VideoGAMES or VIDEOgames?

[Patrick]

There's an age-old debate in the wargaming world about which is more
important--simulating military conflict or providing an enjoyable,
playable gaming experience: i.e., is it a WARgame or a warGAME?

Debaters take sides and hash it out awhile, then everybody agrees both
aspects are important.

But today I was thinking about video games. Someone (probably someone
young) contrasted playing board/card games with "playing a video game
or watching a movie." And what struck me is that he apparently
considers video games and movies to be very similar experiences--both
very different from board and card games.

Maybe that shouldn't have surprised me, but it did. In my mind, video
games clearly belong in the same category with board and card games.
Movies, like books, are a basically passive way to spend time (not to
put too fine a point on "passive"--you do have to be mentally active,
but you're passive the sense of being stuck with what's presented to
you). Games--of any kind--are active: you make decisions and cause
things to happen.

I'm guessing it may be a generational thing. There were no video
games around during the first twenty years of my life. And when they
came along, the word "game" is what stood out for me. To me, they
were just electronic versions of the board, card, and dexterity games
I grew up with. Maybe closer to dexterity games at first, but I
figured that was just a passing phase. I'd never cared much for
dexterity games--or sports--so the animated action aspect of video
games was incidental to me.

More interesting to me were text-based RPG-like games and wargame AIs
and such. And computer chess. In all those, the "video" aspect was
incidental; it didn't matter if the output appeared on a screen or on
a printout or what.

But nowadays, the typical video game really does have a LOT in common
with movies. It's a complex multimedia experience--3D animation,
music, sound effects, story line, characterization, and the whole
works. So, I can see why the fellow mentioned above lumped video
games in with movies as similar pastimes.

My wife and I play computer/console games often. But we both steer
clear of anything movielike. The more a game has in common with a
movie, the less we generally like it. She gravitates to puzzle games
and 2D civ-type games; I play wargames and traditional board and card
games. She'd been enjoying "Heroes of Might & Magic III Complete," so
she bought HoM&M V--and instantly regretted it. The 3D graphics (with
movable camera view) made her dizzy, and she found the animation and
storytelling aspects distracting. Now she's back to playing HoM&M III
Complete (with a fan-created mod called "Wake of the Gods").

One reason I don't like story-based or movielike games is that stories
have a beginning, middle, and end. And great games (like backgammon,
hearts, dominoes, and chess) are meant to be played over and over and
over again; they never really end--you just reset the game and start
over, playing as many times as you want to. So, while I was impressed
with "Zelda/Link: Phantom Hourglass" and played it all the way
through, it really bothered me that the story (and seemingly the game
too) comes to an end. Of course I *could* start over and replay it;
but I wouldn't. I almost never watch a movie or read a book more than
once.

Anytime some young whippersnapper tells me he was playing a great
video game but *finished* it and is now looking for another game, I
can't help but think it couldn't have been that great a game. If it
were a great game (like chess, backgammon, etc.), it'd be infinitely
replayable. No one would ever "finish" it. To my mind, being
finished with a game (permanently) means deciding it sucks and wanting
nothing more to do with it.

Looking back, I guess I should always have been able to see VIDEOgames
instead of videoGAMES. After all, they're often played on a TV
screen--so they must be like TV in some way. I guess everybody else
saw that. But somehow I was so hung up on the "game" side of it that
I was practically blind to the "video" side.

Now that I see both sides, though, I still think of them as
videoGAMES. Because I really don't have any interest in VIDEOgames.

How 'bout you? What's your experience with this?