What's in the name "video game"

How about digital crack?

the PLAYSTATION industry

lets face it, in ONE YEAR the 360 will have put M$ out of business, people will have finally wised up and installed Linux on their pc's and nintendo will be making games for the PS3!

endof

and the psp's already ass raping the DS like a donkey in a hedge

sony PWN the world

The industry will not change what we call video games. The public will. Computer manufacturers are trying to sell us 'notebook computers' but we still ask for laptops. A 'Sidekick' and a 'Helio' are both still cell phones, no matter what the commercials say. Video games will still be video games until we're ready to call them something else, and not because the people making them slap a new arbitrary label on them.

What could you say besides "the Video game industry"? There are not too many other terms synonymous to Video games unless something is made up. Even a google search of "Synonym Game" or "Games" comes up with search results leading you to word games.

When speaking of the Movie industry people often say Hollywood - maybe what we need is a central location with a name that could become synonymous to the industry - though I must admit, I don't have any suggestions....

I think a new term might be helpful, but until gaming truly goes mainstream, video games will always be seen by non-gamers as childish.

I'm glad I'm not the only one who feels this way. I personally can't come up with a good alternative name, but the example ones seem good enough. Either way, 'video game' has always felt really tacky to me, and I'd be more than happy to see it change.

Thank you Kendrick, you have put it best.

This theory is hairbrained in the same vein that people thought changing the term 'retarded' to 'mentally challenged' would change the sting of the stigma.

'murder simulators' has a nice ring to it

LOL @ Dave.

(I'm assuming you were trying to be funny)

Video games fall under the umbrella of what's been tendered as 'interactive media'. I think it will sooner or later videogames will be frequently billed as interactive entertainment

The biggest challenge the games industry faces is making good games. Businessmen may hope a "re-branding" will sell more product (no worries as to whether that product is any good), but to blame the name seems silly to me. Over time, good games will change the way people think when they use the term "video game." What kinda crap name is "movies"? Yet that term has stuck and isn't seen as limiting the appeal of film.

#4 is right, this is just marketing BS, a comic book is a comic book not a graphic novel, and toilet paper is toilet paper not bathroom tissue.

HeWhoShallNotBeNamed: Darn, you beat me to it! XP

Electronic entertainment seems pretty good.

But I dont see a problem with video games. Las Vegas is not worried about being called the gaming industry. I have noticed that video games have been moving closer to hollywood, as the whole world is moving away from passive screen-staring to interacting. So maybe eventually hollywood and video games will merge images and become "screen games" or "movie games" or "interactive movies".

Ahh, video games will do. Labels, labels ...
sticks and stones, you know.

As an educator who supports the use of "video games" in education, I think the term still works. Granted some games are above and beyond the "game" title and into experiences/art, but the term implies enjoyment and accessibility. "Entertainment software" implies a learning curve. A game is something that can be picked up and enjoyed by anyone. Granted everyone gets something different out of each game, but the same is true for the variety of board, game, physical games.

Yes, if there is a change it will come from the public, not the industry. But I think we will have an easier time showing people the educational and artistic applications to "video games" rather than just hoping a name change results in a change of mindset.

Is Poker not a game? Nuff said. And to those who say the term "Video Game" is negative, they already have a different name for what they play: "simulators"!

I say just keep the title 'video game'. It's a new genre that isn't going away anytime soon (my retirement home better have at least a ps3 in it!). Talk like this from the suits up in the corporate towers is such BS. How can you say a billion dollar a year industry has an image problem??

"Then again, terms like "graphic novel" and "cinema" probably sounded a little clunky before they came into common usage to describe the serious side of comics and movies, respectively."

The first thing i got in my mind was "Action figure" ...

The term video "GAMES" is bad for the industry says an executive at the company that makes the "PLAY"station...

Nice.

Let's see. Football GAMES. Baketball GAMES. Olympic GAMES. These aren't childish games, so what does the word GAMES have to do with it?????

Comstock, the point of changing the label is to attract a new audience to the product. People who dont want to play games because they are "mateur adults" are more likely to look at interactive media or some other mature-sounding label for the same thing.

Using a different moniker just dodges the issue, which is the image problem with video games. It's a copout alternative that would be neither accepted nor efficacious.

Calling wreslting "combative acrobatics" wouldn't change what it is or its reputations.

It would behoove the gaming industry to be pro-active about changing their image (i.e. educating parents/consumers about gaming, partnering with politicians and advocacy groups rather than fighting them) rather than attempt to fool the public by means of a simple name swapping. And the image isn't only that it's childish, but also destructive to our youth and influential on people's behaviour.

Change the game, not the name.

A rose by any other name would still cost $60 ($99 in the UK.) That is our biggest challenge

The simple reason video games is still so unaccepted is that it's not accessible to the individual. That is, no one can simply start making a video game in their spare time. Anyone can write a book, anyone can record a song and anyone can buy a camera and film a "movie."

