I'm not making a comment on ethics, just casino games. In fact, I see the ultimate goal of the people who create social games as to create a game with a clear goal, and a bit of a challenge to get there, and to immediately follow up that goal with another goal. Then you gradually make the goals harder and more attractive, and say if they pay or get a friend to join, they can get a little help. If you time it correctly, you can make it so that the only way that the player doesn't feel like they're drowning is when they're paying or bringing in new players in acceptable intervals, but you always pull them out of the water before they stop breathing and give them a cookie. It's a game, but I don't see it as ethical.
>distinguish a game from a not-game.
A not-game can be played without you. Your only choices are to watch and/or lose.
>Would you call drinking games a kind of game? Dear Esther? Sim City? This is rhetorical; you probably wouldn't. But other people would, and there's no clear reason why they're wrong.
Depends on what drinking game - if it's a drinking game in which there's only zero or one rational way to behave, it's just drinking, not a drinking game. Example: if it's a game where you pick a number, then roll a die, and if you roll the number you picked, you drink, no, it's not a game.
I know an awful lot of drinking games that are games. I can't recall one that isn't, other than the "watch X and when they say Y, drink" game. That's not a game. But it can easily be made a game by having each player choose a particular word.
I don't know what Dear Esther is.
Sim City is not a game, it's a simulation of a city. It's no more a game than building a model airplane or painting a landscape. Setting any particular goal within Sim City and achieving it is a game - just like the facebook stuff.
Casino games are completely different, though. The only object in a casino game is to gain money, and the rules reduce to: "Every 10 minutes, we will take a five dollar bill out of your pocket." They rely on a combination of the misguided common sense "law of averages" heuristic that people carry plus the illusion of control to create the dramatic rhythm that people expect from a game. They prey on an ignorance of statistics and primitive beliefs in magical qualities to keep them there. Not games. Victimization of average people by organized crime and cash-hungry governments more like it. If video poker is legal, I'm not sure why three-card monte isn't, other than it makes everything too obvious.
> A not-game can be played without you. Your only choices are to watch and/or lose.
This is acceptable as part of a constellation of definitions. Some people disagree that agency, rather than interactivity, is the defining attribute of a game. Some people disagree that victory conditions, achievable or not, are necessary. What makes your definition right, and theirs wrong?
But... this definition says that Tetris is not a game. It doesn't matter what you do in Tetris; you're just delaying the inevitable loss. How does your definition distinguish casino not-games from Tetris? (I am assuming, of course, that you consider Tetris to be a game.)
> Casino games are completely different, though.
This paragraph is an ethical (and possibly a legal) argument. Just because they're unethical does not make them not-games, unless you specifically include ethics in your definition. I fully agree that bad ethics are bad, but that's not the point. Ultimately, I have to quote you:
>distinguish a game from a not-game.
A not-game can be played without you. Your only choices are to watch and/or lose.
>Would you call drinking games a kind of game? Dear Esther? Sim City? This is rhetorical; you probably wouldn't. But other people would, and there's no clear reason why they're wrong.
Depends on what drinking game - if it's a drinking game in which there's only zero or one rational way to behave, it's just drinking, not a drinking game. Example: if it's a game where you pick a number, then roll a die, and if you roll the number you picked, you drink, no, it's not a game.
I know an awful lot of drinking games that are games. I can't recall one that isn't, other than the "watch X and when they say Y, drink" game. That's not a game. But it can easily be made a game by having each player choose a particular word.
I don't know what Dear Esther is.
Sim City is not a game, it's a simulation of a city. It's no more a game than building a model airplane or painting a landscape. Setting any particular goal within Sim City and achieving it is a game - just like the facebook stuff.
Casino games are completely different, though. The only object in a casino game is to gain money, and the rules reduce to: "Every 10 minutes, we will take a five dollar bill out of your pocket." They rely on a combination of the misguided common sense "law of averages" heuristic that people carry plus the illusion of control to create the dramatic rhythm that people expect from a game. They prey on an ignorance of statistics and primitive beliefs in magical qualities to keep them there. Not games. Victimization of average people by organized crime and cash-hungry governments more like it. If video poker is legal, I'm not sure why three-card monte isn't, other than it makes everything too obvious.