Poll: Are MU* video games?

[Misadventure]

@arkandel Multiplayer is not an issue.

Ascii is a form of graphics and so not a differentiator.

A solid answer might be "Is trivial pursuit played on a text medium only, a video game?"

I suggest strongly that roleplay is not a Game. It is play.

[faraday]

@misadventure said in Poll: Are MU* video games?:

Ascii is a form of graphics and so not a differentiator.

I mean it really comes down to how esoteric you want to get about the definition of "graphics". All text on modern displays is converted into a raster image once you get low enough down into the video driver. But does that really mean "text = graphics" on any practical level or in common parlance? Not at all.

[Ganymede]

@thenomain said in Poll: Are MU* video games?:

Says someone who apparently never played Planescape Torment.

I couldn't get through it, no, but that was a different game for a different time.

The Banner Saga trilogy is pretty nifty, though.

Not cruel and excruciating, like Torment.

Ironic, don'tcha think?

[GangOfDolls]

I'm here with this hot taek:

I've seen people try to MU* in video games and hoooooly shit is it the most annoying thing to witness. I give zero fucks about /dance emote through someone's v. serious wedding RP in a public tavern.

So: ney.

Never shall these twain meet.

[magee101]

Are MU* games? Certaintly, you can even play them -similar- to video games, however I think the key difference here is the adjective used, -video-. These games create no images, they just transmit text. I will have to go do some digging to get some articles and studies but engaging with images (videos) stimulates the brain in different ways than interacting with text.

[Crawfish]

@saosmash This is how I explain it to my therapist.

[Deleted]

Any game you can play without a visual component doesn't qualify to me as a video game.

[Paris]

I think that by mid-1990s standards MU*s counted, especially MUDs, or places like Arx. There were games like Nettrek that were effectively MUDs, accessed over the internet, were entirely text-based, with economies, ship battles, etc, and IIRC they were called video-games.

I attended a conference in the early 1990s, as well, where people were trying to convert MUs into graphical games-- this was also a pivotal moment (IMO) in the creation of MMOs, which were not quite there yet but folks were trying to apply text-based roleplaying into a graphical medium, both with an arcing plot and personal mini-plots. There was a debate even then whether MUs were videogames.

The pushback from the MU* community was hard: they wanted it to remain text-based, with graphics supplied by our imaginations, as this was considered more immersive than the shitty polygons and awkward interfaces that had currently been sort of available. There was skepticism that you could convert MUers to a multi-gamer entirely graphical system: the beauty of language and creativity would be lost.

Fast-forward to today, and MMOs usually have one RP server where most folks use a mush-like post format to play. It reminds me of early pre-TF posing because of the lack of a larger TF-like and client-like buffer. People sometimes use mods like MRP in WoW to give themselves a description, background, +finger/wiki type deal.

So I'm not sure if by today's standards a MU* is a video-game anymore, but IMO it was by the standards going around back when we first started, especially, as mentioned earlier, heavily-automated formats.

[Ninjakitten]

Man, depending which philosopher or ludologist you ask, MU*s aren't even games, or at least the story-constructing, collaborative, don't-play-to-'win' version most of us here play aren't.

By my lights, they're games, but no, they're not video games. Computer games, I'd say yes -- like the old Infocom-style text adventures, which are also computer games but not video games IMO, but which also fit into more of the definitions of 'game' than a MU* does. Online games, certainly -- you could still argue 'game', but 'online' is pretty definite.

If you play sudoku on your tablet instead of the newspaper, has sudoku now become a video game? Is it even a game, or is it a puzzle? How about solitaire on your laptop instead of with a deck of cards? Poker or mahjong against the computer? If two of us decided to write a story by turns in a shared google doc, which we could even have open at the same time, would that be a game, let alone a video game? If not, and if a MU* is, what makes the difference?

There's not going to be unanimity on much of this, because even the academic definitions are several and varied. Why would conversational ones be clearer?

