Contemporary Aesthetics

Volume 6 (2008)

2008

Definition of Videogames
Grant Tavinor
Lincoln University, Canterbury, New Zealand, tavinorg@lincoln.ac.nz

Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/

liberalarts_contempaesthetics
Part of the Esthetics Commons

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Liberal Arts Division at DigitalCommons@RISD. It has been accepted for inclusion in
Contemporary Aesthetics by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@RISD. For more information, please contact mpompeli@risd.edu.
 Definition of Videogames

  Grant Tavinor
About CA
Abstract
Journal Can videogames be defined? The new field of games studies
has generated three somewhat competing models of
Contact CA videogaming that characterize games as new forms of gaming,
narratives, and interactive fictions. When treated as necessary
Links and sufficient condition definitions, however, each of the three
approaches fails to pick out all and only videogames. In this
Submissions paper I argue that looking more closely at the formal qualities
of definition helps to set out the range of definitional options
Search Journal open to the games theorist. A disjunctive definition of
Enter search terms videogaming seems the most appropriate of these definitional
options. The disjunctive definition I offer here is motivated by
Search the observation that there is more than one characteristic way
of being a videogame.

Editorial Board Key Words

definition, disjunctive definition, games, interactive fiction,
Permission to Reprint narrative, videogames
Privacy

Site Map
1. Introduction
Publisher
Videogames are now the topic of the nascent interdisciplinary
Webmaster field of games studies. As it stands, the field is a clutter of
different ideas and methods with hardly any core agreement
among theorists about what they are studying or how to study
it. A number of competing theoretical models of games have
been offered, the three most prominent being the
narratological approach, the ludological approach, and games
being conceived as a new type of interactive fiction. Typically,
each of these theoretical positions proposes a feature to be
characteristic of videogames. Such claims are not always as
clear cut as we might expect of definitions because the
theoretical models offered in the games literature often exist in
hybrid forms, and difficult borderline cases are usually
acknowledged. Indeed, the participants of the debate do not
always see it as a definitional debate, in part, perhaps,
because much of this material is located in the domain of
critical theory where definitional exclusivity is not always seen
as a virtue. Games scholar James Newman, though, makes the
definitional nature of much of this theoretical literature
explicit.[1]

An analytic approach to the theory of videogames is well

overdue, particularly one that is cognizant of how such
definitional debates have taken place in other cultural
domains. The field badly needs a definitional debate to be
carried out in clear, unambiguous terms so that the range of
theoretical options open to games scholars is made clear. On
this definitional issue, games studies has much to learn from
analytic aesthetics, as the concern with the definition of
videogames shares a number of similarities with the definition
of art debate. Treated as definitions, narratology, ludology,
and interactive fiction theory are all prone to examples of
videogames that lack the purported characteristic feature, or
of items that have it but are nevertheless not videogames. Put
in the classical terms, if proposed as conditions that are
necessary and sufficient for an item to be a videogame,
narratological, ludological, and interactive fiction theories all
fail as proper definitions. In this paper I will argue that we
may need to look more closely at the formal qualities of
definitions, and the kinds of conditions they include, if we are
to come to an accurate understanding of what videogames
really are.

2. The Theory of Videogames

In the first part of this paper I will briefly run through the
current theoretical positions and the obvious problems they
face when treated as definitions in the classical mode. A point
of terminology has to be made at this initial stage.
Videogames are variously referred to as "computer games,"
"electronic games," and even "digital entertainments." These
terms cannot be taken to be strictly synonymous: "computer
game" is sometimes taken to refer to games on a personal
computer; "electronic game" might also refer to toys; while
"videogame" is sometimes used to refer exclusively to console
games such as those on the X-Box 360 or Playstation 3. I will
adopt "videogames" as the general term here because it is the
term that dominates current usage, and because it has the
virtue of referring to the visual aspect of games that seems
crucial to their definition. My purpose here is more than just
an attempt to provide a nominal definition of videogaming; it
is also explanatory, in that I intend to justify the extension of
the term.

Narratologists, through their critical orientation with texts,

argue that videogames are or can best be treated as
interactive narratives or stories. As such, videogames can be
placed within a wider explanatory schema that attends to
narratives of all forms, including most centrally, literature and
film. Related the narratological approach to games are a
number of theories that cast games as texts.[2] Though her
work is by no means exclusively narrativist, an example of a
theorist who has provided readings of videogames that
includes a focus on narrative conventions is Janet Murray.[3]
Murray wonders whether games have the potential to express
stories or narratives even though their representational nature
is different from that of other narrative media. It is clear that
many videogames do involve narratives. For example, Grand
Theft Auto: San Andreas begins with the player-character CJ
in a voice over, explaining his return to the city of his birth
after a sojourn in Liberty City. The game, mostly through cut
scenes and dialogue incidental to the gameplay, follows this
narrative through to its conclusion: CJ, having defeated his
enemies and reunited his family, decides to once again step
out and explore the city. Admittedly, narratives do seem more
obvious in some gaming forms than others. Narrative plays a
particularly important role in the adventure and role-playing
genres, for example.

But, problematically, narrative does not seem to be a sufficient

or even necessary condition of videogames. Against
sufficiency, it is clear that videogames share their narrative
forms with other media. We can question whether the
narrative element is something distinctive to gaming, or
whether games are simply a combination of media forms,
including on occasion narrative ones. In many videogames
involving narratives, the narrative is incidental to the gaming
activity itself. For example, in a game such as Katamari
Damacy, the particularly bizarre gameplay involves using a
large sticky ball to roll around different environments sticking
to and picking up a variety of objects. What narrative there is
in Katamari Damacy is comprised of a back-story progressed
through pre-rendered videos that do not significantly add to
the formal qualities of the gameplay. In such games the
narrative might be removed without detriment to the
gameplay.

Many games lack a narrative element altogether, and so

narrative cannot be considered a necessary feature of
videogames. The classic Tetris involves the manipulation of
differently shaped blocks of colour that fall at intervals from
the top of the screen so that they can be fit together like a
puzzle. The game, and its appeal, involves a challenge of
sensory-motor coordination, rather than following a narrative.
Dance and music games also tend to lack narrative structures,
instead concentrating on the cognitive, sensory, and motor
challenges attendant to those gaming forms.

