Messages

You clearly have never considered the definition of a game.

I have. I don't agree either with your definition or with your analysis.

And you're working from the assumption that there is one definition that will cleanly separate games from non-games. This strikes me as an unreasonable assumption.

Here's something that grinds my gears. The fact that people consider Snakes and Ladders (or Chutes and Ladders to some) to be a board game.
Does it require a board? Yes. Is it a game? Not... at... all!
It would be easy to make Snakes and Ladders into an actual game, but with the default rules, it is not a game, and I can prove it.

The other day on Twitter, some game designer posted the argument for why Candyland (which is similarly "on rails"â€"even more so than Snakes and Ladders, since the outcome is decided in advance by shuffling a deck of cards) is not just a game, but a great game for its target audience. The relevant part for this discussion (partly from the replies) is:

• Aren't we past this notion of what "games" are? "Walking simulators" are widely accepted as games, for example.
• For young children, there is interactivity and challenge, because they have to (in Snakes and Ladders):
  
  
  
  • take turns, waiting for their turn (patience, following rules)
  • throw the dice (physical coordination)
  • count the number of pips (numeracy)
  • and move the piece the corresponding number of spaces (memory, numeracy, coordination)

Also, kids (and many adults) are superstitious, and therefore strain to affect the dice mentally (which, in turn, requires them to be able to predict which outcomes will be good and which will be bad, another aspect of numeracy). Even if it doesn't actually work, they have a subjective impression of agency.

Besides, you could make a very similar argument about for example Roulette: you have options, but they are meaninglessâ€"it doesn't matter a damn which number you choose to bet on (or red/black or any of the other types of bet), since it's all random anyway… and statistically speaking you're going to lose.

And as for your "a computer could do it all for you"â€"sure, but then again, a sufficiently advanced computer could auto-click its way through any adventure game (without deaths or dead ends), or play a guaranteed-to-be-perfect game of chess.

[The Box of Delights]

Well, this is definitely not it (the aspect ratio is all wrong, for one thing), but the last screen made me think of The Box of Delights.

It's always a pleasure to catch up with this thread and discover awesome stuff.

Radio Radio's chiac in Dekshoo is as cool and incomprehensible as this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wr0QIXaoSY

It's a really fun one. That version is actually a cover, with the original by Adriano Celentano:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VsmF9m_Nt8

Yup

You are both right.

So it's a (current) BBC show with a bunch of ghosts, it's funny (well, it's a comedy, and I think it's fairly amusing, anyway), and one of the actors is Simon Farnaby…
Time for someone to get it, surely?

It's not Ghost Whisperer, but you are both right in your perceptions.



I thought somebody would have seen the show or recognize some of the actors, but even if you haven't, it's fairly googleable from what you know.

Not that either. You are partly right with some of the guesses about explanations for the discrepancy, though you're missing a major one.

Nope.

I should perhaps reveal that the guy seen in almost all the screens so far is not actually a major character on the show. Here we see more of the actual main cast:

I don't know if it could be, but it isn't.

Nope, not The Great either.

Hah! That was what I was trying to trick you into guessing. 

Though I thought it might take this screen to do it:

Back to something more… contemporary?

Monarch: The Big Bear of Tallac

It occurred to me that it resembled the Heidi anime, so I figured out it must be one of the World Masterpiece Theater productions by Nippon Animation. Edit: Actually it turns out I read the Wikipedia article wrong, and this was never part of that series, but it did the trick. (I didn't watch any of these shows as a child, but I was a big fan of Dogtanian from the same studio.)

It does look very familiar, but it's not something I can remember the name of.

I haven't had time to do more than dip into those albums, CW, but I like the sound.
Boney M and Shirley Bassey too (almost goes without saying!).

Here's a song that always cracks me up. I guess it's meant to be sad(?) — but it's so absurdly over the top it just makes me feel happy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ELnhjGw4Zs
Another one that I can't quite take seriously:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcq5NlYz1PU

"Jesus Christ, I'm so blue all the time/  That's just how I feel / Always have and always will" ... It's all a bit too on the nose.
Bridgers' song doesn't have the jauntiness of O'Sullivan's, though, so it doesn't cheer me up the same way.

[Hannibal]

Yes, the show was called Hannibal. Which was also the first show featured in this thread, back on page 1.

CBS has just announced a new show called Clarice, which will follow Jody Foster's character from the movie.

Interestingly, the TV rights to Thomas Harris's books and characters ended up being split, so that NBC's Hannibal had the rights to use Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham (from Manhunter/Red Dragon) and most other characters/stories, but not anything that originally came from Silence of the Lambs, like Clarice Starling or Buffalo Bill. (They created close approximations as stand-ins instead.) And now Clarice won't be allowed to use Hannibal Lecter or anything from the other books.

No, not AHS:

Alright, to continue the king of limbs theme:



(These screens are not all from the same episode, BTW.)

Nope. We've had this one before, actually…