Imagine a concert venue with 500 people in it. Now imagine that the organizers throw a large inflatable beach ball into the room. People begin to play with the ball, batting it back and forth. The ball is a Toy.
There is an implied bounded space defining how to play with the ball. Some of it is implied by the ball’s design and others boundaries by the various social contracts in effect. But there is no formal bounded space. The room itself does not count as a bounded space, because there is no formal declaration that someone can’t take the ball into the lobby and play with it there.
There will be parts of the community that play a game with the toy. The most obvious/common bounded space in this scenario suggests that the ball not hit the floor. This implied boundary is of the social contract variety.
Now imagine that same scenario, but with a stage at either end of the room. The organizers throw the same ball in, but announce that the concert will appear on the stage of the side of the room to first get the ball onto the opposite stage. Now the ball exists within a bounded space as described by goals.
The ball itself is still a toy, but it’s now being used in a game.
The organizers may add constraints to the bounded space that reduce the freedoms of the players. These constraints would take the form of rules–if the ball touches the floor it will be thrown back to the center of the room, you may not touch the ball with both hands, etc–that alter the experience of playing within the bounded space.
Now imagine an iPhone app consisting solely of a 3d representation of a beach ball. Toy or Game? At first glance, it would seem to be a Toy, but there’s a problem with that. The developer(s) of the app has decided upon an environment for the ball to appear in–both scale and appearance. Additionally, the developer(s) decided on the exact algorithms for the ball’s movement, as well as the controls that produce the behaviors.
So the developers, by deciding upon the exact nature of the experience of playing with the ball (toy), are providing a bounded space for the ball, i.e.–a game.
And that is why I contend that no interactive electronic experience can be considered a toy.
Now imagine the lead singer is inside the ball. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFDHqp18lY4
There’s got to be some kind of useful metaphor here…
Except that the developers have not defined how you play with the ball. Yes, they have developed the physics and the space (the universe and the concert hall) but they have not provided any rules beyond what the universe inherently provides us.
They have not limited how you play with the toy. You may take your iPhone outside with you. Or play with friends (perhaps with the iPad version). You may establish rules and play a game, but there is not inherent game within the simulated beach ball.
The beach ball app is a Simulated Toy. Much like a cardboard box may become a simulated toy when you imagine it is a Transmogrifier. Toys inherently have some design but lack specific constraints that limit how you may interact with them. Simulated toys allow us to transplant a set of toy constraints onto another object to create a limited version of that toy. We transplant the rules that govern a beach ball in real life into the simulated space of the iPhone App.
So… Toy :: Simulated Toy as Game :: Electronic Game
No, but they have created a bounded space in which you can play with their toy. You taking the iPhone outside doesn’t alter the behaviors of the toy actant inside the game unless the developer has specifically accounted for it.
The iPhone version of the beach ball is still a game, albeit one with both limited constrictions and limited freedoms.
You can’t, for example, take the iPhone game’s ball outside of the confines of the game’s single-room environment, like you could with the real world equivalent.
You could, however, let the player take photos or video in real time and let the software interpret the images as an interactive enviroment for the ball.
Yes, but that just serves to make it even more gamelike, no? ;-})
Now, say another programmer gains access to the code for the ball, and puts it within their own confined space. Maybe they take the program and replicate it elsewhere, or merely take the basic movement of the digital ball and transfer them to another device. I’m presuming they will have made the first digital ball into a Toy. In which case, game players can intentionally understand something within the game universe as a toy if they have means of making it so.
The ball actant was a ‘toy’ within the original game as well, but I generally concur with your point.
Games may make use of toys within their design. A simple game may only make use of one toy and therefore be incorrectly (in my opinion) mistaken for a toy itself.
So, as soon as someone says that you can’t take the real beach ball out of the main room, then you’ve created a bounded space, and therefore a game, right? If it is, I not sure how.
I can see that a bounded space is a required element of a game, but I don’t see how you can really have a game without some sort of overarching goal.
Not necessarily. The bounded space is not about the physical space. The bounded space is a conceptual space–and one specifically intended for play–created by rules of interaction.
Stating a rule of expected behavior–such as ‘don’t take the ball out of the room’–isn’t created a bounded space for play, it’s just a rule. However, if a bounded space has been created with the intent of play–’the ball can’t leave the room’ is a constraint of gameplay.
Corvus, I’m wondering what your definition of a “toy” is. Based on the example of your hypothetical iPhone game (where the developers have pre-designed an environment and set of behaviors for the ball), couldn’t the beach ball at the concert also be considered a game in itself? The makers of the beach ball designed it in a specific way: to be bounced, thrown, held, etc. Certain parameters went into the making of the beach ball to make it behave in a certain way, just like the iPhone developers created their ball to act in a certain way. So what’s the difference?
The definition I settled on in my last post on the topic (I like your toys, they’re not all stickery) was:
Short answer–no.