Occasionally in the narratological approach, games without

narratives are incorporated because, though lacking a
narrative in the traditional sense-that is, a story in which
events are selected for their contribution to an unfolding plot,
they are seen as being narratives in virtue of some broader
conception of that term. For example, a game like Tetris might
be included in this narratological approach because it is
comprised of unfolding events in which the notions of success
and defeat can be applied, something that Steven Poole calls
"kinetic narrative."[4] There is a certain ad hoc flavor to
stretching the notion of what constitutes a narrative. Of
course, the expansion of the concept 'narrative' to include
unlike traditional narratives is a practice common to a great
deal of recent intertextual theorizing, of which these
videogame theories are typical. It seems to me that the
expansion of what counts as a narrative or text often threatens
to render those terms theoretically vacuous.

The second theoretical approach to gaming, ludology,

emphasizes the obvious gaming nature of videogames. Jesper
Juul, in his hybrid game/fiction theory of videogames, links
videogames to earlier forms of gaming, hoping to show that
they replicate many of the formal structures of traditional
gaming in a new computational medium.[5] Espen Aarseth is
perhaps the most prominent of the ludologists, and has written
at length about the function of games, even those picked out
by narratologists as exemplifying narratives, as "ergodic"
items.[6] "Ergodic" is Aarseth's term for texts that require the
audience to pay special attention or to take a role in
generating their content: "In ergodic literature, nontrivial effort
is required to allow the reader to traverse the text."[7] Ergodic
texts allow the possibility of multiple readings, allow the reader
to instil in a text novel meaning, or place the onus on the
reader to choose in which narrative direction a text goes.
Examples would be the Choose Your Own Adventure books
that were popular briefly in the 1980s, role-playing games
such as Dungeons and Dragons, the Aleatoric writing of the
French surrealists, modern experiments in cyber and
hypertexts, some of the more complex non-linear and
experimental literature of the twentieth century, and
videogames.

I am not so sure that a special terminology is warranted in this

case, or that it picks out something that is specific to
videogaming that might be of use in forming a classical
definition. The idea that some texts require "nontrivial effort"
from their audiences because of their non-linear structure or
other complications, such as the possibility of multiple readings
or branching narratives, disregards the fact that much
traditional literature also displays these properties. This is
something that Aarseth immediately notes, but his response-
in part an ad hominem claiming that such a criticism could
only come from someone without "firsthand" experience of the
texts he intends to refer to[8]-is unconvincing. In fact, most
representational art demands the appreciators contribute
interpretative content to those works in varying degrees, with
many traditional artworks opening up possibilities of ambiguity
and multiple interpretations.[9] Aarseth's term seems to me to
be an attempt to unpack the interactive nature of videogames
that does not rely on that term-which he thinks meaningless
and unmotivated[10]-and that sets videogames as unique
objects that might resist the "colonisation" of games studies by
other disciplines such as English, critical theory, or film
studies, an issue of which I will have more to say later.[11]

But even if Aarseth has identified something that is distinctive

of a range of textual artefacts, it is clear that this range is not
co-extensive with videogames, and Aarseth, in setting out the
explanatory range of his theory, admits as much. The same
criticism can be made of other games theorists who do not buy
into the elaborate theoretical terminology Aarseth introduces.
Jesper Juul's theory links videogames to earlier gaming forms,
attempting to show how videogames fit within definitions of
traditional gaming. His "classical games model" defines
traditional games as involving rules, variable and quantifiable
outcomes, player effort and attachment to the outcome, and
negotiable consequences.[12] But the category of games
picked out by this definition is obviously not identical with
videogames, given its applicability to other earlier non-
videogames. Even if the ludologist has identified a necessary
definitional condition of the videogame, being a game is
obviously not sufficient to make an object a videogame, as
many other non-videogames-toys, puzzles, card games, and
so on-share these features. What is it that is distinctive to
videogames? The theorist may need to step beyond ludology if
she really wants to explain what videogames are.

Neither am I convinced that the ludological approach precludes

the role of the other theoretical approaches to videogames.
The condition of being a game, whether this is cashed out in
terms of "ergodic" items or Juul's classical games model, may
not even be a necessary feature of videogames other than in
the near-trivial sense that videogames are played.
Significantly, Juul admits that his theory of games counts such
a seminal videogame as Simcity as a borderline case of a
game because it does not involve a clear or quantifiable
goal.[13] Microsoft Flight Simulator is a similar case because
apart from a number of missions that seem almost incidental
to the game, winning and losing are not sensible outcomes.
The player simply enjoys the fictional activity of flying and has
no goal other than this enjoyment. Simcity and Microsoft Flight
Simulator, as simulations, seem easier to account for in terms
of an interactive fiction theory of videogaming, thus explaining
something of the trend toward a game/fiction hybrid theory
found in Juul's work. I will return to this hybrid game/fiction
theory when I make my own positive claims later in this paper:
suitably formalised, I think that something like Juul's theory
can be used to base a definition of videogames.

Thus a third theoretical approach is to characterise games as

interactive fictions.[14] Two immediate confusions are possible
here. First, such a theory is not committed to the idea that all
videogames are in fact modifications of the genre of interactive
fiction, a type of fiction in both electronic and non-electronic
media that reached its height of popularity in the late 1970s in
games like Zork. The genre of interactive fiction is merely one
species of interactive fiction more broadly conceived, with
some kinds of interactive fiction-flight simulators for example-
being quite unlike the genre kind just mentioned. A second
and related confusion is that the theory of games as
interactive fictions has the potential to be conflated with a
narratological approach.[15] The fictive status of an artefact
seems independent of its status as a narrative.[16] A
videogame could be a fiction and yet not narrative in form:
again, this seems to be the case with Microsoft Flight
Simulator, where it is fictionally the case that one is flying an
aircraft, but where there is no narrative-in any meaningful
sense of that term, at least

Equally, a game might involve a narrative, but a non-fictional

one. A number of the back-story narratives portrayed in
historical civilization games like Age of Empires are based
(loosely) around real historical events, and so the narrative
aspect of the game (though perhaps not the gameplay) is
non-fictional. A case where narrative and fiction do seem to
coincide is where the narrative is an interactive one, such as in
the Playstation 2 game Shadow of Memories. It is unclear that
a narrative could be both non-fictional and interactive, given
that for a player to participate in a narrative in an interactive
way, the player would need to have some influence on the
course of the narrative. Non-fictional narratives are
presumably determinate in recounting a sequence of actual
events. In Shadow of Memories, this narrative interaction is
achieved by having the narrative branch at a number of
junctures depending on what the player does during gameplay.
This, however, is the source of some common doubts that a
narrative could be genuinely interactive-the branches in
Shadow of Memories are small in number and pre-specified in
content-but at the very least it shows that interactive
narratives, if they do exist, will be a subset of the class of
interactive fictions.

