Is gameplay one word

Gamers, I’m going to do something videogames do to us quite a bit: ask you a question, to find out once and for all, is videogame one word or two?
Q: What is a videogame?
A: An entertainment activity in which players operate a simple device to complete tasks digitally.
B: A new entertainment medium rivaling the cultural significance and revenue of film, TV, art and literature, but which exclusively relies on the resilience, reflexes and mental functioning of the participant, to interact with both AI and other humans to achieve their individual, unique goals.
C: A miserable little pile of secrets.
They’re all “true”. But If you answered B, for you, this question is worth exploring. (If you answered C, I’m glad you love CastleVania as much as I do. Have at you!!)
Ironically, it’s a videogame series that leads me ask this question: what is the difference between “videogame” and “video game”, and more importantly why does it matter?
I’ve been writing “videogame” since I was a little kid who started playing Atari 2600 and Commodore 64 at 3 years old, in 1985. I think it was because of how I say it. I got so giddy over gaming that I can’t help excitedly turning the word into a three-syllable mushjob. “VIDYOGAMES!”
It also just made sense to me. I’d see “videocassette” written out and lots of “video-” words are compound. With videogames being this new thing it just made sense to have its own term.
Once I began the head copy editor on the daily Ohio State student newspaper, The Lantern, though, style guides and grammar became not just hunches and afterthoughts but real issues with real meaning to a huge publication and its audience.

No idea if The Lantern still follows it, but I implemented “videogame” as news editor/head copy editor during my stint there
Unless you’re a special kind of obsessor over the English language, I’m sure you can care less if the New York Times writes “‘60s”, “1960s” or “1960’s,” but it’s actually pretty sweet to learn how small differences in grammar, spelling and punctuation can fundamentally change the meaning or philosophy of a sentence — or a word.
So I made “videogame” one word for Lantern style, even though the Associated Press Stylebook (yes, that’s one word) still listed it as two. Which I understood the AP’s stance (or non-stance), they don’t like change. (“Web site” finally became “website” officially during my tenure — it was 2004 and they finally succumbed to popular lexicon.)

Video Gaming! Here in Las Vegas I got all excited till I realized they meant “video games” — slot machines! Videogaming is my hobby … video gaming is not
I figured the Internet and mainstream media would figure “videogames” out too, just like we stopped writing “web site” and putting technology like “modem” in quotes in consumer manuals.

• “It looks dumb as one” (which I argue the opposite, especially now in 2015).
• “It’s always been like that” (which is never a solid argument, nor is it true)
• “It’s not needing a compound word, unlike videotape and videocassette. Just like board game is two words.”

Number three is at least a valid talking point. Board game IS two words. They argue “videocassette” is one word (how absurd does THAT look compared to “videogame”?) because the cassette is not literally “video”. The magnetic tape contains tape, but the object itself, on its surface, features no video image. You need a cassette deck and a television (one word) to see anything, right?
So if the tape itself could project video on your wall, it would stay two words. I guess. (Hey, I didn’t author this line of thinking, I just troll message boards).
So back to: Is videogame one word? They say it’s a game played out in video, just like Monopoly or Hi-Ho Cherry-o or Settles of Catan is a game, played out on a board.
Well, let’s go back to the first question I asked you. If you’re reading this far (gamers are not known as readers, which is another myth — think of how much text we read even in a 16-bit RPG) you probably answered “B”.

When I beat “EarthBound” I’m not happy because I won the game. I’m happy because I was entertained by more than pushing buttons in sequence. I’m happy the game actually acknowledges me, the player, and my special role in guiding Ness, and helped me feel better about my real life, art and friendship.
When I play ping pong, I’m just happy because I won.
I play Dance Dance Revolution competively (of all things), as well as fighting games. Ironically if anything is a “video game” still, it might be these. As complex as they are to achieve in, and as many people love them, you are always just trying to beat the CPU or the other guy: hence, a simple “video game”.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gameplay is the specific way in which players interact with a game,^[1][2] and in particular with video games.^[3][4] Gameplay is the pattern defined through the game rules,^[2][5] connection between player and the game,^[6] challenges^[7] and overcoming them,^[8] plot^[9] and player’s connection with it.^[6] Video game gameplay is distinct from graphics^[9][10] and audio elements.^[9] In card games, the equivalent term is play.^[a]

Overview[edit]

Arising alongside video game development in the 1980s, the term gameplay was used solely within the context of video games, though now its popularity has begun to see use in the description of other, more traditional, game forms. Generally, gameplay is considered the overall experience of playing a video game, excluding factors like graphics and sound. Game mechanics, on the other hand, is the sets of rules in a game that are intended to produce an enjoyable gaming experience. Academic discussions tend to favor game mechanics specifically to avoid gameplay since the latter is too vague.^[13] The word is sometimes misapplied to card games where, however, the usual term is «play» and refers to the way the cards are played out in accordance with the rules (as opposed to other aspects such as dealing or bidding).

