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> This is interesting, as my five year old daughter loves Pillars of Eternity.

Funnily enough, PoE is the game I've been needling my eldest to try for _years_ now. The PoE games are fabulous CRPGs that I've played through twice each, myself; I expected that she would love the mix of puzzle solving, narrative, and strategy. But it just didn't hook, for whatever reason.

> That being said, she mostly just likes to watch me fighting monsters and change the outfits of the characters.

Oh, well, yes. My kids love watching me play whatever game I'm playing. That's different: they are choosing to show interest in my interests in order to spend time with me.

by bigfishrunning4 hours ago|

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Toca Boca World is a game my daughters (8 and 10) love, and i completely don't understand. It doesn't seem to have a goal or any mechanics --they're just playing dolls on a screen, which is cool but with so little interactivity i think i'd rather they just play with dolls (which they do also...)

Animal crossing has very recently started to take over as "favorite video game", and at least there's a *game* there...

by trelane4 hours ago|

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> It doesn't seem to have a goal or any mechanics --they're just playing dolls on a screen, which is cool but with so little interactivity i think i'd rather they just play with dolls

> Animal crossing has very recently started to take over as "favorite video game", and at least there's a game there...

A large part of the problem here is that folks believe that "game" necessarily implies goals and mechanics.

From https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/game

> 1. a physical or mental competition conducted according to rules with the participants in direct opposition to each other

> 2. activity engaged in for diversion or amusement

Lots of folks see it as definition 1 (cooperative is still a contest against some non-player), whereas your girls seem to be operating under definition 2.

The equivalent to your statement from the other side of the fence would be women that deride male competition.

At the end of the day, we likes what we likes. Doing fun things is the fullest definition of a game. So the application of the priciple looks different depending on what the people enjoy.

by genthree3 hours ago|

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I touched on it in my way-too-long post elsewhere on here, but I think this is exactly it: there's a (fuzzy at some boundary, sure, but useful) distinction to be drawn on something like where the game happens. Does "the game" (the software) supply most or all of "the game"? Or is "the game" (the software) a toy in service of a game that the player brings and gives shape?

Both types of software plausibly "are video games" but can take extremely different forms, and their appeal may diverge wildly—someone who likes one to an extreme, may have zero interest in the other. Others may like both sorts of play, but not regard them as interchangeable (i.e. if what you're wanting at the moment is an e-sport, a visual novel may not be any amount of a satisfactory substitute, even if you like visual novels).

We tend to draw a "toy/game" distinction (with games perhaps being a subset of "toys", but still its own sub-category, anyway) with physical objects to divide those with built-in goals from those without, and that seems to serve us well, but we've not translated that to the digital realm very well (and maybe we shouldn't, I dunno)