I think that if one is careful in specifying exactly what it is that

is interactive about interactive fictions, then videogames can
often be counted as such things.[17] Unfortunately, it is not
clear that all games really are interactive fictions or involve
fiction at all, and, as such, being an interactive fiction cannot
be a necessary condition of videogaming. In some ways Tetris
seems quite similar to a jigsaw puzzle-examples of which also
exist as rudimentary videogames-and jigsaws lack fictive
elements (apart, perhaps, from what is represented as the
picture). Jigsaw puzzles involve the literal piecing together of
pictures, and the mere fact that the representation is moved
from a cardboard medium to a computer screen-making it an
instance of what Juul calls a "transmedial" game[18]-is not
sufficient to thereby make it a fiction. Fiction involves
something more, that is, participation not only with
representations but also with a fictional world where objects
are imagined to exist and properties are imagined to
inhere.[19] Is it that Tetris involves the literal manipulations
of blocks of color on a computer display, or is there fictive
projection involved in that one is speaking of "blocks falling
into place"? Tetris is indeed an ambiguous case, and a great
deal more argument would be need to establish whether it is
or is not a case of interactive fiction, but at the very least it
provides an example of where the fictive qualities of the game
are rudimentary and incidental to the focus of gameplay.
Videogame chess, Sudoku, and tic-tac-toe would be similar
cases of non-fictive games.

A further objection to the idea that videogames are interactive

fictions, and one that James Newman makes much of, is that
much of the fictive activity involved in gaming is distinctly
non-interactive.[20] For large stretches of many games one is
merely viewing pre-rendered videos that fill out back-story or
advance the narrative, but which the player has no ability to
affect. And, of course, being an interactive fiction cannot be a
sufficient condition of videogame-hood, as pen and paper role-
playing, military or commercial flight simulators, and childhood
games of pretense are all interactive fictions while not counting
as videogames.

3. Definition and Normativity in the Videogame Debate

I think that the preceding section is enough to show that the

theories of videogames that do exist within game studies
would face significant difficulties if they were to be considered
as proper definitions. It is another matter entirely to ask just
why the games theories encounter these difficulties when so
treated. One thing that became clear in the definition-of-art
debate is that theorists of the arts were often guilty of picking
out a property of art favored in their own time and claiming
that property to be essential to the kind.[21] In this way
definition often turned out to be disguised recommendation.
Clive Bell's introduction of "significant form" in his famous
theory of art would seem to be guilty of this; the art-historical
context of his theory was a growing interest in formal
structures in the increasingly abstract art of the early twentieth
century.[22]

It seems to me that although ludologists, narratologists, and

others would claim to be characterizing the nature of games,
there does seem to be a large normative component in their
proposals and that this comprises the most significant problem
with how the definitional debate concerning videogames has
been conducted to date. Games theorists have all too often
been guilty of implicit advocacy. There are clear cases in the
games literature where the definitional and normative issues
have become confused for each other. For example, in his
discussion of the difficulties inherent in the definition of
videogames and the possibility of a definition in terms of
graphical or aesthetic qualities, Newman slips into normative
mode when he claims that "even the most aesthetically
advanced gameworlds can fail as videogames."[23] Newman
does not seem to realise that this does not discount that
games might still be defined by their graphical features-it
merely shows that graphically brilliant games can be bad
games. Definitions should stay silent on these normative
issues so that we can count as games those which we do not
happen to value as games.

Why might there be normative definitional biases in games

studies? A first suggestion is that this normative temptation is
a particular danger when theory has a close connection to
future technology; this is definitely the case in games studies,
where at conferences theorists rub shoulders with industry
figures-or indeed are industry figures-who are directly
involved in designing new gaming forms. Games studies are
conducted for a number of sometimes incompatible reasons.
There are theorists who seek a descriptive understanding of
the origin and present nature of gaming. But equally there are
technologists who want to know about the potential future
applications of the form. A normative take on the definitional
issue more clearly fits with the latter conception of games
studies. This seems to replicate a rather informal division that
can be observed within analytic aesthetics, with some theorists
seeing their role as external to art practice and others seeing
themselves involved or contributing to those practices.[24]

A second suggestion concerns the pragmatics of explanatory

models. Fitting a new field of research within a current
theoretical prototype promises to allow easier access into the
new area. Casting games as narratives allows the games
theorist to use the tools and substance of narratology to
theorize about the domain of videogames. It may turn out that
such an approach is not entirely warranted, and an amount of
shoehorning of the new subject area may occur. I argued
earlier that this might be the case where narratologists are
willing to revise the meaning of 'narrative' to include the
typically action-orientated content of videogames. But in as
much as the approach succeeds in illuminating the functioning
of games, and even in as much as it fails-thus making clear
the demand for a new theoretical method-there may be an
instrumental justification for such an approach.

Another explanation of the definitional biases in games studies

amounts to the contrary of this first pragmatic issue, in that
finding a novel trait, such as the "ergodic" properties that
Aarseth thinks essential to gaming, might allow games
theorists some freedom to start afresh, unconstrained by the
theoretical baggage of a previous tradition. Aarseth makes this
motivation explicit: "Games are not a kind of cinema, or
literature, but colonising attempts from both these fields have
already happened, and no doubt will happen again. And again,
until computer game studies emerges as a clearly self-
sustained academic field."[25] To gain academic autonomy,
games theorists do not need intellectual autonomy of the type
that Aarseth seems to be seeking here, however. Games
studies could be a "self-sustained academic field" even if it
depended on theories and modes of inquiry shared with other
academic fields. The physical independence and autonomy of
games studies could be sustained in virtue of the clear
difference of subject matter. This, indeed, may be an
important reason why games theorists need to settle this
definitional matter.

