Lecture 1: Wittgenstein on Games

Recently I've been playing several games which have seemed to bring me back to the idea that all games are different. As Wittgenstein theorised, the concept of games is like a rope, all twisted fibres, no single thread (Philosophical Investigations, 1973) . Even games in the same genre or even within the same series can be wildly different. For example, Fable and Pokemon, both games are well wihin the RPG (role-playing game)genre, yet both very different from one another. Fable has a wide, diverging storryline where you can choose to be good or evil, the story changes according to your actions in the game. In Pokemon on the other hand, there is a set storyline, which may diverge a little if you decide to go off and do some quests or something, but lacks the depth of a game like Fable. Pokemon is turnbased in battles, relying on a little strategy from the player, but not very demanding.Fable is an action-RPG where every action you make affects the rest of the game, and where every battle requires you to target your opponent and then unleash your attacks, timing them correctly to defend yourself. The two main factors which both these games have in common at all is that they are both competitive, setting the player against other characters in the game to compete for superiority, and a main plotline leading you to the end of the game.

As Wittgenstein mentions, even though all games differ in some respect, there are "families" of games, not just genres, but also other types such as competitive and non-competitive. Also he mentioned that all games have blurred edges, no one game or genre can be completely and definateively defined. This can be seen in cross genre titles and the fact that new genres are being created all the time. An example of this is the RPG genre, once, it used to be quite clearly defined, with most games within it consisting a main sotryline, a hero, a quest and very little else. Today the RPG genre has evolved into many different categories and cross genres, such as action-rpg, MMORPG, first-person rpg etc. This is also the case with other genres and families of games.