Types[edit]

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (April 2010)

There are three components to gameplay: «Manipulation rules», defining what the player can do in the game, «Goal Rules», defining the goal of the game, and «Metarules», defining how a game can be tuned or modified.^[14] In video games gameplay can be divided into several types. For example, cooperative gameplay involves two or more players playing on a team. Another example is twitch gameplay which is based around testing a player’s reaction times and precision, maybe in rhythm games or first-person shooters^{[citation needed]}. Various gameplay types are listed below.

• Asymmetric video game
• Cooperative video game
• Emergent gameplay
• Nonlinear gameplay

Ambiguity in definition[edit]

The term gameplay can be quite ambiguous to define; thus, it has been differently defined by different authors.

For instance:

• «A series of interesting choices.» -Sid Meier^[15]
• «The structures of player interaction with the game system and with other players in the game.»^[16]
• «One or more causally linked series of challenges in a simulated environment.»^[17]
• «A good game is one that you can win by doing the unexpected and making it work.»^[18]
• «The experience of gameplay is one of interacting with a game design in the performance of cognitive tasks, with a variety of emotions arising from or associated with different elements of motivation, task performance and completion.»^[3]
• «Gameplay here is seen as the interactive gaming process of the player with the game.»^[19]

Playability[edit]

Playability is the ease by which the game can be played or the quantity or duration that a game can be played and is a common measure of the quality of gameplay.^[20] Playability evaluative methods target games to improve design while player experience evaluative methods target players to improve gaming.»^[19] This is not to be confused with the ability to control (or play) characters in multi-character games such as role playing games or fighting games, or factions in real-time strategy games.

Playability is defined as a set of properties that describe the Player Experience using a specific game system whose main objective is to provide enjoyment and entertainment by being credible and satisfying when the player plays alone or in the company of others. Playability is characterized by different attributes and properties to measure the video game player experience.^[21]

• Satisfaction: the degree of gratification or pleasure of the player for completing a video game or some aspect like mechanism, graphics, user interface, story, etc. Satisfaction is a highly subjective attribute that provokes a difficult measuring due to player preferences and pleasures influencing the satisfaction for specific game elements: characters, virtual world, challenges, and so on.
• Learning: the facility to understand and dominate the game system and mechanics (objectives, rules, how to interact with the video game, etc.). The Desktop Systems try to minimize the learning effort, but gamers can use the learning curve in video games according to the game’s nature. For example, on the one hand, gamers can demand great initial abilities before playing, or training them harshly in the first phases of the game, to help players understand and dominate all the game rules and resources and use them from the beginning. On the other hand, players can learn step by step in a guided way when they need some ability in the video game.
• Efficiency: the necessary time and resources to offer fun and entertainment to players while achieving the different game objectives and reaching the final goal. An efficient video game can catch the player’s attention immediately and provoke him to continue playing to the end of the game. Efficiency can be analyzed as the correct use of the challenge through the game, the correct structuring of the objectives or the best adaptation of the control to the actions in the game.
• Immersion: the capacity to believe in the video game contents and integrate the player in the virtual game world. The immersion provokes that the player looks involved in the virtual world, becoming part of this and interacting with it because the user perceives the virtual world represented by the video game, with its laws and rules that characterize it. A video game has a good immersion level when it has equilibrium between the proposed challenges and the necessary player abilities to overcome them.
• Motivation: the characteristics that provoke the player to realize concrete actions and persist in them until their culmination. To obtain a high degree of motivation, the game should have resources to ensure the player’s perseverance in the performed actions to overcome the game challenges. This means providing different factors to ensure positive reception in the interpretation of the game process, keeping the player focused on the proposed challenges, showing the relevance of the objectives to reach, and rewards for challenges to keep the player confident and motivated. The player should feel satisfied after receiving the reward or after completing the challenge.
• Emotion: the involuntary impulse, originated in response to the stimulus of the video game and induces feelings or unleashes automatic reactions and conducts. The use of emotions in video games help to cultivate the best player experience and leads players to different emotional states: happiness, fear, intrigue, curiosity, sadness… using the game challenges, story, aesthetic, appearance, or the music compositions that are capable of affecting the player.
• Socialization: the degree of the game attributes, elements and resources that promote the social factor of the game experience in a group. This kind of experience provokes appreciating the video game differently, thanks to the relations established with other players or with other characters of the game that help the player resolve the game challenges in a collaborative, competitive or cooperative way. The game socialization allows players to have a totally different game experience when they play with other persons and promote new social relationships thanks to their interaction. In addition to this, socialization also is present in how the social connections that players have are projected with the group in the characters of the video game and the context in which the game is realized. For example, choosing the player to be connected or to share something, interacting, obtaining information, asking for help, or negotiating for some items, and how our influence with the other character is positive or negative to achieve the game objectives. To promote the social factor, it is advisable to develop new shared challenges that help players to integrate and being satisfied with the new game rules and objectives, creating a set of collective emotions where players (or characters) encourage and motivate themselves to overcome the collective challenges.