A further normative motivation that I suspect is lurking here,

especially in relation to narratology, is the desire for
videogames to be taken seriously both as a form of media and
a topic of study. One suspects that games theorists are a little
insecure with the standing of games as a childish or geeky
pursuit, and that search for serious narratives in videogaming
might be seen as a prerequisite for taking games studies
seriously. The games literature is filled with inflated
estimations of the meanings of quite simple videogames.
Consider as just one example Steven Poole's bizarre reading of
Pac-Man as a "neo-Marxist parable of late capitalism"[26].
This is surely to credit a game with a narrative significance
that it does not really have. A similar issue arises when it is
questioned whether games are art or have the potential to
become art. This question arises with unsurprising regularity in
both the popular media and academic treatment of
videogames. For example, Aaron Smuts has claimed that the
primary question that analytic aesthetics should ask when
concerning itself with videogames is whether or not they are
art.[27]

I think that it is a mistake to tie the worth of games studies to

the presence in videogames of serious ideas, narratives, or
art. This is especially the case if, as seems to have happened
with some narratological approaches, videogames have to be
shoehorned into an existing theoretical schema. The worth of
games studies does not hinge on establishing games as being
significant in this sense. There are many other reasons for why
games are a worthwhile topic of study for the theorist of
culture, not the least of which are their increasing dominance
in popular culture and the persisting worries that many have
concerning their negative effects on individuals and society.
Furthermore, if we are not concerned to establish videogames
as serious narratives or works of art, our eyes might be
opened to the interesting features they do have, particularly in
terms of gameplay, where it seems to me videogames are
offering something creative and new.

4. The Formal Qualities of Definition

If the analysis of the earlier parts of this essay is correct, then

treated as definitions each of the former theories fails to pick
out all and only videogames. The properties of being a game,
narrative, or fiction cannot be used as conditions in a simple
necessary and sufficient condition definition of videogames.
Where does this leave the games theorist with an interest in
explaining how, or indeed if, games can be defined? Drawing
again on the lessons learned in the definition of art debate,
there are at least four responses that might be made here.

A first response might claim that ludology, narratology, and

interactive fiction theories of gaming fail because they pick out
the wrong intrinsic property in their theoretical analyses. It
may be that there is some other property that is shared by all
and only videogames that has thus far escaped the attention
of games theorists. Lacking such a proposal, however, it is
hard to know what to make of the prospects of this response
to the definitional impasse. Besides their digital visual medium,
it is their nature as games, narratives, and fictions that allows
videogames to function and is typical of the engagement that
players have with them. If there is some property besides
these that all and only videogames share, it is not immediately
obvious what it is.

A second more pessimistic option is to give up on the

definitional project altogether and argue that for some reason
games cannot be defined. I suspect that because of their
commitment to critical theory, such an approach would be
tempting for a number of the theorists currently working in
games studies. There is also an argument to be made for this
theoretical manoeuvre in terms drawn from analytic aesthetics.
In response to the failure of earlier definitions of art, a number
of mid-twentieth century philosophers have argued that art
cannot be defined because it altogether lacks essential
properties. For these thinkers, the unproductive state of the
definitional debate concerning art signifies the failure of the
project in a more fundamental way than the inability to settle
on the right kind of intrinsic property. Morris Weitz presents
the most famous form of this anti-essentialism.[28] Among
other claims, Weitz argues that because art is open to creative
reinvention, philosophers may set out typical conditions of art,
but these can never count as necessary and sufficient
conditions. Art, he contends, is an "open concept" that cannot
be closed by formal definition. Thus, the failure of theorists of
art to arrive at a satisfactory definition of art is not a result of
the content of previous definitions, but because art as a
domain is not amenable to classical definition.

Something similar might be said of videogames. The invention

of the videogame set a certain kind of precedent for the future
of gaming forms, but the category has been subject to
continual reinvention and so has given rise to artefacts quite
different to the very first videogames. Games designers have
clearly found different ways to explore the potential of the
computer for entertainment, and many of the gaming
examples that were used earlier as counter-examples to the
proposed definitions of gaming are just these innovative
games. Videogame, no less than art, the anti-essentialist
might think, is an open concept. The idea that videogames
have developed over their history, so that they are now quite
different from their original conception, is something that I will
acknowledge in my own definition later in this paper; however,
it will not be treated as a reason why the definitional process
is hopeless.

The definition of art debate did not end with Weitz and the
other anti-essentialists.[29] Recent philosophers have been
keen to rehabilitate the essentialist program despite anti-
essentialism or perhaps, indeed, because of it. Some theorists
argue that the anti-essentialist arguments show only that
intrinsic properties-those perceptible of the artworks
themselves-cannot be used to define art, but that these are
not exhaustive of the properties one might pick out in a
definition. Counter to the intrinsic mode of definition to which
Weitz objected, a number of theories of art have arisen that
couch their definitions in terms of relational properties such as
"aesthetic function," "history," "institutional" or "social" role, or
a hybrid of these. These properties are not perceptible in the
artefacts themselves, but can only be discerned by
ascertaining how the artefact stands in relation to some other
thing, whether it is an aspect of our perceptual or affective
psychology, a previous artefact or historical lineage of
artefacts, or some social or institutional fact.

Turning to the issue of videogames, we can see that

narratological, ludological, and interactive fiction theories all
pick out intrinsic or proximal properties-properties that inhere
in the games themselves-and that their failure may possibly be
traced to this fact. Most central games do involve gaming,
narratives, or fictions, but we cannot expect of any given game
that it will contain any one of these things. Thus a third
response that might be made here is that games can be
defined, not in terms of their intrinsic properties, but rather
through some kind of relational property. A historical definition
seems a natural proposal; videogames do have a documented
historical origin, and subsequent games do seem linked to and
influenced by this historical precedent.[30] Indeed, I think
that No-l Carroll's historical theory of art might shed light on
games and their development in this regard.[31]

Another response that has been made to anti-essentialism

focuses not on the type of properties referred to in definitional
analysis but on the form of the definition itself. A number of
recent philosophers of the arts have argued that a classical
mode of definition is not the only definitional game in town:
disjunctive definitions are also possible.[32] A disjunctive
definition is one that includes at least one disjunctive clause
among its conditions. To drastically simplify matters:

X is a work of art iff it has property A or property B.

