I think your friend is wrong, but turn-based games do irritate the hell out of me. With the exception of chess, perhaps. It ruins any suspension of disbelief I managed to muster about a game.

In real life, there are only so many things that freeze and wait until you respond. Things like the ticket processors in your local overcrowded movieplex. Things like vending machines. But the entire world, filled with life and movement, certainly never freezes at once, waiting until you click Yes, No, Maybe.

... however I'm okay with a game which only has parts that are turn-based, as in, turn-based combat in a world that otherwise gives the impression of being realtime and alive.

Gameplay, hmmm? I would define it thusly: The interactive experience arising from the participation in a game, where "game" is defined as the excercise of determining a victor*.

*Though I must admit, to my chagrin, that the word "victor" is of itself meaningless outside the context of "game", ie it sounds a bit circular to me.

My definition of "game" is as follows, if you tell me your definition and I don't want to strangle you, it's good.

Colin loses, you win!

Does Colin ever mess with you? I'm desperately trying to believe there aren't people that misinformed alive today.

I mean Chess is turn based, how could you think Chess doesn't have "gameplay".

*shakes fist*

It appears as if you're putting all (video?) gaming into either a turn-based or an "action now" category. What about adventures or interactive fiction? They're not really turn based (at least as I would define such--it's not like there's an opponent that gets its turn between your "moves") and it's just like the action games in that something happens each time you click the mouse or enter the next command to parse except that it'll wait essentially indefinitely for your input.

I do seem to recall that in the Discworld adventure games, Rincewind would start looking bored and eventually start knocking on "the glass from inside your monitor" if you left it running untouched long enough.

I really appreciate this aspect of these games, as it allows me to be interrupted and deal with "real life" as needed without having to pause
things in the middle of some twitchy fight or jumping sequence, assuming that the game even gives you the option of pausing.

Oh, as well.

Whew, long post...

This is sort of along the lines of what Katerin mentioned, but I always thought the term "gameplay," at least in common usage as it applies to video games, is meant to refer to the more mechanical, rule-based aspects of a game. In other words, those aspects that define the parameters for player participation and interaction with the game, and the conditions under which the desired goal is achieved.

Every game comes with a set of rules. They're easy enough to describe in a turn-based RPG, for example, where all sorts of attributes and abilities can be described in simple mathematical terms and there are fairly set patterns for engaging in combat, etc. In a game like Halo, though, where AI scripts and other obscure bits of code play out in complex 3D environments, it's more difficult. You can talk about how high the character can jump, how fast he can move, how powerful the weapons are, etc, but because the game's rules - the gameplay - isn't communicated as easily in strictly numerical terms or other simple means, gamers are often reduced to describing the gameplay in terms of "feel."

Gameplay can exist independent of a game's artistic elements. Space Invaders could be remade as a next-gen 2D army shooter, where instead of downward-drifting pixellated aliens the enemies are realistic-looking military units marching sideways and forward across a battlefield, accompanied by a rousing musical score and realistic sound effects. The set of rules governing player and enemy movement, the playing field, projectile damage, etc. (the gameplay) could remain exactly the same, while the underlying premise and art design would be completely different.

In other cases, the artistic elements are inseparable from gameplay, or at very least serve to inform or add essential context to the game's rules of interaction. Take Shadow of the Colossus, for example, where your character must locate Colossi by holding a sword to the sun and moving it about so the reflected light focuses to a point, indicating the direction you must take. As the beam focuses, it intensifies in brightness, the accompanying sound effect changes in pitch, and the controller begins to vibrate. It's an unusual, beautiful effect, where the aesthetic qualities of the experience also provide critical feedback to the player according to carefully designed rules of interaction.

True gameplay innovation is difficult to achieve, because it involves changing the underlying rules in ways that may or may not be welcomed by the player. It's much easier to apply different artistic or thematic sensibilities to tried and true formulas, tweaking them a bit. Games that successfully merge fresh gameplay with unusual artistic and thematic elements (like Katamari Damacy, for example)are few and far between.

