I've seen a lot of comments or responses from people saying that Animal Crossing's mechanics are unfulfilling or "pointless", but I think they're missing the spirit of what makes them enjoyable to a lot of people. I'm going to posit that a video game is the three following things, but you're welcome to disagree:
1) a player performs some sort of input into a game
2) the game responds with some sort of audiovisual phenomena in regards to that input
3) 1 and 2 are repeated, creating a relationship between the player and the game
I know a lot of people define video games as a series of choices or "states", but I think it's too strict as I don't think the appeal of video games is necessarily reduced to "a series of interesting decisions" as Will Wright puts it. I do think decision-making is a big part of a lot of games, but it doesn't explain the entertainment of situations like Revolver Ocelot torturing Snake in Metal Gear Solid, or groups of teenagers playing an easy Starcraft map against a computer player together. Animal Crossing is the same way too; the relationship the player has with the product is fulfilling, and that's what drives its appeal.
He says a useful model is that if the game has no goal, it's better termed a "toy" (like Lego); if it doesn't give you "agency", it's an "event" (like watching a film); if it doesn't have mechanics that restrict what's possible, it's an "activity" (like jogging); and if it has real-world relevance, it's "life".
I haven't played Animal Crossing and don't know where it falls on those spectra.
AC has both external ("pay off your loan to expand your house", "expand the village population", "fill the museum") and internal ("I want a house full of XYZ furniture that coordinates with my outfits", "I want a garden of fruit trees", etc) goals.
You have agency - there's no penalty for not expanding your house or visiting other islands, etc.
The mechanics do restrict what's possible but then I can't think of a game (except perhaps Dwarf Fortress or real-life RPGs) where they don't.
And there's very little real-world relevance beyond, I suppose, "don't be a dick and life is easier for everyone."
This debate has happened in the video game world many years ago (and I'm sure is still ongoing in some circles), but most people arrived at a very simple but counterintuitive solution:
A "video game" is not the same as a game.
You can have definitions of games, toys, events, etc, but "video game" encompasses all of them.
Once it's digital and has some kind of interactivity, the only thing that matters is whether the author has defined it as a "video game". That's it.
I think all the different stories one hears from creative people about their success is at a psychological/sociological awareness level equivalent to pre-Maxwells Equation understanding of Magnetism and Electricity.
Thanks to Zuckerberg & Co collecting more data in a day about behavior, than Psychologists and Sociologists have done through their lifetimes
what is becoming obvious is there is a very WIDE distribution of all kinds of Psychological Traits, Needs and dozen other factors in any population. And they aren't static but dynamic like electric and magnetic fields. Not just 2 fields interacting but 20 or something.
Creative people are able to connect with some subset and produce group behavior that are not always reproducible because the Maxwells Equations of Psychology and Sociology haven't yet been discovered.
I like the structure of Mark's definitions, but I think it wouldn't define products like Neko Atsume, The Beginner's Guide, or Minecraft as video games. I think we generally consider the aforementioned to be video games, so it doesn't make much sense to 100% claim that a video game needs structure or goals. We can start calling them "interactive experiences" or something, sure, but if not I think we should accept that video games are a wide variety of things in our world, and appreciate the variety.
Or maybe to be more short, I think it might be good to be a bit less prescriptive of what qualifies as a video game, as we otherwise will blind ourselves to why people enjoy them as entertainment, competition, or self-expression.
A game usually is defined as a set of rules and actions so that when you are playing the game no matter how many players play that game that you can get into some kind of win condition.
Looking at what other people have posted "paying off your house" or "filling the museum" in Animal Crossing are more like achievements that you can perform but they aren't necessarily a win condition.
A similar game that is more of a toy than really a game is the Stanley Parable. Sure you can get the Achievements in it but there is no real win condition at all. It doesn't even penalize you for not doing a task and instead figuring out the endings is what makes it fun.
I guess it was used as to mean "without value", which is not exactly what it means.
The prefix "in" of "invaluable" does mean negation but it means negation in the way that the value of the object is such that it doesn't exist. It's so valuable that you cannot even quantify it, it transcends the notion of value.
interestingly, you can track this issue back to latin, which has a preposition "in" (meaning in, on, to), which is often attached to verbs, and a prefix "in-" which negates the word it's attached to.
> I'm going to posit that a video game is the three following things
In other words: Action from the player delivers result from the game, giving the player a sense of satisfaction.
And that's the point. There is a direct correlation between action and satisfaction. The more challenging and complex your action is, the higher can be the satisfaction when you finally get a good result.
And that's why people see Animal Crossing as kinda pointless, because everything is so simple, there is no complexity in action, thus no high satisfaction as direct response. Instead there is the very long game, where you do many many small actions over a rather long time to gain some rather small or middle sized result, while you have many many more mechanisms where the result is simple just random.
For people who are fixed on shortterm direct satisfaction, this is bad, because it's a slow longterm process with little outcome. It's basically like an extrem-sportler who needs to find the joy in just walking through the park.