Playability’s facets[edit]

The playability analysis is a very complex process due to the different point of view to analyze the different part of video game architecture. Each facet allows us to identify the different playability’s attributes and properties affected by the different elements of video game architecture.^[22] The playability’s facets are:

• Intrinsic Playability: the playability based on the video game’s nature and how the player shows it. It is strongly related to the gameplay and game mechanics. We can analyze the video game design implementation in this facet, especially video game rules, goals, objectives, rhythm, and other design mechanics.
• Mechanical Playability: the video game quality as a software system. It is related to the Game Engine, with special emphasis, for example, in the fluency of the movie scenes, correct lights, shadows and rendering, sound and music, graphics motions, character personality implementation and communication systems in a multiplayer video game.
• Interactive Playability: player interaction and video game user interface development, for example, interaction dialogue and game controls. This playability is easily visible in the Game Interface.
• Artistic Playability: the quality of the video game arts and aesthetics in the game elements: visual graphics, sound effects, music and melodies, storyline and storytelling and how these elements are shown in the video game.
• Intrapersonal Playability or Personal Playability: the individual vision, perception, and feelings that the video game produces in each player when they play the game. It has a highly subjective value.
• Interpersonal Playability or Social Playability: the group consciousness and different user perceptions when the player plays with other players in a competitive, cooperative or collaborative way.

Finally, a video game’s «global» playability will be deduced through each attribute value in the different playability’s facets. It is crucial to improve the playability in the different facets to guarantee the best player experience when the player plays the video game.

See also[edit]

• Game development and Game design
• Game mechanics
• Interaction design
• Play (activity)
• Time-keeping systems in games
• Video game genres

Footnotes[edit]

References[edit]

Further reading on playability[edit]

• Desurvire, H., Caplan, M., & Toth, J. A. (2004). Using heuristics to evaluate the playability of games. CHI ’04 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems, Vienna, Austria. doi:10.1145/985921.986102
• Fabricatore, C., Nussbaum, M., & Rosas, R. (2002). Playability in video games: a qualitative design model. Human-Computer Interaction, 17(4), 311–368. doi:10.1207/S15327051HCI1704_1
• Jegers, K. (2008). Investigating the Applicability of Usability and Playability Heuristics for Evaluation of Pervasive Games. Internet and Web Applications and Services, 2008. ICIW ’08.
• Korhonen, H., & Koivisto, E. M. I. (2006). Playability heuristics for mobile games. In Proceedings of the 8th Conference on Human-Computer interaction with Mobile Devices and Services (Helsinki, Finland, September 12–15, 2006). MobileHCI ’06, vol. 159. ACM, New York, NY, 9-16. doi: 10.1145/1152215.1152218
• Korhonen H., Koivisto E.M.I. (2007). Playability Heuristics for Mobile Multi-player Games. In proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Digital Interactive Media in Entertainment and Arts, DIMEA 2007, ACM Press (2007), pp. 28–35. Perth, Australia. doi: 10.1145/1306813.1306828
• Nacke, L. (2009). From Playability to a Hierarchical Game Usability Model. In Proceedings of the 2009 Conference on Future Play on @ GDC Canada (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, May 12–13, 2009). FuturePlay ’09. ACM, New York, NY, 11–12. doi: 10.1145/1639601.1639609
• Nacke, L. E., Drachen, A., Kuikkaniemi, K., Niesenhaus, J., Korhonen, H. J., Hoogen, W. M. v. d., et al. (2009). Playability and Player Experience Research. Proceedings of DiGRA 2009: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory, London, UK. (online slides)
• Järvinen, A., Heliö, S. and Mäyrä, F. Communication and Community in Digital Entertainment Services. Prestudy Research Report, Hypermedia Laboratory, University of Tampere, Tampere, 2002.
• González Sánchez, J. L., Zea, N. P., & Gutiérrez, F. L. (2009). From Usability to Playability: Introduction to Player-Centred Video Game Development Process. Proceedings of First International Conference, HCD 2009 (Held as Part of HCI International), San Diego, CA, USA. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-02806-9_9
• González Sánchez, J. L., Zea, N. P., & Gutiérrez, F. L. (2009). Playability: How to Identify the Player Experience in a Video Game. Proceedings of INTERACT 2009: 12th IFIP TC 13 International Conference, Uppsala, Sweden, August 24–28, 2009. doi: 10.1007/978-3-642-03655-2_39
• González Sánchez, J. L., Montero, F., Padilla Zea, N., Gutiérrez, F. L. «Playability as Extension of Quality in Use in Video Games». Proceedings of 2nd International Workshop on the Interplay between Usability Evaluation and Software Development (I-USED), paper number 6.Uppsala, Sweden, 24 August (2009)
• Phillips, Hubert, ed. (1957). Culbertson’s Card Games Complete. Watford: Arco.