On the definition of game: If it's an interactive experience (whether with an AI opponent or another person or even an inanimate object like a deck of cards) that involves a set of rules, and it includes some sort of achievable goal or obtainable reward, it could probably be considered a game. If it involves some sort of electronic display, it's a video game, like you said.

With regard to your friend, he doesn't know what he's talking about when he says turn-based games have no "gameplay." They just don't have the kind of gameplay he likes.

I think Fly and I are linked at the brainstem or something.

Well, at least this wasn't the discussion of "sport vs game". Oh, I used to hate those arguments. There were actually people on my college track team who one minute would admit to earning an "athletic scholarship" and the next denounce track as "not being a sport". No, I would say, it is a sport. It's not a game. They can be mutually exclusive (chess being a game and not a sport -- uh oh, I went there).

But back onto the topic at hand, I think Robear hit on the head. There is no difference between Civilization and Max Payne, Diablo, or Gran Turismo. All that differs is the pace at which you are forced to make those decisions. It's like playing a boardgame that has an egg-timer. Some games have egg-timers that are 30 seconds, some are 60 seconds. And then there are households where people throw out the egg timer and play at their leisure. Is Risk not a game because it doesn't come with an hourglass?

Maybe you're right; maybe turn-based games and real-time games are only trivially different, or even exactly the same in this regard (although, if that is the case, why do we feel so strongly and commonly inclined to differentiate between them?). But this only addresses half of the problem that is vexing me. If we are to settle upon an account of gameplay, then we must also be able to articulate why it is that game-playing (whether real-time or turn-based or both) is distinct from other activities, such as food-eating, snow-shoveling, or web-surfing. For it seems to me that when I surf the web, I also go through a period of previsualization, guesswork (or, if you like, expectation -- more specifically, inductive inference), and then observation. And so it would seem with a huge range of other daily activities that aren't often lumped together with the playing of games.

I think that the only easy way out of Wittgenstein's conundrum is to embrace circular reasoning, and I just hate to do that.

Katerin: If you're curious about the Wittgenstein vs. Popper poker incident, I think you'd enjoy the book Wittgenstein's Poker. It's moreso a work of historical biography than of philosophy, but it's fun, careful, and thorough.

The Matrix was turn-based ? Me no get what you say.

The difference I think is in how we react to it. How much time between turns determines how much thought, effort and skill we can use to affect the outcome of each turn. Turn based also has the advantage of letting the user set the time taken between turns. Which probably has alot to do with our personal preference.

Game: n. An act meant to induce pleasure in another human being; a substitute for masturbation.

Ex: I got tired of porn, so I played a game.

Does this mean that you don't tire of porn games?

Neo was able to do all of his cool moves not because he moved or thought faster in time relative to himself but because he moved and thought faster in time relative to those around him. In that way we are like Neo whilst playing turn-based games.

There is something to be said for twitch-based gameplay, but that's just one trick that the video game pony knows. I think a seasoned gamer can enjoy many different forms of gaming, all of which have "Gameplay" much like a music lover enjoys many different forms of music.

Colin seems to have touched on the semantics for the word gameplay. I think his implied definition of gameplay was out of the realm of the common understanding for that word. Sounds like he unintentionally admitted to fudging the definition of gameplay by feeling the need to resort to thumb wiggling as a means of clarification.

Perhaps in the future if someone doesn't understand what I mean when I obliquely refer to my gender, I'll wiggle my genitals at them.

Is Lobo referring to Colin Powell?

"But this is not ignorance. We do not know the boundaries because none have been drawn. To repeat, we can draw a boundary -- for a special purpose. Does it take that to make the concept usable? Not at all! ... One might say that the concept 'game' is a concept with blurred edges. -- "But is a blurred concept a concept at all?" -- Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn't the indistinct one often exactly what we need?"

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, # 70-71

this is one of those questions/subjects in life in which the 'answer' (although technically one which will always be simply an opinion - i.e. worthless to all but the holder) is worth but a mere grain of sand in comparison to the efforts/resources extended in the pursuit of said answer, especially since it won't change anyone's opinion anyway.

some battles in life are not worth fighting if one's general goal is 'progress' of any kind.

i.e., this discussion is something worthy of the U.S. government and the politicians/ingrates hiding under her skirt.