Home Artists Posts Import Register

Downloads

Content

On this week’s episode of Windbreaker, Yahtzee, Frost, and Marty discuss what delineates a game from an experience.

Files

Comments

Maciej Myczkowski

I'm closer to Yahtzee's interpretation. To me, a "Game" is something you win or lose, or at least a challenge or a rewarding task. The hard requirement is that user interaction drives the outcome, because that provides a specific kind of satisfaction. On the other hand, I'd use "Experience" for things that are focused on delivering a very specific experience or artistic message, unconstrained by conventional structure, or goal, or user input. It's art in a more pure or abstract form. A Game can be an Experience if the satisfaction from achieving something is enhanced by the accompanying artistic message, or at least they don't interfere with each other. But you can have a pure catharsis Game with no artistic element to keep your hands busy and your mind numb, and you can have a pure artistic Experience where the point is to immerse yourself in something without having to worry about ruining the intended experience by not playing it right. I got the impression that Marty is looking for Experiences regardless of whether they are Games, but he can absorb them easier and benefits from them more if they are delivered via the medium of video games rather than movies, and he might be conflating the medium with the content.