[-empyre-] Why videogames are so special in contrary to other games

[Daniel Cook]

"...please make a clear statement why videogames are so special in contrary
to other games." -Georg Russegger

This is perhaps an obvious answer, but the difference between video games
and other games is the presence of ruleset and feedback automation by the
computer.

If you've ever played a board game or a sport, you quickly realize that each
community adopts its own rule variations.  The official rules are but a
starting point and the 'real rules' exist in the performance carried out by
the community.  A critical aspect of this process is that the rules rarely
scale easily from as groups increase in size or change composition since
they need to be renegotiated in the age old processes of learning and
forming social norms.

When we look at this from the perspective of games played by children on
playgrounds, it may seem like a trivial point.  However, the same process
and limitations exist when dealing with any traditional rule based system
when it comes into contact with humanity.  Consider the official rules for a
government and the real world variations that occur when those rules are
executed.  Bureaucracy has natural limits due to the inherent difficulties
that comes from organizing large, messy groups of people.

When you introduce a computer into the mix, the rules become rigid.  They
are code that is executed with great precision.  As long as your methods of
measurement are reliable, you can create *reproducible *and *scalable *patterns
of human behavior to a degree that has hitherto been the downfall of
empires.  Once I've tested a game on 10,000 players, I know with reasonable
certainty what effect it will have on 10 million.  The playtesting and
metrics that drive modern game design as a much about finding the
predictable bounds of human behavior within a system as they are about
finding a system that is enjoyable. (Carrots and honey when properly applied
are quite successful at constraining a populations behavior while still
honoring free will.) Many computer moderated applications fit in this
category, but games are unique in that they explicitly deal in the intricate
aspects of autonomy, motivation, goals and other psychological circuitry
that seem so central to our illusions of identity and will.

The tricky part to the particular question asked above is that the patterns
of behavior that you witness in non-video games are in fact identical to
those that you witness in video games. Split the activities down into their
atomic elements and analyze them in isolation and they look quite the same.
In fact, the behavior set is non-video games is much broader since we are
still early in the process of instrumenting the spectrum of human activity.
 What is different is that video games allow us to execute games in a
radically more efficient and reliable fashion. At what point does more of
the same change into something radically different? For single player games
the difference is as dramatic as the difference between the simple, human
executable rules of Solitaire and the rich computer executable worlds of the
Sims or Bioshock.

The real questions for me become: What transformations occur when we shift
from human executable multi-player rules to rich computer
executable multi-player rules? When that shift occurs in government?  In
workplace management?

take care,
Danc.
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