27th August 2003, 2:55 PM
Quote:You're completely ignoring the main definitions and trying to twist around the other definitions to help your case! "Mental Images", good grief!
So I guess if someone made a game where you press a button in conjunction with a sound (and there was no visual aspect at all, no monitor, nothing), and it was just a simple pen-like device, you would call that a video game as well. Or I could play with my calculator and have a mental image of a giant fairy princess being rescued by a dragon slayer and call that a game. Or how about my toaster oven? Sometimes I toast things and then imagine jumping over lava pits, and that's a mental image, so it must be a game!
Wow, you sure do go to great lengths to manage to make it sound like you have absolutely no clue what I am saying... if you honestly think that I even remotely think any of your "examples" are videogames you must be quite deluded.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=video%20game
Quote:1.An electronic or computerized game played by manipulating images on a video display or television screen.
2.n : a game played against a computer [syn: computer game]
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=image
Quote:image
6. A mental picture of something not real or present.
7.
a. A vivid description or representation.
b. A figure of speech, especially a metaphor or simile.
c. A concrete representation, as in art, literature, or music, that is expressive or evocative of something else: night as an image of death
imaged, imaging, images
5. To describe, especially so vividly as to evoke a mental picture of.
(these are just the most relevant ones in 'image')
Now... the first defintion of Video Game is "An electronic or computerized game played by manipulating images on a video display or television screen."
One definition of Image -- one that fits, very, very well, in the case of text-based games -- is "A vivid description or representation.".
Okay, there are clear differences between text-based games and graphical ones. Text-based games describe something in words and have your mind create the picture based on those words. Like a book, except interactive... while graphical ones create the picture for you. But the words on the screen are a representation of the image... its still the image, but in a different form. Kind of like a 2d image versus a 3d one, taken to a larger degree...
Sure, its a quite different form of image, but its a quite good one. Words can do what pictures cannot, after all... I've always loved it when games let you examine things and get text explanations as they can say so much that pictures just can't adaquately do. Text-based games just take that one step further... its just a different form of the same art!
Oh, there is one other big category of text-based games other than interactive fiction (text-based adventure games) -- text-based RPGs and MUDs. Those are also games, similar to RPGs and MMORPGs respectively, except with no graphics... they were once relatively popular as well.
Interesting to know that MUDs aren't games, OB1... I guess you learn something every day...
Quote:Ooh, there are holes in the ground! That makes it so much better!
And in WW you would backflip (which you could do in OoT but it wasn't really necessary), jump over your enemies, counter, etc. You obviously haven't played WW for very long if you think the combat system is as shallow as OoT's. It's not as deep as say, The Mark of Kri of course, but it is a step up from OoT.
"holes in the ground"? What in the WORLD are you talking about? It clearly has nothing do do with my point... because I never mention "holes". Just the fact that WW loves to put, in places where OoT would put a surface where you can walk but will take constant injury, a surface that might hurt you a quarter heart and teleports you to the room enterance, thus greatly decreasing the difficulty... are you trying really hard to act like you don't understand me or something? I don't get it...
Oh yeah, and WW is a step up from OoT in the complexity of the combat system, but the small amount of added depth is countered (from a fun standpoint) by the greatly lessened difficulty of said combat.
Maybe you don't see the difference, but I can see it quite clearly. OoT is still a fairly challenging game for me. Beating that thing with zero deaths would be quite hard. I haven't come anywhere near that in any of my plays of the game, and think that it'd require some pretty serious play to do... that or a lot of quitting just before I die and a bunch of time on my hands to redo what I've done already... WW? I am sure that I'll beat it with no deaths on my first try.