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Are titles like Beyond: Two Souls really games?
This is a question that pops up every time an adventure title bursts into the mainstream consciousness. Heavy Rain, The Walking Dead, Beyond: Two Souls and others have all been hit by concerns over whether they are a “real game.” While different in many respects, each of these games feature a heavy focus on storytelling with minimalistic gameplay elements. The simplistic gameplay mechanics is what people latch on to, fueling the fire to proclaim them something less than games.* But it is an argument that holds no water when tested.
From a technical standpoint, the first definition of a game from Merriam-Webster defines it as an “activity engaged in for diversion or amusement.” I don’t know about you but when I sat down to play Beyond: Two Souls it was to engage in an activity to amuse myself and as such, it is a game. But as gamers we have a more stringent definition for what a game truly is, right?
Truth be told, we really don’t have a good definition. If you ask 10 different gamers how they define a game, there is a strong likelihood that that all of them will have a different standard for what qualifies. For some, games need a score mechanic, a fail state, a competitive aspect, complex mechanics, a combination of all of those things, or something completely different. For myself, a game needs to be something that requires interaction from the player to achieve some sort of progression or reach some sort of goal. That goal can be to make my score go up, clear a level, rescue the princess, conquer the world, or a host of other things including simply reaching the end of a story. Thus, I consider something simple like Peggle to be a game while also considering something complex like Civilization V to be one as well.
With so many differing approaches to games, the closest, and most fair, definition has come to the standard being thus:i games need to have a set of defined rules for how to play. It doesn’t matter how simple the rules are, as long as there are rules. After all, is War not a real card game because its rules are simple and easy to understand? Of course not, despite their differences in complexity, War is a game just as much as Poker is.
And the same goes for titles like Beyond: Two Souls. They are games. Beyond: Two Souls and their like have a defined set of rules that as games they have to adhere to and players need to play within the boundaries of those rules to progress in the game. And for me as long as I am impacting the experience through my input and it is pushing me towards something, I consider it a game. They may be different from what some expect of games but they are still games nonetheless.
*Despite not wholly believing such, I used such an argument in the 2012 Perfectly Sane Game of the Year Debate against The Walking Dead. {It’s my fault, as this was the crux of my argument. Also, Walking Dead sucks.- editor}
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