Not Games Are Games Too!

I was just having a little chat on Twitter with Richard Perrin (creator of Journal) about what people call "not games" and I soon found I had enough words to say about it to justify a blog post, so here it is.

Twitter conversation - https://twitter.com/PerrinAshcroft/status/356767235072720898

Journal - http://journal.lockeddoorpuzzle.com/

For those of you unfamiliar with "not games" - this is a term used simply for games that tend to be denounced by more hardcore gamers as, well, not games!

To me the reason why some gamers say "this is not a game" stems from their specific preconception of what they expect when they sit down to play a game. They play games to "have fun" rather than experience a story. When they sit down to play a game like Journal they cry - "Hey, this is a narrative! I wanted fun! This isn't a game!" They wouldn't have these same preconceptions if they were sitting down to watch a movie or read a book, and one of the challenges to us as game developers is to think about how we can break this preconception in video games.

Perhaps it's due to the semantics of the word "game" - the idea that it is play, for fun, "just a game", when really it isn't. Video games are a medium that can be used for fun, but it can also be a story, a creative piece, a narrative. It can be anything it's creator wants it to be, and the medium deserves respect and recognition as such.