Haven't played AC yet, but it reminds me of Stardew Valley. Another game many would call pointless - besides the dungeon sidegame, you essentially run around the map, planting crops, picking crops, selling crops and gifting mayonnaise to people in exchange for story progression. There's little challenge here, and little complexity.
But at the same time, the game is extremely relaxing. The music, the ambiance, the story, all make you rest. And that's the goal of the game.
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Anyway, I question the connection between complexity of action and satisfaction. Take rhythm games. Yes, many people play them for mastery, but a common (perhaps more common) way of playing is just to enjoy your rhythmic jumping/button pressing/hand waving to the beat with some fancy audiovisuals also synced to the rhythm. There's near zero complexity here. But what matters is the state of flow you achieve, it becomes an emotion pump.
As far as I know it can become quite complex and deep. More complex than Animal Crossing.
> But at the same time, the game is extremely relaxing. The music, the ambiance, the story, all make you rest. And that's the goal of the game.
I thought the goal is building up your farm and collecting all the bundles and achivments?
I guess at the end the goal depends on the player. Which is the point, whether it's pointless depends on the satisfaction the player gains from playing.
> There's near zero complexity here.
I find them quite challenging.
Yes, from the mechanical point they are simple, but execution-level is still rather high depending on your personal skill.
Animal Crossing is similar. For a kid it might be challenging enough to do all those stuff and things, for a teenager or adult, it's just braindead dialog-clicking with no challenge in excecution at all. The satisfaction comes over time.
> The more challenging and complex your action is, the higher can be the satisfaction when you finally get a good result
But this assertion is just not true.
Simple actions can be very rewarding and give a lot of satisfaction.
And that's exactly what you can get in Animal Crossing.
I don't think action that delivers satisfying results is defining a video game. I think it's a relationship formed from inputs and audiovisual responses, like I mentioned. Paratropic isn't really a game about satisfaction and results, as the designers want you to be frustrated and anxious.
I think some people see Animal Crossing as pointless because they don't find much value in expressing themselves through the game. I think Minecraft is a similar example of this, as some people mostly focus on fighting monsters or getting gear, as compared to building a house they like the look of.
In academia many end up going back to Huizinga's "magic circle" [0] which he was writing about in the 1930's, before any video games were around(although many immediate mechanical precessors were in evidence like pinball and slot machines).
From the perspective of a game creator or player, what tends to be of primary importance is the information conveyed through the game, which can be primarily aesthetic(a pretty picture) or deal with specific themes and principles. In this light, introducing the magic circle is of some importance because of its clarifying property: the information is exploring these concepts, and not some others that you might be interested in.
And so it goes with many opinions about games, too: if it doesn't cover the topics they want in they way they like, players reject the game. Some players need to see violence and power struggle, others need cozy reassurance.
I like this definition, because it lets me think of pressing a button to get a walk signal to cross the street as a video game. Makes the walk home more satisfying.
I'm not even being 100% facile—I used to think about this on the way home from Bart before I stopped taking Bart thanks to the quarantine.
1) a player performs some sort of input into a game
2) the game responds with some sort of audiovisual phenomena in regards to that input
3) 1 and 2 are repeated, creating a relationship between the player and the game
You can reduce that to "control and achievment". Games give you a little world you can control and achieve something. Even if this something is some value in a meaningless counter (like cookie clicker, I was hooked on that for a while).
I think you've hit on something with this, for AC. Right now, the world is seemingly more out of control and random than normal, for many people. Nothing they can do, literally nothing they could possibly do (outside suicide) can change the trajectory of their own lives due to something outside of their control.
But in games like AC, you control everything. So it's sort of like a child of abuse developing OCD or some other neurological disorder. It's a coping mechanism. Maybe there's something to that?
Exactly. There's a pretty wide spead of phenomena we like about video games. I think that's why I suggest a relationship via interaction as a cover-all.
Actually your simple reduction doesn't hold, which is the very reason I stopped playing Animal Crossing: If you perform NO input, the game STILL responds. i.e. If you don't play, the game still simulates its world. Weeds grow, town inhabitants move out, etc.
It's basically an addiction-based dark pattern. The game punishes you for not playing. I play games on MY TIME, and I won't make myself slave to one.
1) a player performs some sort of input into a game
2) the game responds with some sort of audiovisual phenomena in regards to that input
3) 1 and 2 are repeated, creating a relationship between the player and the game
I know a lot of people define video games as a series of choices or "states", but I think it's too strict as I don't think the appeal of video games is necessarily reduced to "a series of interesting decisions" as Will Wright puts it. I do think decision-making is a big part of a lot of games, but it doesn't explain the entertainment of situations like Revolver Ocelot torturing Snake in Metal Gear Solid, or groups of teenagers playing an easy Starcraft map against a computer player together. Animal Crossing is the same way too; the relationship the player has with the product is fulfilling, and that's what drives its appeal.