this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2024
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Stubsack: weekly thread for sneers not worth an entire post, week ending Sunday 1 September 2024 (awful.systems)
submitted 2 months ago by gerikson@awful.systems to c/techtakes@awful.systems
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[–] sailor_sega_saturn@awful.systems 12 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

The paper starts with a weirdly bad definition of "computer game" too. It almost makes me think that (gasp) the paper was written by non-gamers.

Computer games are manually crafted software systems centered around the following game loop: (1) gather user inputs, (2) update the game state, and (3) render it to screen pixels. This game loop, running at high frame rates, creates the illusion of an interactive virtual world for the player.

No rendering: Myst

No frame rate: Zork

No pixels: Asteroids

No virtual world: Wordle

No screen: Soundvoyager, Audio Defense (well these examples have a vestigial screen, but they supposedly don't really need it)

[–] Soyweiser@awful.systems 10 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Excel is a game.

[–] self@awful.systems 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

things that are games:

  • the control circuitry for a $1 solar-powered calculator
  • my car
  • X11

things that aren’t games:

  • pinball, unless it has an electronic score display
  • Quake-style dedicated servers
  • rogue (nethack)
[–] bitofhope@awful.systems 9 points 2 months ago

More computer games:

  • web browsers
  • stock market trackers
  • election watch

More computer non-games:

  • hangman on a paper teletype
  • ARGs
  • anything on the Vectrex