What makes a game a game? It should be an easy answer, yet a debate often springs up around the question and some people tend to get a little bit pissy when a “non-game” raises to popularity. It’s good that people are passionate about the medium, but it’s vital that we don’t forget that different strokes suit different folks. That’s why when a Telltale game comes out, or a game like Life is Strange, it’s important that we just take a breather and relax; they’re games, they just don’t fit your preferences. They aren’t merely “interactive movies,” as the complaints often state.
A game, first off, is about interactivity. It’s play. And sometimes the lines between games, art, and work get obscured, but a game often remains a game regardless of where it crosses over into those other definitions. A game has rules, often. A game evokes emotion of some sort. A game is about play and escapism and, well, so many other things. The definition isn’t precise. It’s vague, and rightfully so. There are examples that really blur the lines, and some criticism over whether or not these games are glorified books can hold weight. That just isn’t the case with these Telltale-style games, though.
The adventure game is timeless and predates many of the more conventional types of play we’re used to seeing in video games these days. Hell, even choose your own adventure books were pretty much just gamified reading. When you take that format and add a visual interface, more choices, and a controller, you’re making it even harder to refute that these creations are video games. I mean, they’re games with video.
Part of what makes a game a game is player agency over the outcome. Sure, the outcomes in these games usually end up being pretty similar, and a lot of the experience revolves around watching. But the player’s path through the game changes, and it’s not always according to what they want to happen. There are penalties for bad decisions. There are losing conditions. There’s a system behind all the storytelling and branching paths that the player navigates according to their own decisions. Even if the player randomly hits buttons, The Wolf Among Us would still be a game in the same way that many other mainstream games rely on chance. I just have trouble seeing where the argument comes from. They’re games, they’re just a different sort. And that’s a good thing, because adhering to convention stagnates the whole medium. Experimentation is good for us all.
Where I think the games mostly differ is in their ratio of story to gameplay. It’s also why I particularly love them. Storytelling in games is still in its infancy and is far from a well-honed craft. It could be that many gamers just don’t care about the story that much. It could be that it is admittedly difficult to blend story into a medium that relies largely on player freedom. I like games from all over the spectrum but every now and then, I require something just a little bit different. Something that is almost guaranteed to be emotionally evocative. Life is Strange is that kind of different. The Walking Dead by Telltale was nothing if not emotional, and often times, I felt like I was losing because things I wanted to happen just weren’t, and it was my own damn fault.
But never did those experiences feel like work. And not once did I feel like I was just watching a movie. My mind stayed engaged, I took responsibility for what happened, and I was absorbed by the idea that I need to pay attention to details if I want the story to play out a certain way. And that’s an incredibly personal experience when you get down to it. And at the end of the chapter in the Telltale games, a menu shows how your choices differ from other players who are going through the game for the first time. If the experience is malleable like this, how can it not be a game?