Are videogames contracting the meaning of the word game?

Noby Noby Boy

We’ve had our fair share of discussions around the term “game” on this blog. Often inspired by the fact that it was problematic to categorize our work as games. Up until now, our answer has always been that we are trying to expand the meaning of the word “game”. But perhaps something else is (also) going on.

Before videogames, the word game could be used for many things. And it still is used like that by people outside of the gamer elite. Basically anything whimsical, childish or silly was a candidate to be called a game. Game was even used as a term to denounce certain practices, as in “that politician is playing a dirty game” or “she was playing games with my feelings”.

Videogames, possibly because they are made with computers, have formalized games into something that is perhaps a lot stricter than what a game used to be. As games continue to become an economically important industry, this formalization only gets more extreme. I clearly remember as a turning point somebody from Activision saying, in 2004, that they “make games for gamers”. Up until then, there was still some doubt about what videogames could be. And ambitions about reaching new audiences. But since then, videogames overall seem to have become increasingly “gamey”.

The success of Nintendo has of course altered this course somewhat. But not to the point where the word “game” is being redefined -or given back its former meaning. Nowadays, we’re simply getting more and more comfortable with the idea of playing “non-games”.

Like watching non-movies and reading non-books. It seems rather silly.

6 thoughts on “Are videogames contracting the meaning of the word game?”

  1. I tend to define game as a playful communication. Video games, being developed by party A and consumed by party B, qualify as a communication in the same way a novel or film can be considered a communication. And since you can just as easily ‘play’ The Endless Forest as you can WoW, I feel it’s not terribly necessary to use separate overall terms for the two experiences. That is, they’re both games.

  2. But maybe the important thing is not that we’re playing a GAME, but that we’re PLAYING it.
    You can play with anything, a toy, a game, a pen or your hair.

    As you can READ books & non-book. Or WATCH movies & non-movies.

    But it’s much more relevant with PLAY (and partly with READ, actually) because it’s precisely (one of) the specificity(ies) of that medium.

    Thus, your work is concentrating on “things-to-play” 😉

  3. I agree. Perhaps it’s easier when you speak a language where the words “to play” and “game” are related. In French we say “jouer un jeu”, in German “ein Spiel spielen” as in Dutch “een spel spelen”. Only in English are “play” and “game” so different from each other.

  4. Doesn’t apply to Swedish either. There’s a huge difference between a “lek” and a “spel”.

Comments are closed.