'Reader' vs 'Player' vs another word entirely?

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Funnyguts
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'Reader' vs 'Player' vs another word entirely?

#1 Post by Funnyguts »

So relatively big names in the counterculture game scene seem to want to get rid of the word 'game', on the grounds that the fight over whether or not stuff like a Twine story or a Stencyl game like Dys4ia should count as a game is pointless. Since the large majority of people on this forum make VN/KNs, things that have been straddling the percieved border of game and not-game for a while now, I've been wondering about the awkward tension between our use of the term 'player' and 'reader'. If we're supposed to get rid of the concept of 'game', does referring to those who check out what we make as 'players' make sense? But does 'reader' make sense, especially in the context of more involved VNs with adventure game or RPG elements? What if a KN doesn't even have words and displays everything entirely through images?

I've been thinking about what a better word might be to replace both reader and player. The best I can come up with is 'participant'. It has the connotations of being active as a player (along with reminding creators of less interactive things that everyone should be actively engaging with their work rather than sitting there passively following along), but doesn't necessarily carry the discrete, goal-oriented, fiero desires we've come to associate with the word player. The downside is that it might be a bit confusing in certain situations (Were the participants in AdversityComp the people who experienced the final product, or the ones who sent submissions in?).

I'd love to hear better words if you have them.

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Re: 'Reader' vs 'Player' vs another word entirely?

#2 Post by DaFool »

Player all the way.

If Cow Clicker is a game, VNs and Twine stories definitely are.

The act of clicking on something is a interactive response to stimulus created by a set of rules, whether those are internal stats or in the case of stories, flag branches. Thus, a game.

Don't worry about KNs, KNs barely have a market anyway.

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Re: 'Reader' vs 'Player' vs another word entirely?

#3 Post by Desu_Cake »

Reader is a good word, player is not. I never ever describe myself as "playing" VNs, always "reading".

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Re: 'Reader' vs 'Player' vs another word entirely?

#4 Post by teacup »

I dunno, I always use the word 'player' because I consider visual novels to be games.
If the VN has choices and player interaction, it's a game. You don't read a game, you play a game.
Participant sounds kind of weird to me... would someone really say, "That visual novel looks interesting. I want to participate in it." as opposed to "I want to play it" or "I want to read it"?
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Re: 'Reader' vs 'Player' vs another word entirely?

#5 Post by SundownKid »

You "read" a KN, and you "play" a visual novel. As long as it has decision branches, it still counts as a game, despite what critics may claim. Anything that's interactive counts as a game.

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Re: 'Reader' vs 'Player' vs another word entirely?

#6 Post by Carassaurat »

A distinction between 'game' and 'play' is one of the greatest assets of the English language. While I do not consider all visual novels to be games (it depends on whether you're trying to win), the word play is much broader than games. You can, for example, play in theatre, play music, play a movie, or play with your food. Both player and reader work as far as I'm concerned.

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Re: 'Reader' vs 'Player' vs another word entirely?

#7 Post by TrickWithAKnife »

Terminology... it's not actually that important. Realistically, why would you need to use any particular word to define the people who will make use of your VN?

It's even less useful than the "are VNs games?" debate.

The English language is expansive enough for us to say the same thing in many ways.
So all you developers, creators, game makers, and visual novelists out there should focus on your projects, and let the masses decide what they want to call themselves.
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Re: 'Reader' vs 'Player' vs another word entirely?

#8 Post by Flowers from Nowhere »

I always describe myself as "playing" a visual novel but I could understand other people thinking of themselves as "readers." It is, however, my opinion that adding a new word to the mix (assuming it is picked up by the populace) would just result in there being three words people might choose to describe themselves instead of just the original two.

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Re: 'Reader' vs 'Player' vs another word entirely?

#9 Post by Greeny »

I always get confused whenever this occurs to me. Then five minutes later I forget all about it.

As a self-proclaimed businessman, alternative terms that come to mind are "consumer", "audience", "money bags".
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Re: 'Reader' vs 'Player' vs another word entirely?

#10 Post by CainVoorhees »

Carassaurat wrote:A distinction between 'game' and 'play' is one of the greatest assets of the English language. While I do not consider all visual novels to be games (it depends on whether you're trying to win), the word play is much broader than games. You can, for example, play in theatre, play music, play a movie, or play with your food. Both player and reader work as far as I'm concerned.
While I agree with you on the use of player as a term, not all games require you to "win" and not all of them include "winning" as part of its design. Minecraft and The Sims are excellent examples. The conditions to "win" are set by the players themselves as goals. The game itself doesn't set them.

