Video Games and Entymology

I recently watched this video.


It comes from a series of videos about video game design, but their method is so thoughtful that I have found that it applies to quite a few other areas of creativity.

By this point you may have guessed at the purposeful misspelling in the title of this post. Well, I warned you in the blog title.

But, on to more time consuming discussion. This video is about the word "Game" as used in the video game industry. Within the past few years there have been an increasing number of not fun games created. When I say that I don't mean that they aren't good games, I just mean that their primary purpose is not to entertain.

To me this creates an interesting look into how words develop. The tone of this video seems to suggest that the word game isn't useful, and that we should abandon it in favor of a new term: Interactive Experience. Early on in the video the speaker makes a comparison to poetry and suggests that it's crazy to question whether or not a piece of writing is actually a poem if it doesn't conform to certain rules (i.e. rigid meter or rhyming couplets). But the truth is that the scholastic community did question poems that broke those rules. And eventually they came to the conclusion that the term "poetry" was broad enough to contain these new expressions, they just came up with new names to contain the newer, free form poetry.

That's how language works. Us silly humans are always making up new stuff. If we find a new medium to work in, then we explore it. If someone pays us, we explore more. If people are willing to pay enough, or pay enough attention, then the business minded part of humanity jumps in to exploit it.

And they need something to call it.

"Why?" you ask. (You know, it gives me a perverse pleasure forcing that on you. You may not have even wanted to ask that question and I just attributed it to you. Writers are sick.) Because that's how we have learned to communicate. We make a written or audible symbol and someone else sees or hears the symbol and interprets it.

But words, spoken or written, are only useful for communicating an idea if we have a similar understanding of their meaning. Definitions are useful because they allow us to communicate. (One of my favorite discussions of the usefulness of words and definitions is by C.S. Lewis in his paper, Mere Christianity.)

The term "game" is historically used to denote play, and there's no doubt that our current "video game" started there. The new term the author of this video suggests, "interactive experience", would be useful for a discussion about interactive experiences, but it fails at telling me what kind of interactive experience (which is currently the problem with the word game). The word is undergoing a change.

It may be useful to adopt "interactive experience" as a term for the medium and leave "game" to it's old usage. I say useful because the use of a term is found in its ability to communicate an idea. If we're divided about what "game" means, then the word loses validity. Another option would be to keep the word "game" and just lump the other kinds of experiences in with new adjectives to keep them apart (e.g. fun game, strategy game, intellectual game, game that makes you question your own sanity, etc.). One problem I see in using the word "game" is that the word has other ties. We already have a definition that is associated with other activities (e.g. soccer, chess, uno, tag, etc.) and they are usually tied to fun or entertainment. If we continue to use the word "game" for every interactive video experience then we lose a bit of meaning. I'm not saying it can't work. I'm just saying that this is a problem I see. "Interactive Experience" for me, lacks some of the original connotation attached to the word "game".

The difficulty is that we are creating new experiences that are categorically different than what games and video games have historically presented. We've invented a new category that is related, but is genuinely different. If it weren't, then we probably wouldn't be having this argument. We'd find something else to argue about.

So we've got multiple interactive experiences being created. Lumping them together as "games" has caused confusion. A new term that embodies the whole is useful in this case.  "Interactive Experience" is as good as any I can think of. It would sometimes be nice to force everyone to agree on categorization methods or terms, but language seems to evolve much more fluidly. We'll see if "Interactive Experience" catches on as a description of the medium. Though in the end, I think it will probably be most useful to people talking about interactive experiences or trying to sell them. People who want to play games will still just play them.

Katanas

While preparing to write I tend to do a lot of research, perhaps too much. One of the things I am currently studying is combat. Since I'm writing a fantasy novel set in a time without guns, I'm studying really anything that came before guns.

One thing that I've noticed is a rolling commentary on the katana. The katana is a Japanese blade that has become extremely popular. People who love the katana say it was the best sword ever. People who like other swords usually say the katana is overrated because of popular culture. I've just got a few observations:

Katanas are not just swords. To many people the katana represents the values and belief system of the Samurai. It's not just the sword, but the entire Samurai culture that is involved with this sword. It's similar to the way those of European descent view King Arthur and the knights of the round table. There is a sense of romanticism and adventure surrounding the Katana.

Military change throughout the ages represents a huge back and forth between opponents. If I sent my army at you with a stick, you might get bigger sticks for your army. If I put on a lot of heavy clothes and to pad my warriors bodies and some wood on their heads to protect them, you might come at me with a sharpened weapon to cut through that padding, or a club with spikes that could poke through. If you just found this great stuff called metal that you could shape, you might use as much as you could find. But you might, instead, change your fighting style so that you could pinpoint the weaknesses in my armor without finding a new weapon. Chances are that you'd probably do whatever you could to come out on top.

The point here is that weapons, armor, fighting styles, and even military philosophies change throughout the years in concert with enemies, resources, and technology. Swords throughout the world have gone through various changes throughout the millennium. Materials dictated how long and how thin swords could be made (a 4 foot copper sword would not stand up to continual beating, but a 2 foot copper sword made thick enough might do the job). Sometimes it was a matter of knowing how to forge the metal. Sometimes it was about finding the metal (Iron, as it turns out, is not found naturally in bars or sheets at a local sword making store). Katanas were made in Japan. Japan is an island with limited resources. Katanas have a thick back side made of lower quality metal with a blade forged from a very high quality metal. This design allowed the weapon smiths to create a strong blade with less cost. It is an ingenious design that comes partly from the real world limitations.

One fallback katanas have is that they don't bend. Katanas are created like a long, thin, axe blade. Thick at the back and sharp at the edge. They can stab, but Europeans started making swords that could take a lot of strain and still come back to their original shape. One reason flexible swords are useful is that they can slide along tough armor and slide into weaker joints. The knight was like a tank. He let the armor take blow after blow until he was in position and then he attacked. We don't see many knights fighting with rapiers, because thin and flexible rapier blades made it easier for unarmored opponents to take down a knight.

But there is one piece of evidence that may support the katana's effective design especially in more modern combat. The swords used in more modern wars are single edged, curved blades like the katana. Part of that is that sabers are very useful for cavalry who want to ride through and slice down their enemy. A curved sword is much better if you want to keep going, while a straight sword tend to hang up a bit. Also, plate armor became less and less useful when guns came around (thick enough plate to stop a bullet may well just be too heavy).

I don't know if there is any connection between the saber and the katana. The truth is that every weapon is useful in certain situations, but just looking at the trends, it seems that over time we gravitated toward a similar style. That doesn't mean that the katana is the best sword ever, but the convergent design seems like a good indicator that there is something to be said about katanas.