I Have No Words & I Must Design: Toward a Critical Vocabulary for Games

'A game is an interactive structure of endogenous meaning that requires players to struggle towards goals' (2004:24) 

A review of this quote from the article by Greg Costikyan, notes taken previous to 07/10/2011. We look in detail into Interaction, Goals, Struggle, Structure and the term "Endogenous meaning"

Interaction
One of the first points he makes is that there is a difference between a "game" and a "puzzle". He says that people don't call a crossword a game but it is clearly a puzzle. This is because there is no strategy, no really goal and no opposition. 

Interaction needs a purpose to be involved in a game or classed as a game. For example, you can get media classed as Interactive Entertainment which is normally found on a website sometimes a Flash based website. In these site you can interact a lot and control the media such as pausing a video or choosing an article to read but you cannot interact with the media so that you cannot class this as a game technically. There is no puzzle, struggle or goals which means it can't be classed under the genre of a game.


Goals
A game needs goals to be classed as a game. Without them it is pointless to play as there is no reward to playing the game and interacting with it. Meaning that the audience has nothing to achieve and nothing to reward themselves with.

Interaction in a game is useless without a goal. If a game has a point of interaction it needs to have a decision which will change the game and create a goal. For example having a switch, you could just walk past it and ignore it or you could press it and receive something good or bad which could then change the future of the game.
He says about the game "Sim City", saying it is being a software toy because it has no goals in the game, there are no written goals to achieve. Instead you make your own goals and when you achieve your goals you create your own rewards. This could even be compared to the modern day game Minecraft by Mojang, this is a sandbox game in which different game modes allow you to create your own goals. The Creative game mode allows you to build anything you want. People choose to build amazing structures with beautiful architecture. There have been many articles stating how architecture in this game effects the rewards and just from building using certain methods such as "The Golden Ratio" which was a equation discovered by Pythagoras and expanded into terms the game could use by The Voxel Team. But this creates goals in building and rewards you with amazing structures of beauty.


Struggle
A game without struggle could be classed as a bad game. Struggle means that the audience has something to work against to achieve their goals and be rewarded for beating them. For example Half-Life 2, the struggle in the game is to find the correct path and grind though endless enemies and once this struggle is beaten the audience have reached the goal and receive an award such as an achievement, better weapons or more story. Normally it ends in the creation of a new struggle with new goals to achieve and better rewards.
Saying this, a game needs to have a balanced struggle. This is very important as if there is too much of a struggle then the user gets frustrated or stuck and begins to dislike the game or even stops playing. But then if the game doesn't have enough struggle then the user finds the game to easy and the user stops playing because it is too easy. 


Structure
Structure is very important in a game. It is what builds a framework for the game and make it playable. He states that even children playing a game such as Tag, they invent rules which are the structure of the game and make it fun and playable. The structure also shapes the player of the game, it makes the player think about skills needed and they think ahead about the struggle and strategy they will need to win the game. 

A game such as Scrabble is a good example. It comes with set rules but there used to be no rules about time taken each turn. This meant that the audience needed to create their own rules on the amount of time taken each turn otherwise they would be punished. This also adds to the struggle and makes the game more fun.


Endogenous Meaning
This comes from the quote at the start of this post he says this is part of what a game actually is. Games have interaction, goals, struggle and structure which all make the game attractive. However, there are certain aspects in the game which make it especially addictive. These achievements could come in the form of medals, guns, money etc. They are basically status symbols which users can show off to other users to prove their skills. But these achievement gained have no purpose in real life. Meaning that the skills gained or the achievements gained are useless in real life. But these achievements make the games very addictive and make the user work hard for them.

There are items in some games which come under this description but can be traded for real life money, for example hats in Valve's Team Fortress 2. But if the company goes bust or they change their policy then again these items gained are useless in reality. 
A good example is Call Of Duty games in which there are a lot of different achievements to gain throughout the game mainly in multiplayer. Things like the levelling up system, titles, new guns, medals and the actual console achievements. These are all ways in which the user can use their skills to gain these status symbols but are useless in real life.