In this case intrinsic (or, indeed, relational) properties may be

individually or jointly sufficient for X to be art, but it is not
specified that they are individual necessary for X to be so.
Informally, this is often meant to capture the intuition that
there may be more than one way to be art. For example, in
his naturalist version of this theory, Denis Dutton argues that
direct pleasure, the display of skill or virtuosity, style, novelty
and creativity, criticism, representation, "special" focus,
expressive individuality, emotional saturation, intellectual
challenge, traditions and institutions, and imaginative
experience are all recognition criteria of art works. Individual
artworks may lack one or more of these properties-thus
explaining how the definitional debate concerning art has been
propelled by the method of counter-example-but the "features
on this list are implicated, individually and more often jointly,
in answers to the question of whether, confronted with an art-
like object, performance, or activity, we are justified in calling
it art."[33]

Thus the fourth and final response is to conclude that

videogames cannot be defined by a simple necessary and
sufficient condition definition of videogames, but that this
stems from the strict adherence to a narrow mode of
definition. A disjunctive definition might be used to explain
how, even though they fail to have a single set of necessary
and sufficient properties, videogames can nevertheless be
defined. There might just be more than one characteristic way
of being a videogame. Indeed, this would be a way to
reconcile the theoretical divergence of ludologists,
narratologists, and interactive fiction games theorists, while
retaining the valuable contribution these theorists do make to
the understanding of videogames.

In the face of the difficulties discussed in the first sections of

this paper, the games theorist who wants to hold onto the
prospect of discovering a definition of videogaming has at least
three theoretical options: persisting with the intrinsic mode of
definition; developing a definition using relational properties;
or developing a disjunctive definition. Which of these
responses to the definitional issue concerning videogames is
most appropriate? I think the most productive way of
assessing this question is to see what might be made of one of
the options.

5. A Disjunctive Definition of Videogames

A disjunctive definition of videogames may be the most

appropriate response. I will argue that such games can best be
defined by providing a set of conditions, not all of which are
individually necessary, but when combined in an appropriate
way are sufficient for an artefact to be a videogame.
Specifically, my proposal is as follows:

X is a videogame iff it is an artefact in a digital

visual medium, is intended primarily as an object
of entertainment, and is intended to provide such
entertainment through the employment of one or
both of the following modes of engagement: rule-
bound gameplay or interactive fiction.

The form of this definition needs a little explanation in that it

differs from a purely disjunctive definition. There are at least
two necessary conditions that need to be specified in the
definition so as to distinguish videogames from some fairly
similar artefacts. Some disjunctive definitions of art also
accept that there are at least some necessary conditions of
art. For example, alongside the disjunctive list that he claims
to be recognition criteria of artworks, Dutton also thinks that
two necessary conditions of art are "(a) being an artefact and
(b) being made or performed for an audience."[34] These
count as very basic qualities that artworks must have, though
they are common to other cultural forms. Games seem to be
similar in this respect, and so the disjunctive definition of
videogames proposed here entails two necessary conditions:
being an artefact in a digital and visual medium, and being
intended primarily as an object for entertainment.

The first necessary condition seems almost inevitable; we

would hardly think an artefact could be a videogame if it did
not involve a computer and a visual display. The invention of
the computer stands as a historical prerequisite for
videogaming, and gaming exists as an employment of that
technology for the purposes of entertainment. Even though
this medium condition seems to be an almost self-evident one,
it needs to be included in the definition because a number of
videogames are structurally very similar to non-videogames,
differing only in their representational medium. This is the case
with the transmedial games that have migrated into a
computer setting, an issue that was touched on earlier in
terms of the videogame versions of jigsaw puzzles, chess, and
Sudoku. These artefacts become videogames in virtue of their
transfer into a computer setting. Without the necessary
condition specifying the digital and visual medium of
videogames, the above definition would also apply to these
games in their non-computer form.

The reference to visual representation is needed because there

are a range of toys and electronic games that would otherwise
be included under this definition. Examples here would be
electronic games, dolls, and toys such as Furbys. Furbys-the
non-standard plural of Furby is intentional-are small, cuddly,
owl-like dolls that are able to respond to their owner and to
other Furbys through the use of the fictional language Furbish.
Individual Furbys give the appearance of learning the player's
language by slowly deploying more pre-programmed real
words and phrases rather than their Furbish equivalents.
Videogames are games for play involving a visual monitor or
screen, even though they involve other representational modes
such as sound and tactile means such as force feedback
controllers. Some electronic games and toys seem to be
counted out of the class of videogames because their
representational or interactive media do not principally involve
a visual screen. The representational media of the Furby are
its toy-like properties and quasi-linguistic abilities. Furbys are
essentially an updated version of the talking doll, but one that
because of its employment of sophisticated computer
technologies such as voice recognition, is interactive in a
manner somewhat similar to the interactivity of videogames.
Whereas videogames often provide a fictional world that the
player may interact with and explore the potential of, Furbys
depict a fictional being that encourages the same sort of
interaction. Videogames may exist as a species within the
wider class of electronic games, of course, allowing us to
understand the connection between the clearly related kinds.
Note also that this visual medium condition is not a claim that
videogames are always pictorial. A number of early
videogames such as Hunt the Wumpus or ADVENT were text-
based games. Graphical games-especially those in a three-
dimensional medium-have come to dominate videogaming,
though aspects of text persist even in modern games in game
menus, subtitles, and elsewhere.