Well, not unless you’re making the assumption that an intelligent being (or beings) consciously established the laws of physics expressly for the purpose of play. In which case–sure. But that’s an entirely different conversation.
The iPhone game, on the other hand, is an environment expressly created for the purpose of play.
The problem I’m having with this is that when you follow this logic, anything that exists within a man-made space ceases to be a toy. If you have to say that the man-made space is expressly created for the purpose of play, then that narrows it down, but doesn’t lead to the conclusion that ‘no interactive electronic experience can be considered a toy.’
An iPod Touch, while capable of running software which can be used for play, was not created expressly for the purposes of play. It affords play within it, but that’s not it’s only purpose. Therefore, an application within it can potentially be a toy.
Note that I’m not arguing that the ball within the app is a toy, but rather that the app itself is a toy, with certain affordances that allow play with it.
I think I’m going to take this to a new thread later, where I refine my position a bit. I will say that I fundamentally disagree with the notion that virtual environment are the equivalent of real world environments, which is what I feel your argument tends to suggest.
I will go on record here agreeing with Joe. Simulated environments play the same role in a system that real environments do with the limitation that they are further constrained and limited than real environments. Further to that the level of simulation (or accuracy of the simulation) limits the usefulness of the environment but does not do so in a way that necessitates a Game within that space.
Which is why all virtual games are limited versions of what could be played in real life. An RPG (even one with actual role playing) is limited in what can be done by the simulated environment it is played in. On a computer this is very limiting at times. In your imagination (a legitimate form of simulation) the limitations are defined entirely by you. In reality there are further constraints and you wind up either LARPing or relying on some other form of simulation because our reality constrains the use of magic.
I’m having trouble with this idea that an iPhone app which is just a bouncing a ball is not a toy because it has been designed, or has such. I’m willing to posit that the ball within the game may not be a toy (or a whole toy) but the app itself is a toy.
There’s really no difference between the application and an actual ball as interactive objects, except for the affordances the objects allow. Yes, an actual ball has more affordances, but they aren’t infinite. I can’t eat the ball. I can’t connect my ball with legos (well maybe with glue, but that requires something beyond the ball and the legos). I can’t play baseball with my ball, as it doesn’t come with a bat. The developers of the ball didn’t allow for that option for me.
Admittedly, it’s not the nature of a ball to be eaten, or come with a bat. That’s okay.
I’d argue that the same analysis can be done on an interactive toy application like the one you describe. It’s not as versatile as a toy, but that lack of versatility doesn’t make it a game, or not a toy.
To put it another way, if I give you a ball and tell you you can’t take it out of the house, does it become a game, because I’ve confined you to the environment of the house?
The fundamental flaw with this whole argument is that we assume that constraints alone define a game. However everything (physical or virtual) exists with some fundamental constraints. The virtual (or simulation) space has the added requirement of defining the environmental constraints where a physical object has those constraints already defined. This leads to the nowhere discussion we’ve reached. To horrible warp a perfectly good saying: Any significantly advanced simulation is indistinguishable from reality. With unlimited tech, time, and resources you could create a simulation that was equal in all respects to reality.
Therefore Toys are designed within environmental constraints.
Simulated Toys are also designed within environmental constraints, however those constraints are also design choices.
The missing piece from this discussion is that of feedback. Rules by themselves do not make a game. Rules provide a mechanism for feedback. Environmental rules provide important feedback about how the space and object work. This feedback, however, is neutral. By applying a second set of rules we generate meaningful feedback (negative or positive).
Take an example of the simplest virtual space/toy I can think of: You have a black screen and a white ball and paddle. The environmental rules define the paddle size and shape and the nature of the ball. The paddle can move up and down at a fixed speed. The ball can travel in a straight line and when it encounters the edge of the screen or the paddle it changes direction according to the angle and velocity it struck the obstacle. This is a toy.
The paddle moves, the ball bounces. Now add a rule on top of the environment. When the ball bounces on the edge of the screen behind the paddle a sound is made (perhaps different from the sound of the ball hitting other walls). Now we have a game (implied) where the feedback leads us to think the goal is to keep the ball from hitting the edge of the screen behind the paddle. More rules (and more feedback) will better define the game. Add a score counter every time the ball bounces off the paddle and reset it when the ball hits the edge behind the paddle. Now the feedback indicates the goal is to see how many bounces you can get before failing.
Meaningful, intentional feedback is what takes a simulated toy and creates a simulated game. This can be applied to a real space with a gymnasium and a tennis ball. The ball is a toy. The environment creates neutral feedback about the toy within the space. The creation of additional rules that provide meaningful feedback turns the toy (in a space) into a game.
Therefore Simulated Toys may exist, and their only significant difference to Physical Toys is that the simulation must also provide the environment and neutral environmental feedback.
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