Comments on: What is an Adventure Game?

By: The Sunday Papers | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

The Sunday Papers | Rock, Paper, Shotgun — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 09:27:30 +0000

[...] Hardy writes about What Is An Adventure Game? Reductionist, but fun with it. I’d like to know what Walker’s take is on it, but this [...]

By: Chris Lepine

Chris Lepine — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 04:03:10 +0000

After re-reading this, and your comments on my site – I think we’re basically dealing with the same problem with different focuses.

Love the site. Linked!

By: Cameron Goble

Cameron Goble — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:28:26 +0000

As a grad school student in Education, I was struck by something one of my profs kept drilling into us. She was teaching us ways to teach science to children. Over and over, she reminded us that science is something you *do*.

Not read about. Not think about. Not talk about. (Or at least, not enough just to read, think, and talk about.) Science only counts if you Do.

Maybe games and game design have that same quality: setup, experimentation, and results are all part of something you must *do* to get them, not simply read about or build purely from thought. The doing builds the understanding and furthers the field.

By: Cameron Goble

Cameron Goble — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 23:22:47 +0000

Well, you’re welcome. All I can say is that game designers take cold, analytical code and turn it into an experience that gives risein the players to meanings and emotions themselves. Maybe it’s no great surprise that a comment on such a critique can take that route as well.

By: gnome

gnome — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:46:07 +0000

That of course is what I liked about your piece. It can ignite creativity and discourse.

By: Igor Hardy

Igor Hardy — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:53:13 +0000

Hey Cameron! Big thanks for the comment.

It’s funny how I wrote a seemingly cold, analytical article and you took the key terms of my definition and were able to turn their meanings into such an amazing range of adventure gamer’s emotions.

If this is truly how the definition resonates then I’m really proud of it.

By: Igor Hardy

Igor Hardy — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 23:29:35 +0000

Hi Chris,

Nice to hear you liked the article.

You can definitely look at what games (and genres) are from many different perspectives. In this article I wanted to create a strict and concise (but broad) definition that would inspire designers to test its limits.

By: Igor Hardy

Igor Hardy — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 20:58:30 +0000

In some contexts it’s better to be very specific, in others it is better to remain vague and general – each approach sacrifices something. I would say we need them both.

By: Chris Lepine

Chris Lepine — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:52:51 +0000

Hi Igor,

Just to clarify my trackback – I enjoyed this article and agreed with the general premise (as I’m a big adventure gamer myself). I’m trying to provide a different kind of account about ‘what games are’ – and maybe what game genres are. Hope I didn’t make it sound like your article was a straw man

By: gnome

gnome — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 18:34:17 +0000

A most interesting read, though I’m far from convinced that cultural phenomena -especially art- need strict definitions… Still, there are always interesting ideas to be explored while discussing this, regardless of the need for something concrete or not.