A Taxonomy of Interactive Electronic Recreation
In the last two weeks, I've been thinking a lot about how one would go about categorizing video games. It started with Matthew Gallant's post on this subject and the cognitive boilers were further fueled by Corvus Elrod's post looking to define "game." Throughout both of these discussions, I wished numerous times we could all be in the same room with a whiteboard, so we could just draw a graph of what we actually mean.
This is a a personal bias (or perhaps temporary psychosis brought on by spending too much time writing XML parsers over the last couple of weeks), but I'd much rather have a taxonomy or a graph than a lexical definition. Aligning the terminology just right so that it's properly inclusive without being excessively broad is too much for me. We can say far more about felis catus than we can about mammals at large, or more about music than we can about all performance art. I worry a little that by trying to create a definition that includes all the weird edge cases, we're going to end up talking about things only in very general terms. I'd rather enumerate properties things do or do not possess and work from there.
So I figured up Inkscape and tried to do just that. Don't look for quality here folks, it won't be found. I'm an astonishingly poor graphic artist as it is. This is merely meant to substitute for that whiteboard I would have abused. It's a rough draft, so I'd be happy to hear what you all think of it. Coloured nodes refer to a few call-outs below that I've expanded upon.
"Recreation"- Here I mean to refer to all things not intended for work. I wanted to avoid just a string of terms ("art, entertainment, education, etc.") and Michael Abbott suggested "recreation." While in a lot of contexts is has a less serious connotation, I like the definition given here: "Refreshment of one's mind or body after work through activity that amuses or stimulates." Sparky Clarkson also suggested avocations, which I like.
Interaction Mediated Non-Visually- I don't have any lackluster clip art for this, for obvious reasons. I think this distinction is actually quite important, because I feel if we broaden our notion of video games to include these things, we're forced to exclude a lot of really fundamental things about games. As radio plays are sufficiently distinct from films, so too are these games distinct from video games. Additionally, I'm not convinced of their ability to be anything beyond simple novelties. I'd be delighted to encounter something that would make me reconsider, but for now, these games are not video games. Sorry Dark Room Sex Game and In The Pit.
Video Games- This is why it's difficult to nail down the exact nature of video games: they're not a single set of properties, they're a spectrum. If art, education and entertainment were a Venn diagram, video games exist in the intersections. Complicating things more, it's a very subjective spectrum. The definitions of what is art and what is entertainment differ from person to person.
My claim is that video games are visually mediated interactive software that is some combination of art, education and entertainment. Hopefully that illuminates why I opted for the diagram instead of trying to parse that out.
Again, this is just a rough draft. What do you think of this taxonomy?
This is a a personal bias (or perhaps temporary psychosis brought on by spending too much time writing XML parsers over the last couple of weeks), but I'd much rather have a taxonomy or a graph than a lexical definition. Aligning the terminology just right so that it's properly inclusive without being excessively broad is too much for me. We can say far more about felis catus than we can about mammals at large, or more about music than we can about all performance art. I worry a little that by trying to create a definition that includes all the weird edge cases, we're going to end up talking about things only in very general terms. I'd rather enumerate properties things do or do not possess and work from there.
So I figured up Inkscape and tried to do just that. Don't look for quality here folks, it won't be found. I'm an astonishingly poor graphic artist as it is. This is merely meant to substitute for that whiteboard I would have abused. It's a rough draft, so I'd be happy to hear what you all think of it. Coloured nodes refer to a few call-outs below that I've expanded upon.
"Recreation"- Here I mean to refer to all things not intended for work. I wanted to avoid just a string of terms ("art, entertainment, education, etc.") and Michael Abbott suggested "recreation." While in a lot of contexts is has a less serious connotation, I like the definition given here: "Refreshment of one's mind or body after work through activity that amuses or stimulates." Sparky Clarkson also suggested avocations, which I like.
Interaction Mediated Non-Visually- I don't have any lackluster clip art for this, for obvious reasons. I think this distinction is actually quite important, because I feel if we broaden our notion of video games to include these things, we're forced to exclude a lot of really fundamental things about games. As radio plays are sufficiently distinct from films, so too are these games distinct from video games. Additionally, I'm not convinced of their ability to be anything beyond simple novelties. I'd be delighted to encounter something that would make me reconsider, but for now, these games are not video games. Sorry Dark Room Sex Game and In The Pit.
Video Games- This is why it's difficult to nail down the exact nature of video games: they're not a single set of properties, they're a spectrum. If art, education and entertainment were a Venn diagram, video games exist in the intersections. Complicating things more, it's a very subjective spectrum. The definitions of what is art and what is entertainment differ from person to person.
My claim is that video games are visually mediated interactive software that is some combination of art, education and entertainment. Hopefully that illuminates why I opted for the diagram instead of trying to parse that out.
Again, this is just a rough draft. What do you think of this taxonomy?
Labels: taxonomy
posted by Nels Anderson at
1:20 PM
6 Comments
