These types of games don’t have an ending in the traditional sense but instead offer item collection or scoring systems, not unlike the leaderboards and high-scores of classic arcade games. ![]() Other games like SEGA’s Sonic Dash utilise a combination of both swipe and touch inputs to enable movement and jumping, respectively. The control scheme of surprise worldwide hit Flappy Bird is entirely centred around a simple single-touch command. The emergence of these technologies in video game hardware has forced many game developers to re-evaluate what made a game playable one one format and how to adapt these input methods to create an enjoyable experience on a new device. The difference with the touch screen and the traditional analog input methods is that you’re reducing your commands to “touch” or “swipe” to simulate the buttons or directional inputs. Touch interfaces are being used for things as basic as a restaurant menu or as complex as architecture and design systems. Touch screen and mobile devices have become common in most businesses and homes. In recent times, simple interactive experiences have become a huge part of our everyday lives. This could potentially further a debate as to whether these are in fact games, or just interactive experiences. Many contemporary mobile games also have no ending and may utilise gimmicks or events that encourage regular attention from players. For these reasons it would be fair to say that Tamagotchi is certainly an interactive experience, but is not necessarily a game.Īlthough a game without an ending would have been an unconventional design choice at the time, aspects like these have become increasingly common in more modern games. The pet also requires constant attention, which would remain outside of the expectations of games in an era where the design normally intended for play in short bursts. Encouraging a player to have their character die as a means of achieving completion goes against the norm of traditional video games, and a lack of ending or score can be considered fairly unusual for the time. The only definitive end a ‘player’ can achieve is the eventual death of your Tamagotchi pet, upon which you simply start over with a new one. Your only objective is to care for your pet. Tamagotchi, in its original form, offers nothing in the way of ‘completion’ in the sense you would expect from a video game – nor is there there presence of a story, or even points or scores. In this writer’s opinion, this marks where the lines of what can be considered a “game” really start to blur. Although Tamagotchi is considered a toy, the presence of a dot matrix LCD screen used to display pixel-art characters is very comparable to a traditional video game. It too made use of simple button commands to create an accessible and intuitive interactive experience, not dissimilar to that offered by the laserdisc games of the previous decade. Moving into the late 90’s, Bandai’s electronic pet-simulation Tamagotchi had become one of the biggest toy fads of the decade. ![]() The popularity of laserdisc games dropped significantly in the late 80’s, but the idea of interactive movies continued on through future disc formats, such as DVD and Blu-Ray, in a more limited capacity. This minimal interactivity along with fixed story progression and impressive visuals offered an appealing game experience worthy of the arcade and eventually home use. Arcade set-ups simply transferred these inputs to a standard arcade joystick and buttons, creating an experience that the average gamer would easily identify with. Laserdisc players used simple directional and button inputs, similar to what you would find on the average television remote control. These games make use of prerecorded animation instead of the standard character and background sprites, whilst only requiring very basic input from the player to progress the story. In 1983, Dragon’s Lair hit arcades and served as one of the first popular laserdisc games – titles featuring arcade cabinets that operated around a fitted laserdisc player – in the west, paving the way for the likes of Space Ace and Time Gal which have since gone on to become cult classics. Laserdisc systems were one of the first mainstream media sources to bring a simple interactive experience into the gaming sphere. As we move towards simplified interfaces and more accessible content, the lines start to blur on what can be considered a video game. ![]() However, even many videos now offer some level of interactivity. If a game played itself it would essentially be a video. Every video game is an interactive experience, but when does an interactive experience become a game? Video games by their very design require input from an external source, most commonly a keyboard, mouse, controller or joystick.
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