The entertainment condition of the proposed definition is

needed to distinguish games from similar artefacts that have
more practical purposes, such as military and commercial flight
simulators, virtual museums, and computer desktop
applications that involve fictive aspects, such as the paperclip
character who offers advice in some versions of Microsoft
Word. Some digital artefacts clearly serve purposes other than
entertainment; simulations, in particular, because they are
able to present in a fictive way an activity that in the real
world would be either dangerous or costly, are valuable tools
in learning and training. That games are "intended" for
entertainment needs to be noted because some non-games
can be used for entertainment purposes while arguably not
becoming games in virtue of that fact. Although a commercial
or military flight simulator might be treated as a game, this
would not be sufficient in my view to make it a one.
Furthermore, the definition must be framed in terms of
intended function to cover games that while intended to
entertain, turn out to be not in the least bit entertaining
because of some deficiency or flaw.
The latter disjunctive aspect of the above definition is included
in order to cover the contingent ways in which games have
traditionally provided modes of engagement. In picking out
games and fiction as being crucial to videogames, I am in
general agreement with Juul's game-fiction hybrid theory of
videogames; where I differ is in how these conditions are
formalized in terms of a disjunctive definition. The gameplay
and interactive fiction conditions are needed to distinguish
ways in which digital visual media have been employed for
entertainment purposes that do not constitute videogames,
such as internet sites and videos, digital television, interactive
media such as DVD games, and so forth. It is a matter of
historical contingency that videogames have employed one or
both of these interactive modes. Indeed, one important
positive of this disjunctive definition of videogames is that it
explains some of the links that videogames have to earlier
forms of culture-in particular, board games, narratives, and
fiction-and that tempted previous theorists to characterize
games in terms of those previous forms. Videogaming is
essentially a manner in which traditional cultural forms have
been implemented in a new technological medium.

First, that an artefact involves rule-bound gameplay is a

condition that is sufficient, given the presence of the two
necessary conditions of this disjunctive definition, for an
artefact to be a videogame. Games such as Tetris, Pong and
Pac-Man seem to be videogames in virtue of this condition, as
do most transmedial games such as chess and card games.
This condition demands that we specify what it is to be a
game, though this explanation is outside of the scope of the
present paper. Juul's discussion of the classical games model
promises to be of use here.[35] The explanation might also
have to capture the relationship between puzzles and games,
because the former term seems particularly apt for describing
videogames such as Tetris. At the very least games involve
rules, and an objective-what it is to win the game-that is
meant to be achieved in terms of those rules.

One complication is that the designation "rule" cannot always

be taken to signify a rule in a declarative linguistic format.
Rules in traditional games usually amount to a set of
declarative statements about what sorts of moves are legal in
the game and what counts as the objective or goal of the
game (what it is to win). What guides the action in
videogames are almost never rules of this kind but material
possibilities for interaction and objectives that must be
achieved-and often discovered-given these possibilities. A part
of the challenge of many videogames involves discovering
what the rules and objectives are through trial-and-error
inductive reasoning, this being another way in which
videogames differ from traditional games where the rules and
objectives are known by the players in advance.[36] Juul
argues that the extending of the concept "rule" to the material
possibilities in videogames is appropriate because both things
instantiate a particular kind of goal-directed algorithm.[37]
Explicating the nature of the rules within videogames,
including their similarities and differences to traditional game
rules, is a topic in need of further research.

As argued in the earlier parts of this paper, not all videogames

involve rule-bound gameplay, even in the minimally specified
sense of having rules and an objective. The second
characteristic way in which an interactive entertainment can be
a videogame is its employment of interactive fiction. Merely
being a fiction, in conjunction with the two necessary
conditions of the definition, is not sufficient for an artefact to
be a videogame, as this would include within the class of
videogames many fictional internet videos and films in a digital
medium. It is clear that the emphasis must be placed on
"interactive" to distinguish videogame fictions from these other
kinds. What it is to be an interactive fiction is also in need of
further explanation, but it already seems clear that something
more than physical interaction or responsiveness is needed.
What is needed is an explanation of how a player contributes
to the fictive content and so can be said to be playing a role in
a fictional scenario.[38]

Even without a detailed explanation of interactive fiction, it is

evident that interactive fiction comes in number of forms,
including simulations, world-exploring or world-building
fictions, and interactive narratives. Simulation is that class of
interactive fiction that makes claims to veracity with real
activities or experiences; the various versions of Microsoft
Flight Simulator, for example, attempt to simulate the
experience of flying. Though the simulation is incomplete in
various respects-it makes no attempt to simulate the physical
forces of flying in a physical way, as do some commercial flight
simulations through employing the somatogravic illusion-its
simulation is detailed enough that it can be used as a training
aid for real flying.

World exploring or world building games are those games that

portray a fictional world, either through text, as in early text-
based games, or, as is much more common in recent times, in
a 3D graphical environment. When presenting a 3D graphical
world, these are often called "sandbox" games. Though these
games often do involve rules and objectives, they need not. A
number of world building games are open-ended; as Juul
notes, Simcity does not specify a clear goal. How the players
conduct themselves-whether they aim for a vast functional
metropolis or a city that they can subsequently destroy with a
natural disaster-is up to the player. Newman calls this aspect
of non-goal orientated gaming 'paidea.'[39] Grand Theft Auto,
with its vast and replete fictional world, also encourages this
kind of open-ended gaming, as does the similar fantasy-
themed game The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion. In both games the
gamer can spend his or her time exploring the cities and
wildness areas and interacting with the locals. Some Massive
Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) also lack
quantifiable goals and outcomes, with fictional (and real) social
activity being among the principal motivations for playing the
game.

Finally, a number of videogames are fictional insofar as they

involve interactive narratives. I claimed earlier that narrative
and fiction are not co-extensive terms, but I also noted that
fictionality seems to be a prerequisite for genuinely interactive
narrative. Some artefacts are videogames in virtue of allowing
their players to contribute to an unfolding narrative. It is in
this sense that the genre of interactive fiction, if employed in a
digital visual medium principally for the purposes of
entertainment-for example, a game like the already mentioned
Zork-counts as a form of videogaming. One especially
significant case of gaming narrative is the fantasy role-playing
adventure and its orientation around the "quest": a
transmedial gaming form that owes its existence to the
documented historical convergence of computer and pen and
paper role-playing games.[40]