The name is not as big as a problem as the current state of the media is. When people can start making their own video games easily and use it as a medium of personal expression, video games will become more widely accepted and less "feared."

This is the same interview in which he claims that Sony is charging you $600 for an ultrapowerful system but no one will ever use 100% of its capacity, right?

As a comics reader, movie watcher and video game player, I've always thought "Films" and "Graphic Novels" were much more telling about the person calling them that than the mediums themselves. Same with games. Don't piss on me and tell me it's raining (Sony have brought pee-rain to a new level, this gen around).

We should start to call video games Wii-tainment!

I don't really have a problem with video games. People think of poker, basketball, and chess as games, and no one thinks those are solely for kids.

My biggest grip would be with the "video" part of the name. It's pretty easy to imagine some sort of electronic game that uses only sound for output. Would this still be called a video game? I'd rather call them electronic games or something.

Or you could go way out in left field and call them something like "Actives" or go Latin and call them "Luduses" or something else "Lud-blah".

I think rebranding comic books "graphic novels" only worked because it was a complete diversion from the campy nature of comic book tone at the time. Same thing has to be done with video games. If you make games that are exclusively aimed at adults, maybe repackage the video game in a book or even a graphic novel (!) that drives the story further than "get revenge, kill x, save the princess, save the world". Games like Indigo Prophecy. Or games that aren't based so much on "skill" of the player (counter-intuitive for games, i know), because many older gamers don't have the dexterity for many video games (why the Wii is so popular among all ages). Even the return of "adventure" games such as Monkey Island, with comedy and anybody could play it without being punished for not clicking the mouse at the exact right time.

I really think Nintedo is on the right track, even if they didn't get it all right. They are still making games for kids, but they are at least Approaching the problem, rather than "making things shinier".

I think this is a serious issue, and yes, it does mean something to say "cinema" over "movies". Different levels or registers of perceived content or quality are important to buyers. You can bet there is a reason people buy "Mr. Clean" over "Shope Rite Kitchen General Cleaner" even if they are the same chemical.

Of course, as pointed out, the industry cannot FORCE acceptance of a new label, even if they have a genius one. I sure can't think of one. Maybe something with "app" in it. who knows. "Immersive Application" or something.

Ultimately this will happen. Just like anime people don't want it called "cartoons", or LARPers don't want it called "playing pretend" or whatever. There is a perceived difference in the words "animation" and "cartoon", even if technically it does not exist. You can bet that ads saying "BUY THE LIMITED EDITION COWBOY BEBOP CARTOON SET HERE" would not pull the same buyers as something *aiming high*

Just look at the difference it made that the film "Snakes on a Plane" kept its name. Or the outcry of fans when "Revolution" became "Wii". People care about product image.

Funny you should mention "graphic novel", because I despise that term. I mean, in its original conception as a reference to presentation (long, unserialized, containing neither ads nor staples), it's all right, but in its modern usage it's a term that elitists use to try and tell us that, say, Sin City is better than Ditko-era Spider-Man.

I call movies movies, and I call comic books comic books. You can jabber on about "interactive entertainment" all you like, but my sincere opinion is that people who use euphemisms like that sound like assholes.

The difference between "Cinema" and "Graphic Novel" is that they don't sound clunky at all. Quite frankly I'll always call them movies and comic books (or manga), but the thought of calling them by their PC terms doesn't make me wanna wretch.

"Interactive Software" is kinda like when people say that people aren't "Handicapped", they're "Differently Abled". Or the same way that it's actually contraversial to wish someone a "Merry Christmas" this time of year. It's one of those PC terms that just went way over-board and started treading in areas that didn't need to be PC'd.

Chess is a game, yet it has a renouned respect over the entire globe. Magic the Gathering makes no effort to cover-up it's status as a game, marketing itself as a "Collectable Card Game", and there's tournements every year with fairly large cash rewards. I doubt anyone's made a living off of MTG, but 50,000 or higher (not sure what they're at these days) is definately nothing to sneeze at.

The problem video games has isn't in the name. The problem lies in polititians and other people who get too much camera time bashing on them and claiming they can lead to violence. The general public does little to no research on things, so when they see someone on TV trashing on games, they assume 2 things:

1. He's on TV, so he's someone important.

2. He's on TV, so he must know what he's talking about.

Once we get more people on TV saying that gaming can be a very healthy hobby, then games will stop getting put in such a negative light.

Any number of ways to dissect this etymologically. "Videogame" is, of course, a holdover from the 1970s, when the idea that you could control objects on a television screen was pretty fantastical. The focus was on the repurposing of a formerly one-way medium into an interactive one; that was the required perceptional adjustment to convince people to introduce a computer into their homes -- a laughably daft idea 30 years ago. Atari had to push the idea that this was an easy-to-use consumer product, just an extension of your TV. Similarly, in arcades, games were promoted as easy-to-understand interfaces that were worth approaching; so again, the familiarity of TV was invoked.