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When we go to see comedians or funny movies, they don’t address the wall behind them; they face us. This is why a game’s first job is to entertain through gameplay and secondarily through humor, drama, or other traditional entertainment devices. The humor has to be a gentleman. I mean, it needs to be squeezed in around the game.

Doug TenNapel

PRONUNCIATION OF GAMEPLAY

GRAMMATICAL CATEGORY OF GAMEPLAY

Gameplay is a noun.

WHAT DOES GAMEPLAY MEAN IN ENGLISH?

Definition of gameplay in the English dictionary

The definition of gameplay in the dictionary is the plot of a computer or video game or the way that it is played.

WORDS THAT RHYME WITH GAMEPLAY

TRANSLATION OF GAMEPLAY

Find out the translation of gameplay to 25 languages with our English multilingual translator.

TENDENCIES OF USE OF THE TERM «GAMEPLAY»

The term «gameplay» is very widely used and occupies the 6.887 position in our list of most widely used terms in the English dictionary.

Principal search tendencies and common uses of gameplay

FREQUENCY OF USE OF THE TERM «GAMEPLAY» OVER TIME

6 QUOTES WITH «GAMEPLAY»

Famous quotes and sentences with the word gameplay.

10 ENGLISH BOOKS RELATING TO «GAMEPLAY»

Discover the use of gameplay in the following bibliographical selection. Books relating to gameplay and brief extracts from same to provide context of its use in English literature.

10 NEWS ITEMS WHICH INCLUDE THE TERM «GAMEPLAY»

Find out what the national and international press are talking about and how the term gameplay is used in the context of the following news items.

REFERENCE

« EDUCALINGO. Gameplay [online]. Available <https://educalingo.com/en/dic-en/gameplay>. Apr 2023 ».

Just like fun, gameplay is a word that always felt awkward to me. This is critical for game designers as it is mostly their responsibility, yet there doesn’t seem to be any established definition of it. Dictionaries generally point in different directions and alternatively define gameplay as game content, game plot or as the actions of a player. Specialized literature often goes one step further by noting the emergence of gameplay and describe it as the interplay between the player and the game systems. They generally carry on by describing constitutive elements like challenge, fun and player choice to great benefit, but they always left me disarmed when asked the dreaded question: “Is the gameplay of our game fun?”. I believe that more scrutinization of gameplay as the essential part of a game would be beneficial and could help identify principles and rules that govern it and inform the process of game design.

Etymology to the rescue

To my utter dismay, in addition to being a game designer, I was also born French, and the Latin roots of my mother tongue created even more confusion as game and play translate in the same word: jeu, or juego in Spanish. Thankfully, etymology is of refreshing help as even if game and play both convey the concepts of amusement, pleasure and joy, they also show some interesting distinctions. Game tends to describe the game itself, its rules and physical form. It is also close to gammon, a term used in backgammon and that can also substitute for that game’s name. On the other hand, play is more often linked to dance, spring, act freely and typically describes the activity of participating in a game. This starts to make more sense for a designer as we understand a game as the ensemble of its rules and its physical boundaries, whether it be a game board or the lines that delimit a football field, while play is actually the actions of players within the limits of the game.