6. Potential Criticisms

My claim here is that games can be best defined by a

conjunction of two necessary conditions-the digital/visual
medium condition and the entertainment condition-and a
disjunction that summarizes how the former necessary
condition instantiates the latter: rule-bound gameplay and
interactive fiction. Finally in this paper, it is worthwhile
rehearsing some of the difficulties that this definition might be
susceptible to, both to defend and to clarify this disjunctive
definition of videogames. Most obviously, examples of games
that do not fit the definition, either because they lack one of
the necessary conditions or both of the disjunctive conditions,
would show the definition to be incomplete. Perhaps, in the
case that the proposed counter-example failed to meet one of
the disjunctive criteria, a further way in which digital visual
entertainments could count as videogames could be used to
supplement the definition. Indeed, this seems almost an
inevitable prospect given that status of gaming as a
developing cultural form. Thus, a related potential difficulty
here is whether the disjunctive aspect of the definition, even if
it presently does cover the features characteristic of
videogames, will continue to do so. A definition can hardly be
blamed for failing to predict the future course of a
technological artefact. The sensible thing to do in such a case
would be to broaden the extension of videogames and revise
the intension of the definition to account for this substantive
change. "Videogame" just is a historically contingent class, and
any useful definition will have to acknowledge the potential of
its future revision.

It might be argued that the definition offered here is too wide,

particularly with respect to its inclusion of computer versions
of games such as chess and Sudoku. Are these really
videogames or normal games in a video setting? Just as one
can play chess using a board and pieces or by correspondence
using chess notation, so one can play it employing the
representational means of a computer. Some would argue that
this shift in medium is not sufficient to thereby make chess a
videogame. Indeed, if it did have that effect, it might be that
the proposed definition would be sufficient to turn any game
into a videogame so long as it is played in a digital medium.
Rather, genuine videogames, such as Tetris, have a closer
connection to their digital medium in that they could not be
played except in that medium. Therefore, if the intuition that
medium transposition is not sufficient to make non-
videogames videogames is correct, the medium condition in
the proposed definition includes artefacts that are not
genuinely videogames.

There are a number of responses that might be made here.

First, there are unequivocal cases where non-videogames are
adapted into videogames. Sports videogames are the most
obvious examples: playing videogame football is not merely
playing football in a video setting. Arguably, the difference
between chess and football is that we are already familiar with
transmedial forms of chess, and so our initial temptation is to
see videogame chess as just chess in another medium. Chess
is such a representationally minimal game that it is very easily
shifted between media (including into a purely
mental/linguistic medium, as in blindfold chess). Modern
videogame football, on the other hand, needed the technology
to support 3D graphics and physics modelling before it could
be created, and even now the form we have is only a rough
approximation of the game. (Still, it is less approximate than
the board game version I remember from childhood!)

Second, what would we say if chess had originally developed

as a computer game and had subsequently been shifted to a
board game setting? Surely our intuitions in such a case would
tell us that a videogame had become a board game. Why
should medium transposition in the other direction-from board
game to videogame-not have the same categorical
implications? In fact, some videogames have been adapted to
become board games. In the early 1980s, Milton Bradley
produced a number of adaptations of popular videogames,
including board game versions of Pac-Man and Frogger. These
examples show that medium transposition can change whether
or not something is a videogame or a board game. To explain
these intuitions about media transposition and game identity,
perhaps it is best to say that there is a genus/species
relationship in operation here, with board games and
videogames being instances of a more inclusive category of
games simpliciter. The identity of game types such as "chess"
or "football" might be argued to be a feature at the general
level. Sometimes, it turns out, videogames and board games
can be tokens of a single general game type, and so a shift
into a digital medium is, on the theory being presented here,
sufficient for a board game to become a videogame while
retaining its general level identity, in this case, "chess" or
"football".

Another potential difficulty is that the definition offered here is

too narrow. If a game is necessarily "intended primarily as an
object of entertainment," this would seem to exclude those
games that have intended uses besides entertainment.
Videogames are now widely used in learning and instruction,
such as helping children to learn mathematics. Videogames
are also used to advertise or in a public relations function, as
with the game America's Army, a first-person shooter aimed
at increasing army recruitment and very similar to the popular
commercial game Counter-Strike. Surely the proposed
definition would not allow either kind of case to be counted as
a videogame given their intended respective educational and
advertising functions.

The natural response to make to this criticism is that in these

cases the primary entertainment function-in virtue of which
they are videogames-is a means to the further end of learning
or advertising. Principally, America's Army is a videogame,
and because it is so, it is effective at also being an
advertisement (or, more cynically, a piece of propaganda). If
America's Army was not first a videogame, then it could not
have this further function. In fact, almost all videogames have
mixed intended functions; given their commercial nature,
modern videogames are intended to make financial returns
and would not otherwise exist given the growing expense of
videogame production. But this does not mean they are not
primarily intended for the purposes of entertainment, as such
a claim would confuse what we might call the "local" and
"extended" functions of the artefacts, the local function being
how the artefact is intended to engage its participants, and the
extended function being the extrinsic end, if there is one, that
the artefact is designed to achieve through this mode of
engagement. Such extended and local functions may coincide,
as in a game that is produced solely with the intention of
providing entertainment. But it is surely the case that most
artefacts have a host of extrinsic functions.

Another way to show the need for this functional distinction is

to acknowledge that there are artefacts in a digital medium
that have as their extended aim learning or education, but
which are not videogames because they do not use the local
function of entertainment in achieving this aim. A medical
simulation aimed at training laparoscopic techniques would be
an example if the simulation did not intentionally engage and
motivate its users by means of entertainment. The
entertainment condition of the disjunctive definition, framed in
reference to the local function of an artefact, is needed to
distinguish such cases.

A different kind of problem arises if we question whether the

above disjunctive definition can be turned into a non-
disjunctive condition definition by adding to the first two
conditions a further one that covers the later disjunctive set in
some sort of encompassing way. The most obvious candidate
for such a condition is that the digital visual entertainment
artefact be interactive. Videogames could be defined as
interactive digital visual entertainments. Unfortunately,
'interactive' is an ambiguous term and disambiguating the
term will show it to be unsuitable to the task of defining
videogames. Many non-videogames are interactive in the
sense of demanding audience input, and so if 'interactive' is
taken to refer to audience participation, the definition would
probably stretch to include interactive DVDs, television on
demand systems, various non-game internet activities, and
toys with computer and visual display elements. If the sense
of 'interactive' was specified more restrictively so as to capture
the ways in which videogames are interactive but to exclude
other interactive artefacts, it is not clear that the term could
stretch to cover all and only videogames because the
interaction involved in the various kinds of videogames seems
quite diverse. Tetris is interactive in virtue of being a challenge
to sensory-motor abilities set within a goal-directed
framework. Grand Theft Auto is interactive in the sense of
allowing the player to explore and interact with a fictional
world. It is not clear that these two games share a sense of
interaction that is not also shared by non-gaming internet
activities or other interactive digital media.

