Unworkable Concepts

[SrGrvsaLot]

Is there such a thing as a concept that absolutely cannot be made into a playable game? If so, has anyone run into such an animal?

If these unworkable concepts are common enough, I might enjoy making a taxonomy of them. The only category I can think of off the top of my head is "So unbelievably offensive that the players would have to be total monsters to enjoy it." You know, ideas like Rape: the Game or some sort of detailed Concentration Camp sim.

[quozl]

Is there such a thing as a concept that absolutely cannot be made into a playable game?

No.

If you can think about it, you can interact with it.  If you can interact with it, you can play game entailing those interactions.  Therefore, any concept can be played as a game.

[Jack Aidley]

The players are rocks.

No, not sentient rocks. Just rocks. They cannot move, speak, think or interact in any way, shape or form. Not can they sense anything that happens to them or around them in any way.

I think that would be unplayable.

[quozl]

The players are rocks.

No, not sentient rocks. Just rocks. They cannot move, speak, think or interact in any way, shape or form. Not can they sense anything that happens to them or around them in any way.

You just defined a game right there.  Now, it may not be a fun game but it's still a game and it can be played just by following your rules: not moving, speaking, thinking, or interacting in any way, shape or form.

[Valamir]

Sounds like a wonderful game to play LARP style when babysitting nieces and nephews...:-)

[quozl]

Sounds like a wonderful game to play LARP style when babysitting nieces and nephews...:-)

You're right!  I think I remember playing this game when I was being babysat decades ago!

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

SrGrvsaLot, I don't think this thread is going to be do-able unless you can provide us with a meaningful and specific definition of "concept," that we'll all abide by.

It's OK if the definition is only intended for use in this thread rather than forever. Everyone else, please wait for clarification.

Best,
Ron

[simon_hibbs]

The players are rocks.

No, not sentient rocks. Just rocks. They cannot move, speak, think or interact in any way, shape or form. Not can they sense anything that happens to them or around them in any way.

You just defined a game right there.  Now, it may not be a fun game but it's still a game and it can be played just by following your rules: not moving, speaking, thinking, or interacting in any way, shape or form.

What qualities of this activity make it a game?

The problem for me is that if any human activity can be labeled 'game', then that label just lost it's meaning. I'd rather it was more usefull than that.

Simon Hibbs

[SrGrvsaLot]

Let's see

concept: The underlying idea that drives the game. Intentionally vague, it can describe any number of aspects of play, including: Who the characters are and what they do (like maybe the character's are goblins plotting to take over the surface world); The environment the character's find themselves in (like a world where everything is purple); A key mechanic (maybe all tasks are resolved by writing haiku relevant to the situation, with success determined by the artistic merit of the poem); or a philisophical conceit (a game whose whole point is to explore christian theology). To sum up, a game's "concept" is the short (1 page at most) description one would use to explain the game to someone who knows nothing about it (focusing specifically on what makes it different than other roleplaying games).

[SrGrvsaLot]

Now, it may not be a fun game but it's still a game

That's what I would consider a sign of an unworkable concept. If there's no reasonable way to make it fun without fundamentally changing the concept itself. The rock game is a good example of this, and it would be easy to come up with lots of other examples that fail for the same reason. In fact, this gives me the idea for two more categories of unworkability: "games that require no choices from the player." Like "rock" or "indescriminate slaughter machine" (the game where the characters kill every NPC they encounter in order of proximity), and "games that are so incredibly tedious they might as well be work" again, "rock" falls into this category as would a game where every object and character were assigned a mathmatical function and actions are resolved by integrating those functions.

[quozl]

John,

Would you like to also define "playable game"?  I consider the rock example to be a playable game (defined at m-w.com as an "activity engaged in for diversion or amusement").  Do you?

[SrGrvsaLot]

"Playable" is a bit trickier, and is probably one of those words like "pornography" that depends a lot on community values and individual judgement. I would say a game is "playable" if a group of reasonable people with roleplaying experience would agree that the game would be interesting to try (don't even try to ask me what "reasonable" or "interesting" means, because I don't know). A game like "rock" is a good example of not being playable. The whole point is to not do anything. How long could that possibly be diverting? 5 minutes? 10? A game like "rape" is unplayable for a different reason. Doubtlessly, there are some sick individuals who would derive pleasure from playing a game whose entire point was to pretend to rape people, but these people are deviants from the basic moral standards of the community, and not representative of "reasonable" individuals.

I would define as "unworkable" any concept that can not be made into a playable game, regardless of how it's presented (or, alternatively, is so extremely difficult to present in a playable manner that no one would even bother).

[Shreyas Sampat]

When you define all your terms subjectively like that, you're only asking, "Is it possible to design a game that some people won't like?" To which the answer is yes.

[timfire]

"games that require no choices from the player." ... "indescriminate slaughter machine" (the game where the characters kill every NPC they encounter in order of proximity).

I don't mean to nitpick little details, but how does the above qualifies as "requir[ing] no choices from the player?" I understand the rock-"game" argument, but couldn't the players choose how to kill individual NPC's?

Maybe it would be helpful to define "playable" or "workable" according to a specific audience? Like the Rape-game. True, there's a segment of who would enjoy the game, but the majority of people (hopefully) would find the game repulsive.

Maybe define "workable" as: A "concept" that at least 5% of the RPG community would find enjoyable. (But then the argument might shift to defining what is "the RPG community.")

[Andrew Cooper]

I again with Shreyas on this.  We can't have a useful discussion on this topic without some hard and fast definitions.  It's like trying to discuss "sports" without defining what a sport is.  Some people consider fishing and churling (I think that is how you spell that) to be sports but I certainly don't, so without a non-subjective definition we're talking about two different things.  

Perhaps we could drop the term "unplayable" and replace it with something "non-viable" or "unworkable"; although, we'd have to define that too.

Edit:  Actually, the title of this thread is Unworkable Concepts.  So, how did we get to talking about unplayable?