I think a game can best be described as a toy. When you interact with a toy, you expect the toy itself to react based on what you've done with it. A yo-yo will bounce back up once you snap it back after you drop it. A dangling rope will return if a kitten pushes it. In both senses, someone or something is "playing."

I don't mean to devalue video games as an art by comparing them to toys, but video games are much more complex forms of toys. I don't think visual novels are any different (kinetic novels being a strange and arguable exception). Most visual novels we think of allow the player to make choices - and will react in turn to those choices. In this sense, visual novels are games to be played by a player. There's a lot of reading involved, but interaction and reaction are the keys here.

That being said, I think player as a term to describe someone playing a visual novel is more accurate then reader, but both are still valid terms.

As for kinetic novels being games, I'd argue that the whole process of clicking or pressing buttons and expecting the novel to continue/react to the click is interactive at its core. However, this is my subjective opinion - the subject being what is considered "interaction."

Musing: I don't think we can accurately compare kinetic novels to actual books. Is reading a book a game? The text is already there and you yourself manually move the page over the next; one might think the book itself isn't a game because it doesn't react, but what does it mean for CYOA novels?

Very interesting questions to consider. Reading a book and playing a game are both things to experience, but things to experience include more then reading a book or playing a game (seeing a landmark, for example).

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Re: 'Reader' vs 'Player' vs another word entirely?

#11 Post by Tempus »

Games vs. non-games has been a topic that's cropped up on Gamasutra recently. I think one of the commenters there had it right when they said games exist along a spectrum, rather than within black and white categories.

One things all games [which are unanimously accepted as games] share is that they're rules based interactions played for leisure. Winning as the goal of games is interesting because as far as I know this was the goal of all pre-computer games. Think chess, poker, cricket, bowling, billiards, etc. The goal of them is quite unambiguously to win, though it could be argued that these could be played leisurely without concern for who wins. As CainVoorhees highlighted above, it would seem the goal of winning is nowadays no longer a necessary component for consideration. So that leaves "rules based interaction played for leisure" as the only necessary component of what makes a game... a game. The "for leisure" part is important since it disallows things like work, traditional practices, politics, and so on, which clearly no one considers a game in the same sense as The Sims, Billiards, CoD, Chess, etc.

I think VNs with their choices are games, whereas KNs are not. The difference is interaction; KNs are analogous to a book. You manipulate the pages of the book to advance the story, not to interact with it. You only interact with the medium (the physical paper), not the actual contents (the things the printed words represent) of the book, just as with a KN. With a VN there is rules based interaction occurring (path choices), which makes it in principle no different than other computer games. The difference between VNs and other computer games where you control a player character or team is the level of interaction. That interaction takes place at all is not debatable, there's just a lot less choice moment to moment. This ties into the first paragraph where I mentioned games existing along a spectrum. VNs would be on the low end of the game-y spectrum, but on it nonetheless.

So in short, I think you both play and read / watch a VN, while you read / watch a KN. But... I really don't think it matters what you say. I mean, we say we "watch" movies, but we also listen to them... I'd suggest that in some movies the audio is at least as important as the visuals. Precision is often left out of everyday speech in favour of a simple word with the true meaning implied. When you tell people you watched a movie last night, they don't assume you muted it and only consumed the visuals. They know what you mean.

Hm, I never thought I'd write a post like this! I don't really think it matters what you call your creation or the people who experience it. There's more important stuff to worry about, like actually making it! Speaking of which... I should get back to work :D
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Re: 'Reader' vs 'Player' vs another word entirely?

#12 Post by Carassaurat »

The Wikipedia article on game has a bunch of definitions. Salen and Zimmerman have a bigger list in their book Rules of Play. I go by their own, which is that a game is a "a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome," but you can see that all the other definitions also include terms as goals, outcomes or objectives (i.e. win conditions.) Citing Caillois is always difficult, because French, unlike English, does not make a distinction between play and game, I think — the same goes for Huizinga's Dutch. The closest thing to the English word game is what they call ἀγών.

