginning of the stage and you fly around again if you want another stage just fly off to the side or go straight down. in the Zen mode there's no real objective just have fun, not dying would only be a goal you set for yourself. and as i mentioned before in the regular mode you could just ignore the score and the game doesn't change, they aren't real objectives just self set goals driven by dopamine.
what turns Gary's mod from a game engine to a game is the fact that you get to play with the stuff without having to make a full fledged game.. you don't need to make a full fledged game to make a rocket ship and go to space or to spawn some enemies and run there asses over with a semi-truck. there's no real objectives just make something fun and play with it, sometimes its a game sometimes its just a cool mech.
a game doesn't need an objective just interactivity.
not sure why you mentioned outer wilds although it also is one of my favorite games.
edit: skate games also support my point well, yeah they tend to have objectives or at the least some sort of goals but many people such as myself ignore them in favor of just doing lines and spamming tricks. if you removed the objectives or whatever goals they give you the game doesn't really change for many people would that really make it not a game?
Please note that in this post, as in all of these, I’m using the words toy and game as previously defined under my own opinion, and the words are used only for clarity, not judgment. A game is not by any reasonable definition necessarily better or more fun than a toy.
a game doesn’t need an objective just interactivity.
You’re describing a toy or artpiece, not a game. Games need both. A physics sandbox like Garry’s Mod is a toy. Using it to play Hide and Seek or something is treating a toy as a game.
not sure why you mentioned outer wilds
Because you brought up playing with games (treating them as a toy) rather than going after the objectives laid out for you (treating them as the games they are). Trying to repair my smashed-up spaceship mid-flight has little to no relation to the objectives of that game. Neither does seeing how hard I can smash into the ground and launch the cockpit from the main body, or trying to achieve a stable orbit around a planet or the sun. That’s just treating it as a toy. And if a physics playground was all it was, it might still be fun to play with, but it wouldn’t be a game. (Conversely, if you couldn’t do these things—if you couldn’t take a break and treat it as a toy—it might not have been as fun of a game.)
you can just ignore the score and the game doesn’t change
You could, yes. Just like you can ignore the mystery in Outer Wilds and spend the whole time messing about in its physics sandbox. But that’s treating a game as a toy. Or treating the game as a toy that you’re treating as another game in which you fly off into space and see how high you can push your speed before the sun goes nova. Doesn’t change the fact the actual game still has its own objectives.
And if you’re not trying to beat your own high scores in an arcade game or shoot-em-up or speed-runner where score-chasing is the whole point, you’re not playing the game. You’re playing with the game like a toy. (And that’s frankly what I tend to do with score-focused games.)
[In Superflight] there is a Zen mode with no scoring system, in this mode dying […] sets you back to the beginning of the stage
I had to look this up and the video I found appears to contradict this, or maybe it’s a different version. Anyway, I mentioned “surviving as long as you can” as an objective to distinguish it from simply “not dying”; if the game tracks that you made it to level 19 or dodged 114 bullets before dying on your best run, that’s a high score, that’s an objective. If it doesn’t, it’s not and there may not be one.
TL;DR: If you don’t play a game “as intended,” you’re treating it as a toy. If you can’t tell how to play it “as intended,” it’s not a game. Either might be fun and either might be boring.
i've been looking at this discussion since it first started and been really hesitating to jump in by fear of disrupting it :D
this is all very interesting stuff! I always love to see talk on and around the definition of game, compared to the definition of toy. A friend once told me that he did not consider real life flippers to be games, but toys, and we had a similar discussion.
Is a punching ball a game? probably not, but in some pubs you can find arcade machines that consist in just a punching ball *with a scoreboard* that register who hits the hardest. is adding a score enough to make it a game? well... in that case it seems so.
Garry's mod could be considered a toy, indeed, it has no objectives - but what about minecraft? The gameplay between beta 1.8 and 1.9 did not radically change, and yet one of them contains an end goal - the other one doesn't. Is MC beta 1.8 a toy and MC beta 1.9 a game, despite being both of them being almost 100% identical ? You could say the point of MC is to make a beautiful house but... that's interpretation, the game does not reward you for anything but mining, crafting and killing. If the main goal of the game is born out of player will (e.g. "make a nice house"), is it less legitimate than if it was in the game with a house ranking system and such?
Aerocraft is a game I made while bored in economics class, to try and teach myself blender (making the plane and animating the flaps properly, etc). I stopped working on it when I was bored with it, and wanted to put it on itch or somewhere. I saw there was an option to price it and I thought - "I worked on this for about four hours... if I had to be paid for these four hours, admitting I sell a single copy, the price of this game should be at least 40 bucks." I looked at my friend @tahitip4ncake who was sitting next to me and asked him how much he thought this game should be worth. He said 2$. I put it up for 2$.
It's very interesting to me that this game spawned a discussion on the nature of games; and not so much on the reason why a game so empty would be up for two whole dollars and no less. In general I will always advocate both for a much higher price for games in general (priced to the effort needed to make them, not to their actual content) and for software piracy at large. This position is sometimes hard to defend because games are most often approached from a buyer's perspective, not from the maker's perspective - and so I expected a moderate amount of backlash from whoever would buy and play it. i'm glad to see players are instead filled with wonder and questioning rather than anger and disgust :P
have a nice day, and by all means keep discussing ♥ i hope you can find other games that spark your interest as much as this small "toy" 🙇♀️
As someone who had to do considerable research about games and toys, I have to say you explained perfectly why I believe it's way more complex than it's made to be. Maybe not complex, but less straightforward at least. The general consensus of a "game" versus a "toy" feels at least outdated, as it still values experience a lot while disregarding experience diversity. A game, or a toy, may be the exact same and provoke very different experiences for different users. I think that can be very noticeable between children (a phase we often quickly forget about our specific feelings and habits): it's very common for kids to take a toy and turn the experience into the definition of a "game" (for example, take a car toy and turn the play into a race between friends). The opposite also happens but less often, I think, and I personally live it a lot: if a game contains exploration, I most likely will end up not playing it as a game, but as a toy, with no goal besides going around. Minecraft is also a good example of how blurry the lines are, as you can just update what would be defined as a "toy" with elements that barely change the experience, but it's suddenly by definition a "game". It seems like an abrupt meaning change to something that barely changed. A personal dilemma I've faced in academical circumstances is that things can go as far as defining MMORPGs as "not games" depending on how strict we are with our definitions - because the formal discussion didn't fully follow the changes in game development nor the cultural aspects of those changes.