Dev Perspective (Games and 'Game play')

Hi everyone! I decided to do my first "real" dev perspective topic right now even though I just posted the sort of "intro into why I want to post these things."

Ha ha. It's just that I didn't want to put it all into one post since these can get a bit long. But I did want to explain what this is before I posted it!

I decided to start here since, well, it seems like a good place to start! Games...and game play - as concepts and how they relate to visual novels! 

What is a game?

The guy that wikipedia credits as the first person to address the definition of a game lived during the 1800s. And his conclusion was kind of that we have no idea wtf a game is. I find that to be hilarious in all honesty.

Particularly since this remains a topic of discussion even today. What is a game and is [insert thing here] a 'real' game?

Who knew that games were so confusing? 

What is a game anyway? Why do we do it? Why are they? Why do humans??

Today, Bernard Suits is credited with coming up with a pretty good definition, which calls a game an "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." 👀

So an activity where achieving an objective is limited by the rules. For the purposes of doing it. ╰(*°▽°*)╯

I mean...fair.

Actually, if you do a little digging into how different experts define games, you find a huge range of definitions some of which apply odd limitations (like games only being for profit or games requiring an opponent) and some of which are very broad. 

But what you find in a lot of the definitions are the following things:

-you do a thing

-there are rules

-there are objectives

-someone's probably being entertained.

This seems pretty broad but necessarily so. We live in a world where The Floor is Lava is a game, but so is chess and so is Minecraft. 

This disparity in activities is what so confused the guy from the 1800s. How do you encompass such radically different things into a single group called "game"?

Well. *gestures to the above*

Visual Novels are games

I mean, of course.

They're an activity done for entertainment. And while we don't think of them as having rules and objectives, of course they do.

In an otome game, for example, you're usually trying to do things like 'obtain a happy ending' or 'obtain the best ending' or 'successfully woo the target character', 'obtain all the CGs' or 'unlock all the content' or even 'obtain the tragic endings'. 

There are a lot of objectives a player can try to achieve in these games. Even 'reach the end of the story' and 'don't die' - which seem simplistic but are actually pretty common as objectives to games. Sometimes it doesn't get much more complicated than trying to survive until the story ends.

Otome games also have rules built into the system (like all video games). For instance, the most common rule in any visual novel is "You have to make choices to progress the story" or alternatively "you can't progress to the end without making choices."

The rules actually get a bit more specific than that though. For instance, most VNs require a specific amount and type of choices to unlock specific content that is the focus of one of the objectives.

You don't get 'the happy ending' by just clicking any choice. You have to choose certain ones and a certain amount of them.

"You have to make X amount of Y type of choices to unlock Z content."

(IE let's say you have to make 15 choices that specifically increase your points in order to unlock the happy ending)

The point is, though, that VNs are a thing you do. There are rules. There are objectives. So they are games.

What is Gameplay?

One thing I hear people say sometimes is that VNs don't have "gameplay". 

But of course they do. Gameplay is one of those things that is both simpler and more difficult to grasp than the concept of a game. It's basically just...what you do when playing a game. It's the pattern of how you achieve objectives or interact with the system.

In fact a lot of people define it as a pattern of choices the player makes or challenges they overcome. 

Which is exactly what a visual novel is. 

I've seen many people reduce the gameplay of visual novels to "just clicking something on the screen" although that technically can apply to a lot of games. I think people get hung up on the ratio of passive absorbing of information (reading) to actively engaging with it (making choices). 

But of course, definitions of game play don't really address ratios of passive involvement to active engagement. For instance, we don't dismiss chess as a game simply because a lot of time is spent watching, waiting and analysing compared to the amount of time spent moving a piece from one place to another on the board. 

The analysing is the point.

Visual novels are, in some ways, similar (in my opinion of course) because while you are passively reading the story the player is (presumably) also analysing character development, analysing responses to choices, and then using those to strategically make choices they believe will help them obtain their objective.

Because the player isn't making *random* choices to progress the story. They are making choices to specifically obtain a particular outcome. And they do that by analysing the story content even when they aren't actively making a choice selection.

Of course, gameplay is complex topic that branches into things like player experience and playability - which has  multiple attributes where a specific VN (or VNs in general) might do better or worse.

Playability is a really interesting topic when it comes to visual novels too because it's about how satisfying the experience of playing a game really is. Can the players achieve the goals in a way that's efficient and satisfying??

And how do you determine that since certain aspects of playability are highly subjective? (There's a certain research paper from 2009 that gets cited a lot when people talk about playability and is really interesting in how it attempts to break the concept down).

The End

Anyway, this subject is obviously one I've thought about a lot and have a bit of particular interest in since, of course, I make VNs. And the whole "VNs aren't real games" discourse likes to rear its head occasionally.

It seemed like a good "first dev waffle" post since it's the basic of basics.

As always, this is just my personal take on the matter, my own thoughts and a bit of research thrown in.

Games and game play are interesting topics and a lot of people have different thoughts and opinions on the subject.

These are just some of mine!