Structure and variation

So gameplay would be the alliance of structure and of variation within its boundaries? This sounds right, as the difference between a game and a toy is precisely the presence of rules that structure play in the former while the latter imposes no restriction. But it is also interesting to look at another use of the word play: The door plays on its hinges. Mechanisms require a little clearance between the teeth of cogs to function. Some freedom is needed so they can play within the structure and operate. But isn’t this the case for all structures? A political system establishes boundaries but needs to leave some freedom to its citizens or they would feel too restricted and oppose such control. The universe itself is always in flux between order and chaos and the exploration of the extremes is rather telling. One of the higher states of order of the matter is the crystalline network. The atoms in these gems are highly organized and tightly aligned while variability and freedom is almost nonexistent. On the other end of the spectrum, when structure is minimal and variation is extreme, we find particles floating in suspension, like a soup, where the Brownian movement of particles doesn’t follow any definable pattern. The commonality of these two extremes is that none of them can actually harbor life. A living cell enforces structure through its membrane and internal organization but it also allows for molecular movement or it wouldn’t function properly. The cell is in state of structured flux, just like walking is a state of sustained unbalance. Similarly, a game restricts the possible behaviours through the structure of its rules, but still allows for enough variability for the players to select their own moves. A game that is too directive wouldn’t allow for any uncertainty and wouldn’t incidentally be any fun.

Also read: Fun and uncertainty – Uncertainty is the key ingredient of fun.

The universe around us is organized and the most obvious examples of it are the repetitive patterns of nature. From planets revolving and orbiting, to the tides and seasons on Earth, cycles are everywhere, and it only seems natural that living cells also had to follow the same type of timely organization with one of their most essential activities: cellular division. In his book, A Theory of Fun for Game Design (2004), Raph Koster described at length how the human brain is attuned to patterns and how this impacts the way we enjoy games. The universe is structured by patterns, cycles and rules, but they are so numerous and deeply intertwined that it is impossible for us to comprehend it as a whole. We can only understand it through deconstruction. By using abstraction, we simplify phenomena and analyze them in isolation. By removing parts of the whole to better decipher them, we turn them into symbols, we “grok” them as Koster (after Heinlein) says. Symbols are our tools to see through the maddening complexity of reality, the noise, understand its inner working, and interact with it.

Gameplay as a symbolic system

The way we create abstractions of reality is by using organized symbolic systems like language and mathematics. If we look at them from the perspective of structure and variation we can try to draw comparisons with gameplay. Firstly, symbolic systems operate under the constraints of high level principles that direct their use. Language for instance is structured by rules such as syntax and semantics. If those rules aren’t respected, and the symbolism isn’t shared, then its value becomes greatly diminished as the message will be harder to decode on the receiving end. Similarly, any mathematical reasoning must abide by the laws of logic or be totally futile. As an intellectual construction, we can define our own governing principles to structure the functioning of our symbolic system and shape the domain of abstraction we want to work in. For instance, Euclid stated for his geometry a series of axioms that he based his study on. He could then prove a series of theorems that derived from them. But geometries based on different axioms are possible. Change the initial postulates, change the shape of the abstraction, and you will be able to develop different theorems that function within this new system. This is akin to the difference between different programming languages, they all define a rigid framework, each with its specific function. Music functions in the same way as each musical genre defines its own harmonic scale. At the highest level, symbolic systems rely on the definition of structuring principles. They shape and organize the resulting space of abstraction, as the modification of those rules transforms the symbolic tool as well as its field of application.

Furthermore, the actual content that we create when we use these symbolic systems is akin to defining more explicit norms. A program defines how a computer is to behave, a sentence is generally codified to enforce a specific meaning to be transmitted, a melody is one fixed series of notes among all the options allowed by a given harmonic scale. These gems of meaning are ordered elements in the vast space of possibility shaped by the high level principles. Symbolic systems are organized as a layered alternation of normative principles that define a space of possible options, variation within the structure.

Lastly, it is also notable that symbolic systems allow for norm-bending. Poetry, for example, can twist the conventions of language and play with its rigid limits. Similarly, musicians can be expressive in how they work with harmony as they can follow it exactly by using a major scale, or stray slightly away from the established norm by using a minor scale. Harmonic modulation, or the slight modification of the tonal key, induces a harmonic tension that finds resolution as the tune goes back to consonance. Again, structured play demonstrates balance between structure and variation, the establishment of norms and sometimes their challenge.

Games appear to me in a very similar fashion. The rules become the norms that restrict player behaviour, but should also give him enough leeway for him to express choices and actually learn about the problem he is facing through interaction. These restrictions are not so much limitative but instead propose abstracted problems to offer a clear challenge and allow players to learn to provide adapted solutions. Gameplay is the result of that norm that structures the variations in player behaviour. This leads me to propose this definition.

Gameplay: A symbolic representation of a problem that structures a space of possibilities to allow for the research and evaluation of solutions.

But if gameplay shares the same functional basis as these other symbolic structures that define local norms while respecting their own intrinsic rules and principles, it might mean that gameplay also comes with its own set of meta-principles that would actually help us design games! This is what we’ll explore in the second part of this article.

Also read: Understanding Gameplay – Part Two: Technique – Learn how to use this definition to create gameplay.