Are MU* videogames
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@Griatch I think the difference will have to probably include factors closer to Theno's definition - i.e. tied to automation - than whether text counts as there's no imagery, simply because I don't think anyone here is actually going to claim text adventures like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Pawn or Gnome Ranger aren't video games.
Now you will have to excuse me, I'm having a nostalgia attack. I need a moment.
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Merriam-Webster sez: an electronic game played by means of images on a video screen and often emphasizing fast action
Is a game played over Skype an "electronic game"? What makes a game "electronic"? (Dark Tower, so much fun.) As long as there's no one definition, we can be going at this all day.
The problem I have with your example, tho, is that you are not "playing Skype". Skype itself is not the game, any more than you are "playing email" when playing a game of chess with someone via email. Email is not the game, so I don't think it's right to call email "a video game".
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos -
How about this: For it to be a video game, the computer must be indispensable in more than facilitating communication.
So for example rolling dice isn't indispensable because players could do it locally then announce the results (given good faith), record-keeping for +sheet is a convenience which can be tracked via paper... but if the computer either does calculations that'd be unreasonably difficult to do for humans or impossible within the rules then it is a video game. Or... Hearthstone has cards that require access to every card in the game (and not just the players' libraries) so that'd be pretty weird to do on table-top.
And yea I dunno why my buddy thinks MMOs aren't games. To be fair-ish he didn't said they weren't, he said he didn't consider me a video gamer because I play 'only' those. But it's still a mystery.
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To answer the original question, no but then I also do not consider the various works of interactive fiction to be video games.
I tend to agree with Ark's assessment that for it to be a video game it should provide more then a basis of communication, the computer should be a viable source of game play.
I could see muds counting since they have computer controlled opponents and systems to play with with out needing to involve other people. On a MUSH the main entertainment comes from other players for good or ill you cannot really MUSH without other MUSHers, you would be mostly watching an unmoving screen . You can play an MMO and never interact with another player if you don't want to. True you lose much of the content but it is possible. You can play a fighting game single player and never square off against another person, it is less fun but doable same with any other genre of video game. -
I'd say they are. The textbook "Desktops and Dungeons" traces the CRPG back to its earliest days, and it makes an argument for considering MUDs as multi-player iterations of single-player text-based CRPGs. The first generations of MUDs that were focused on stat-building and monster-killing alongside character role-playing were definitely CRPGs.
Most system-based MUDs would fall under the Multi-User CRPG label. Those MU*s that don't have systems or rules would most likely count as multi-user collaborative interactive fiction, I guess?
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@Kanye-Qwest said in Are MU* videogames:
No, there's no video component. Are you still drunk, this morning?
There is usually a video component today, but it's not required.
You can still play them on a teletype terminal. -
I tend to liken them to reading a book. Often a book written by a horned-up teenager. Or a psychopath. Or both.
MSB free since 24/3/2018
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@Faceless said in Are MU* videogames:
I tend to liken them to reading a book. Often a book written by a horned-up teenager. Or a psychopath. Or both.
One of the original Penn devs said that TS was no more horrible than coauthored fiction-based mutual masturbation.
This pertains to nothing, just coming out of the grab bag of thoughts that is my head this afternoon.