The other option for an encompassing term that could be used

to revise this disjunctive definition is 'gameplay.' Videogames
might be defined as those digital entertainments that engage
their audience through gameplay. Arguably, this would count
as a general condition only in virtue of being uninformative,
given the wide variation that exists in gameplay forms.
Gameplay could be stipulated as the modes of interaction
typically involved in videogaming, but the natural question to
ask now is: What are these typical modes of interaction?
Without specifying the conditions of gameplay, we could not
use the term to separate games from non-games in a non-
trivial sense. It is my contention that when we do specify the
nature of gameplay in a substantive manner, we will find that
gameplay is not monolithic but maps onto the disjunctive
conditions contained in the definition offered here. Again, the
disjunctive form of the definition seems needed because
videogames just do encompass more than one characteristic
mode of engagement.[41]

Endnotes

[1] Newman, James, Videogames (New York: Routledge,

2005).

[2] For an approachable take on this semiotic approach see

Steven Poole, Trigger Happy: The Inner Life of Video Games
(London: Fourth Estate, 2000).

[3] Murray, Janet, Hamlet on the Holodeck (Cambridge, MA:

MIT Press, 1998).

[4] Poole, Trigger Happy, p.108.

[5] Juul, Jesper, Half Real: Video Games between Real Rules
and Fictional Worlds (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).

[6] Aarseth, Espen, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic

Literature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).

[7] Aarseth, Cybertext, p.1.

[8] Ibid., p.2.

[9] See Kendall Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe (Cambridge

MA: Harvard University Press, 1990), pp.144-169.

[10] Aarspeth, Espen, "Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art

of Simulation," in Harrigan & Wardrip-Fruin eds., First Person
(Cambridge, MA:MIT Press, 2004).

[11] Aarseth, Espen, "Computer Games Studies, Year One,"

archived at gamestudies.org/0101/editorial.html (2001).

[12] Juul, Jesper, Half Real, pp.36-43.

[13] Ibid., p.43.

[14] Juul, Half Real.

[15] Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck.

[16] The analytic aesthetics literature on the nature of fiction

is vast, signal works being Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom
Olsen's Truth, Fiction, and Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1994), and Walton's Mimesis as Make-Believe. Both works
argue that fiction is a matter of convention and pragmatics
rather than representational form.

[17] Travinor, Grant, "Videogames and Interactive Fiction,"

Philosophy and Literature, April 2005, 29, 1.
[18] Juul, Half-Real, p.48.

[19] Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe.

[20] Newman, Videogames.

[21] Cf., Davies, Stephen, Definitions of Art (New York:

Cornell University Press, 1991).

[22] Bell, Clive, Art (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1913).

[23] Newman, Videogames, p.15.

[24] A recent exchange on the website of the American Society

for Aesthetics between Denis Dutton and Roger Seamon
illustrates this division. Denis Dutton, "Let's Naturalize
Aesthetics," archived at www.aesthetics-
online.org/ideas/dutton.html. Roger Seamon, "Let Them
Naturalize Aesthetics: A Reply to Denis Dutton," archived at
www.aesthetics-online.org/ideas/seamon.html. Similarly, in
"For the Ghettoization of Aesthetics," Seamon calls for
theorists of the arts to resist the "scientization" of aesthetics,
and to continue to be normatively involved in the practice of
the arts; archived at www.aesthetics-
online.org/ideas/ghetto.html.

[25] Aarseth, "Genre Trouble."

[26] Poole, Trigger Happy, p.189.

[27] Smuts, Aaron, "Are Video Games Art?"Contemporary

Aesthetics, archived at www.contempaesthetics.org ; and
Aaron Smuts, "Video Games and the Philosophy of Art,"
archived at www.aesthetics-online.org/ideas/smuts.html.

[28] Weitz, Morris, "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics," The

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 15 (1956): 27-35.

[29] Davies, Stephen, Definitions of Art.

[30] Kent, Steven L., The Ultimate History of Video Game

(New York: Prima, 2001).

[31] Carroll, No-l, Philosophy of Art; A Contemporary

Introduction (London: Routledge, 1999). Jerrold Levinson is
another to offer a theory of art that is historicist in "The
Irreducible Historicality of the Concept of Art," British Journal
of Aesthetics 42 (2002).

[32] Bond, E.J., "The Essential Nature of Art," American

Philosophical Quarterly, 12 (1975); Davies, Stephen, "The
Cluster Theory of Art," British Journal of Aesthetics 44
(2004):297-300; Dutton, Denis, "A Naturalist Definition of
Art," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 64
(2006):367-77; Moravcsik, Julius, "Why Philosophy of Art in a
Cross-Cultural Perspective?" The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism, 51 (1993):425-436.

[33] Dutton, A Naturalist Definition of Art, p.373.

[34] Dutton, A Naturalist Definition of Art, p.374.

[35] Juul, Half-Real, pp.36-43.

[36] Aaron Smuts notes this difficulty with game definitions of

videogaming, using "iron parameters" where I have invoked
the notion of "material possibilities for interaction": Aaron
Smuts, "Are Video Games Art?"

[37] Juul, Half Real, pp.36-43.

[38] Tavinor, "Videogames and Interactive Fiction."

[39] Newman, Videogames, pp.19-20.

[40] Cf., King, Brad and John Borland, Dungeons and

Dreamers (Emeryville: McGraw-Hill, 2003).

[41] I would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for

Contemporary Aesthetics for a number of valuable comments
on an earlier version of this paper.

Grant Tavinor

Lincoln University

Canterbury, New Zealand

tavinorg@lincoln.ac.nz

Published January 10, 2008