I just think you overthink the concept of a game.
Part of actually wanting to be "professional" (and not in the "get paid" sense) is that you start to think seriously about what you do, what it means and what it implies. I'm thinking very carefully about what games "are" because I want to make awesome, enjoyable games that people like. I don't want to make "games" that are only for my own enjoyment.
It doesn't need to teach or have an ultimate goal to be a game.
By the definition I operate on, a game is something that is designed to teach/practice skills and it does that in a fun way.
You gave some non-digital games to illustrate your point earlier, but there are others that I believe debunk it, such as 'Duck Duck Goose', 'Ouija Board', 'Chinese Whispers' or 'Tag', which have no end goal, no learning to win, no progress, or even an ending.
"Duck Duck Goose" and "Tag" are round-by-round. That means that a game only lasts as long as a single round.
To be honest, I never really thought of "Chinese Whispers" as a "game" since I've never actually sat down with people saying "Let's play Chinese Whispers." It's always just been a spur of the moment thing.
The Ouija Board is an interesting case, but I still don't consider it a "game". I feel it was lumped in under the game label because that's how they knew they could guarantee sales. I mean, using the Ouija Board doesn't really feel game-like to you, does it?
Their only ultimate goal is to be fun,
While it's not the only way, the main way of making "fun" is to trigger the dopamine response in a person's brain, which comes out of making a person feel as though they've accomplished something or gotten better at something. While simulators/toyboxes can make you feel that way, it's not a guaranteed feeling since the designer can't implement moments/challenges that allow for that kind of progression.
As part of my course I had to playtest on people who've never tried games before; we ran them through demos of Minecraft and Portal 2 (among other games). When they went into Minecraft, had no idea what to do and disliked it, yet when they played Portal 2 there was a lot of excitement and energy from the testers.
I don't think this is "accidental" or "coincidental". I think there's something very important about the need for goals and direction in games. The name Simulation/Sandbox/Toybox implies that it's a space that lets you bring your own motivations to the environment, but the name "Game" implies you're setting out to do something specific.
I think that perhaps you're hung up on a textbook definition or something your uni lecturers said.
This is a combination of various papers and lectures which I've put together and studied. Unfortunately, I've not gone for my Masters so I was not required to write a paper on my findings.
The thing is that games is something I care deeply about. It's just my thing. There's a lot of things that I don't care for and just want the simplified version of, such as politics and music (I don't understand or care for the differences in genres, as an example).
But your definition of what constitutes a game doesn't match the consensus of the general public. 'Game' is fine being a vague term and doesn't need to be split up. That's why we have genres to distinguish the variety of things under the 'game' umbrella.
The general public use terms as marketing departments use them. People aren't required, and should never be required, to study or understand the deep, low-level stuff about how things work. That doesn't mean I'm not allowed to discuss why, in my opinion, something is/isn't what it's labelled as.
I personally don't think the use of the word is right, but it's not going to change anything or any one. At the end of the day, I feel I still have very reasonable logic that explains justly what I think and understand.
how loosely are you defining "skill" here? every game has to teach the player its mechanics, and starbound, minecraft, etc. all do this to some degree (minecraft sucks at it but it still does it) and rely on teaching the player how to explore their world, the basic means of progression, how to avoid threats, etc. the combat in starbound and terraria is at least as deep as any action RPG, and what else would you be mastering in those?
Think of it a bit like this.
You're in school, gym class. Now, the teacher could let you into the gym to just mess around with the equipment, but what guarantee is there that you'll actually spend your time doing something constructive? What happens if you get a bit lost and end up in the showers and you're unsure on how to journey back, since you haven't figured out the basic skills necessary to navigate as you decided to skip past that part? What if you focus entirely on building your abs, and then once they're looking perfect, you're not really sure what to do next and you don't feel like starting from the ground level?
I mean, those questions are probably stuffty and don't illustrate my point perfectly, but having an end goal is specifically to give you direction and keep you focused. You can occasionally lose focus and do other things in the game, but whenever you're ready to continue, the story will be there to guide you back on track. It's meant to be a major motivation for progression, nothing more.
Simulators
can teach, but they don't have a guarantee. Normal games
must teach if they want the player to reach the end.
and i would disagree that these games have made no design innovations. minecraft in particular implemented procedural generation into its design in a way that has had a massive influence on other games. this isn't just a pretty new neat feature that wasn't possible before, it would not be the same game without it, it's fundamental to its game design.
I just personally don't feel as though it's a
positive innovation towards making better experiences between the designer and the player, which is at the very core of game design (which is what I do). Procedural games limit the amount of choice the designer has and how he can interact and interface with the players. It's much more a technical feat. rather than a design feat.
EDIT: As I have discussed with other people, Minecraft, Terraria and Starbound all do fall under the "game" category now that they all have actual end goals. I still have major reservations about how Minecraft "teaches" its players, and I still have aspects of Starbound that I personally dislike.
