When I read this, something inside me screamed that you're mixing up games and toys. But in all fairness my point of view is strongly influenced by this:

http://www.costik.com/nowords.html#What_is

I find your lack of an "e" in "Vader" disturbing.

Ahem, Vadar is now Vader-ed.

The whole "SimCity is a toy not a game" argument is a bit questionable.. if the reason it's a toy is that it supports rules but not goals, it's trivial to change it into a game (add goals) or change ANY game into a toy (remove goals). Does the distinction really mean anything?!

Nice article.

To Raigan - The distinction is incredibly important, and changing a toy into a game is not trivial at all but actually quite complex. The complexity, however, is not in choosing whether or not to add a goal, but in chooisng what goal to add, and, in doing so, defining the direction of your game.

Let us say, for example, that the goal of chess was to capture your opponent's queen; suddenly, chess is a completely different game - it still has the same pieces, it still has the same rules - but the new goal makes it a completely different game. Similarly, without a goal at all, chess is merely an arbitrary set of toys with some arbitrary rules.

Or let's take a closer exmaple: World of Warcraft. Anyone who has played the game will tell you that there is no single concrete goal - there's never a dialogue box that pops up and says YOU WIN, but almost every player who plays the game has a concrete goal in mind (most of the time it's making their character stronger, although sometimes it's PvP related) and for them that makes it a game. However, if we can imagine a player simply playing World of Warcraft because they like the pretty colors (they are quite pretty) and watching their numbers go up. There is no concrete goal for that person; World of Warcraft is a toy; a sandbox.

SimCity is the same thing. For many people, it's a game, because they create concrete goals and then compete (either against themselves or their friends) to acheive those goals faster or more extravagantly or, if the goal is a particularly difficult one, they struggle to complete it at all. However, despite the fact that some players choose to use SimCity's sandbox to create a game, SimCity itself is not a game - just like a rubber ball, despite the fact that many people use it to play dodgeball - is not a game on its own. It's just a rubber ball.

It just seems like whether or not the goals are represented in the game code itself or work at a higher level is irrelevant.

If you removed the "You Win"/"The End" from the end of Super Mario Bros 3 -- so that, as in the GBA version, the player is free to revisit any level they want -- it doesn't suddenly change from a game to a toy. Very little about the actual game itself changes at all -- the main activity of the game, which is moving around the levels interacting with things, remains just as fun as when there was an "end" goal.

Whatever it is, it is in both cases -- all that's changed is the higher-level presentation.

The fact that there is or isn't an "ending" which is triggered by some set of conditions just strikes me as irrelevant. For one thing, most players don't finish the majority of games -- so it doesn't matter whether or not the ending exists. I could make an endless/unbeatable game but present it as finite (i.e set unbeatable goals) -- would this change anything about the game, vs if the player knew it was ultimately unbeatable?

Similarly, saying there's no goal to SimCity is a bit disingenuous -- on a broad level the goal is the same as with any game, to interact with the system for amusement, enjoyment, curiosity, or whatever other purpose compels you. Just because the developer didn't add a single line of code saying "if(some condition), PlayVictoryAnimation()" shouldn't make a difference.

As you pointed out, anyone who plays these games ends up making their own goals for their own amusement (whether they're specific goals or just vague ones like "I want to see what happens when.."). Is this any different than if the game designer had let them set the goal(s) from a drop-down menu (and broadcast notification when the goal(s) were reached)? Either way the game itself is identical.

Or take roguelikes -- each play-through ends, however it's not a win/lose ending since given the same result one person might feel that it was a win (maybe they reached a level they hadn't made it to before) while another would consider it a loss. There may be a "completed the game" vs "died without completing the game" in some (i.e some do have a finite duration in terms of # of levels or some sort of concrete goal), but often you might feel like you won despite not completing it, or you might feel like you lost despite completing it, simply based on prior experiences and expectations.