While I disagree with Crawford's line of thought (for him, the Sistine Chapel ceiling isn't art and most of the events at the Olympic games aren't games), it's worth noting that he makes a distinction between toys and games, with The Sims (and Minecraft too, I should imagine) falling under the category of toy. Personally I'd say that toys are non-interactive and that The Sims, being interactive, is a simulation.

Interactivity is not limited to games.

Here's the thing with goals, objectives, win conditions: take any activity that is not a game. Now add a win condition to it. Tada, a game! Walking isn't a game. Trying to walk faster than someone else is an event in the Olympic games. Reading a book isn't a game. Trying to read it faster than someone else would be a game (although a very silly one). Reading a kinetic novel isn't a game. Trying to read more of them than someone else is a game. If adding a win condition makes something into a game, doesn't it follow that it is a defining element of a game?

Mind, in all this, I'm completely non-judgmental. Many people somehow identify themselves with the medium of video games and consequently the very idea that something they like isn't a game is very threatening to them, which I think is tremendously silly. Something not being a game is fine.

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Re: 'Reader' vs 'Player' vs another word entirely?

#13 Post by Reikun »

The word "participant" makes me think of Happenings/Performance Art. I don't think VNs are at a point yet where the player can be considered a "participant" unless someone makes a VN where the protag is a highly malleable self-insert type character and all future situations are generated procedurally based on the protag's actions/personality and not just scripted based on a plot line.
For instance, I would consider someone shooting baddies with a fake laser gun in a Disney ride a "participant" because their actions are affecting a situation that surrounds them. However, I would consider someone shooting baddies with a fake laser gun at an arcade booth a "player" because their actions are only affecting the in-game environment and not the environment surrounding them. IDK where I'm going with this.

I like the points Carassaurat, Tempus, and CainVoorhees brought up. If we can agree that a "game" is some kind of activity with a win condition, then I think VNs are games and the people who interact with VNs are players. CainVoorhees makes a good point in saying that in some games the players define the win condition. For VNs, it might be something like getting the best ending, 100% completion, unlocking all bonus material, or getting an ending without dying first :P

For stuff made in Twine, I would say it's a game if it sets up the player with a possible goal in the story (i.e. the choices available will help/hinder the player in completing the story with a goal in mind, such as solving a mystery or escaping their fate... etc. Pretty much a VN with no pictures, though Twine games CAN have pictures apparently!!). For linear Twine games (like the one I just linked... unless I just haven't gone through all the choices), I'd say they are pretty much the Twine version of a KN (and I'd use the word "readers"). For personal twine games (pretty much ramblings), I'd call them non-linear journal entries, or maybe discursive/exploratory journal entries :/

So yeah................... For VNs, definitely "player."
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Re: 'Reader' vs 'Player' vs another word entirely?

#14 Post by Tempus »

Carassaurat wrote:Mind, in all this, I'm completely non-judgmental. Many people somehow identify themselves with the medium of video games and consequently the very idea that something they like isn't a game is very threatening to them, which I think is tremendously silly. Something not being a game is fine.
I completely agree with you there. If someone responded to something I released by saying, "that's not a game" I can't imagine my reply being anything but, "so?"

I don't think it should matter to the creator whether what they've made is considered a game, art, both, or neither. That's because (hopefully) creators aren't setting out to create games or art (or things that are called games or art) solely to be recognised as such. Games, novels, plays, movies, and so on, are mediums for something; the means, not the end. These things are created to be fun, insightful, emotionally provocative, or any number of other things. Being a game, novel, play, or movie isn't the goal.
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Re: 'Reader' vs 'Player' vs another word entirely?

#15 Post by Funnyguts »

I don't think it should matter to the creator whether what they've made is considered a game, art, both, or neither. That's because (hopefully) creators aren't setting out to create games or art (or things that are called games or art) solely to be recognised as such. Games, novels, plays, movies, and so on, are mediums for something; the means, not the end. These things are created to be fun, insightful, emotionally provocative, or any number of other things. Being a game, novel, play, or movie isn't the goal.
I don't really agree with this too much. As Greg Costikyan has said, the medium is the message. Trying to fit an idea into a medium that doesn't make sense will only hurt the final product. This doesn't just apply to game vs not game or something similar, it also means that each rule of the medium you select should directly communicate your message. Not having choices in a VN would say something about the whole product, as such. The medium you pick should be seen both as a means and an end.

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