[Three-Eyed Crow]

@ninjakitten said in Poll: Are MU* video games?:

By my lights, they're games, but no, they're not video games. Computer games, I'd say yes -- like the old Infocom-style text adventures, which are also computer games but not video games IMO, but which also fit into more of the definitions of 'game' than a MU* does. Online games, certainly -- you could still argue 'game', but 'online' is pretty definite.

This is kind of where I'm at, though I think it's a really fine line. They meet some pedantic definitions of "video games" but I feel like only in the sense of "all computer games are video games."

[boop]

Nah. They're really just chat rooms with other nifty things added in to them.

[Thenomain]

@ganymede

--

edit:
@admiral said in Poll: Are MU* video games?:

Any game you can play without a visual component doesn't qualify to me as a video game.

So...all text games are video games.

[insomniac7809]

@deathbird said in Poll: Are MU* video games?:

Nah. They're really just chat rooms with other nifty things added in to them.

Yup. If a MUSH is a video game, so was AOL Instant Messenger.

[Pandora]

Yes vote here.

Is a MUSH a game? Yes.
Is a monitor required to play a MUSH? Yes.
Is game, requires monitor = is video game.

[Misadventure]

Typically games have constraints, limited choices, and an end point.

Cops and robbers is play, despite being referred to as a game. There are no rules, there may not even be cops, or robbers being played. It's a pastime, playing pretend. Despite all the use of published "game systems" most roleplay isn't really constrained by the rules. Most of it isn't even shaped by the rules.

In case it isn't clear, there is nothing wrong with not being a Game. It just means design needs to be reconsidered to maximize the play that does happen, instead of trying to shoehorn game elements into roleplay. (See morality rules, psychology rules, social interaction rules)

[Tinuviel]

@pandora said in Poll: Are MU* video games?:

Is a monitor required to play a MUSH? Yes.

Is a monitor required, though? Blind people play them using screenreader software of some nature. So I would argue that a monitor isn't required.

@pandora said in Poll: Are MU* video games?:

Is a MUSH a game? Yes.

Again, are all MU* games? Would you go to MUS*H and call it a game? I wouldn't.

Most are games, sure. Even using @Misadventure's definition of game vs play. They have rules, and restrictions - be they self-imposed or handed down from on high, and restrictions, and a competitive nature to them (Be it character-versus-character, character-versus-world, or whatever).

[Thenomain]

@insomniac7809 said in Poll: Are MU* video games?:

@deathbird said in Poll: Are MU* video games?:

Nah. They're really just chat rooms with other nifty things added in to them.

Yup. If a MUSH is a video game, so was AOL Instant Messenger.

This is a good point. The underlying question is like asking, “Is wood a shelter?” Or, “Is Picasso worthwhile as a human being?”

Mu*s can be video games, but they can also not be video games. Application is the number one determination.

[Tinuviel]

I mean. I guess my main query about all this would be: Does it matter? It's a thing. Nobody's going to agree due to the vagaries of application of the MU framework, the differences in ideas on definitions on 'video' and 'game' and 'MU*'.

If we mean MU*, we say MU*. If we mean more mainstream, video-based, electronic, interactive, rules-driven, entertainments that are traditionally called video games, then we say video games.

[Thenomain]

@tinuviel said in Poll: Are MU* video games?:

I mean. I guess my main query about all this would be: Does it matter?

Of course not. It’s a thread to test if the poll function was duplicating.

The only correct, purely logical answer to the poll is “no”. The question includes all forms of Mu*, and some forms of Mu* are not games. And because not all Mu*s are games, they cannot be video games, no matter how you want to define “video game”.

If you want to start a flame war on RPG forums, start a thread called “What is a game?” You know how some people get so tired of answering the same question for newbies so many times that they get angry? That’s what this question is like.

Nobody can define “game”, and nobody can define “play”. We can feel it, we know the shape of it, and we know what we accept, but the best we can do it agree on a rough definition, or clarify when that definition doesn’t meet our own.

Q: What is art?
A: I don’t know, but I know what I like.

[mietze]

I wouldn't call a mush a video game to other gamers. It has been useful to just say I like to play computer games, that's my hobby that I spend hours on doing, when I am talking to mundanes who are not into interactive screen activities with whom I'm having nice pleasant conversation with.