You can play with _any_ game like a rubber ball -- for instance you might play Doom trying to use only melee weapons, or by only running backwards. Does that make it a toy? What _is_ the goal of Doom anyway? To reach the end of the game? That's just an artificially constructed limit that arises due to various factors (the need for the game to be created in a finite amount of time/money, etc). People are still making Doom WADs -- if you made a system whereby when you reached the end of one WAD, the next would be downloaded (or even better, opening the exit door in one level would lead you right into the next), you'd have a non-ending "goal-less" game, but it would be NO DIFFERENT than the original Doom -- you're still just running and shooting because it's an engaging experience.

The fact that there may or may not be an author-prescribed method of play, or a suggested use, should have no bearing on the nature of the thing. Either all games are toys, or none are.. it's a useless distinction.

So I was thinking about this, esp jamesl's Doom-as-goal-less bit, and I think that's really smart but I'd add that a more fitting analogy might be an infinite Doom-game that had the cheats enabled or (even better?) had all the life/ammo/damage rules completely modifiable in-game.

And I guess that's what makes it to me a useful distinction. (Not about the 'how' you play so much as the imposed limits of play.) I've been playing Black & White lately -- I bought it when it first came out, but couldn't quite get into it -- and it's fun and all but (control issues aside) I can't help but think it'd be far more fun and way more interesting if the game dropped all the RTS/tribe-management tropes and just let me be a floaty god with a big pet to a world full of sometimes warring sometimes happy sometimes starving tribes. Granted, there might be a mod or cheat out there that lets me do this, but I guess I wish that more games (esp. games with a simulation or AI-centric slant) would just come with that option, so long as said option wouldn't make the game technically unworkable. I _hate_ building those little people's buildings and giving them lumber and training my beast to do likewise and trying to get other little people to believe in me. But I quite enjoy just watching them wander around, occasionally messing with or helping their lives. . . That would be more of a toy, to me, less of a game.

Online games have been expanding like nothing on the Internet.
Many new online gaming sites have come up.
Even I'm a big sucker of online games. They are susually easy on systems, have a light theme and can be interesting without getting addictive.

Some of the latest that I came across are from Zapak.com.. Zapak is promising to give away free cash to the people who play one of the 30 cash games. (Not cash prizes for winning the game, but to anyone who plays the game) . Just loved the way they have structured the games in this category.

Here is the link

http://www.zapak.com/tgthome.zpk?utm_source=b

I'm having trouble seeing "game" and "toy" as oppositional concepts; I think they're related. A toy is an object; a game is an experience.

The thing that's distinct about toys is there is a "right" way, or a few right ways, to play a game, and no "right" way to use a toy.

Even with a sandbox like Warcraft or a game like SimCity, where you have plenty of choice in how to play with it, there are things you can do with it and things that you can't. But there are very few restrictions on what a child can do with a toy plane -- if they want to pretend it's a submarine, a baby or a talking war jet, there aren't any limits.

Even open-world games are closed experiences. Games are like toys in that you play with them in order to have fun -- but with a toy, how you play with it is always completely up to you. When the column talks about making games more like toys, I think Chris is referring to that sense of imaginative freedom over play.

That being said, I dunno how feasible it is. I think that the closed-world structure of a video game is one of its more appealing points.

And besides, the human imagination lacks limits. Games, being constructs built on technology, probably can't ever approximate that total absence of rules and total freedom of possibility. And again, I'm not so sure they should try. Whether we're talking about video games, soccer, jump rope or chess, good rules are what quintessentially define a game.

Leigh's on the mark. I don't mean that all games should act like toys - I was focused more on figuring out why my two-year-old can pick up a space ship and go "vroom vroom" like it's nothing, but I had to buy a $400 XBox to get anything like the same buzz.

This also partly explains why I haven't introduced my kid to video games yet - but that's another story ...

Oh and sorry about the Vader misspelling. That's my second goof in three columns - ugh.

i love starwar