This culminated in the original name of the first console heavyweight: Atari VCS, or Video Computer System (later the 2600).

So, we ended up with "video". Which, by itself, doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I ran into that recently, when I read about games designed for blind players. Obviously, it's a stretch to call games that function via audio cues and motion-sensitive stimulae as "video" games...

Are we ready for a rebranding now? We're still talking about gaming experience, after all, even if the complexity and structures are well beyond kids' play. And while the "video" was over-emphasized from the start, the fact remains that most gaming requires visual interaction.

If anything, the best option might be "digital gaming", or even a very generic "digital" as a shorthand. But it's probably an uphill climb.

I've definitely thought the same thing from time to time, that video-games is always going to have a juvenile ring to it.

I feel like this is nothing but pointless semantics. At the end of the day, no matter how pretentious executives want to be about the buisiness they're a part of, "video games" is still the most appropriate term. Just as a "board game" is a game whose foundation centers around a board, video games are games, that center around video. You know, nobody considers chess to be only a kid's toy even though some other board games include, say, Chutes and Ladders or Mousetrap. Video games will appeal to adults when they try to capture truly adult interests, when they won't be all "cops-and-robbers" games based around thug life or alien invasions. We need more Tetrises, more Civilizations, more Sim Cities, more Brain Ages, not more Gears of Wars (no matter how much blood and gore it might contain), or else we'll forever and righteously be considered an industry of overgrown teenagers.

haha, don't spit on my donut and tell me its frosting... very good analogy...

Err...the cinema comparison makes no sense. Cinema wasn't a term contrived to replace "movies" or to give films a more serious tone. It has that connotation today, sure, but the word was around very early on just like films, movies, motion pictures and picture shows. It comes from the 1890 invention the cinematograph. If anything, movies is a replacement of cinema. Both just happen to remain in use.

"A rose by any other name would still cost $60 ($99 in the UK.) That is our biggest challenge"

I agree... The reasoning given for high prices is that it costs $20M or more to develop the games... but movies cost upwards of $150M for big budget and the DVD in the end still only costs $15-20

As for the name, who cares? "Video games" is the term we have all used since our childhood (or before some of you were born), so there is no way we as a whole will suddenly change what we call them.

If they want to sell more games, make them cost $20.... I know a lot more titles would be sold...

People still:
-confuse PowerPCs as Windows machines
-refer to Palm Pilots as ALL Palm PDAs, and some even confuse them with Windows Mobile/PPCs
-refer to Windows boxes as IBM compatables.
-PPC as all M$ handhelds running Windows Mobile even though it only refers to WM2003

I can think of one example of a video game that doesn't have any video component. Warp Studio's 'Real Sound' for the Sega Saturn was a completely auditory experience, a sort of interactive novel that required the controller for input but otherwise had only voice and sound as output. Lacking the video portion of the formula, would it still be a video game just because it runs on a game console?

Yes, we are arguing about semantics. But as others have already stated, maybe it's worth weighing the value of separating video games from other games. Of course, then we'll end up banning chess in the United States for fear of inspiring regicide among our schoolchildren.

As soon as video games stop requiring video to play, we can call them something else, like "virtual reality games" or "neuro games" or "Nintendo games" (which would be a huge jump backwards in time, who remembers that?).

I assume that as time goes by there will be more and more older gamers (common sense right?) and then it will be seen as less "Kiddie"

You folks aren't very productive.
My suggestions:
Interactive Cinema
Graphic Games
Electronic Art

Actually we just need to invent a word, preferably french, like cinema (which it turns out is a shorted word like auto and automobile).

Machina
vames/vaming (short for videogaming)
eart
gaming (no, that will never catch on)
Tgames (short for TV games)

At this point, shouldn't videogames just be games and Monopoly and its ilk be referred to as physical games? Or just label them board or card games, and let videogames be games?

""cinema" probably sounded a little clunky before they came into common usage to describe the serious side of comics and movies, respectively."

Just fyi, "cinema" has been in common usage since the early 1900's. It was first coined in the 1890's, when motion picture film was invented. It is actually older than the word "movie".

Its etymology is French, but as so much of the film world originated in France, the word "cinema" has pretty much always been used to describe film as a whole - and not just its "serious" side. It originally referred to a movie house specifically, as in "I'm going to the cinema", but that led to a pretty natural progression in usage pretty quickly. It never referred to any subset of serious films, and it still doesn't.

and btw, the word "graphic novel" doesn't have anything to do with how serious the novel in question is either... it's simply a long-form comic.

So yeah, neither comparison is really valid here...

Keep it simple, stupid.

GAMES. period. maybe digital games?

Why bother?

The cool thing in my language is that we ALREADY have a term for the most serious part of videogaming. We use the adjective "videoludic", and the specialized press uses it widely when talking exactly about what you are referring to.

We have videoludic entertainment. Isn't it good enough?

Let's just do what a lot of older people do and call everything Nintendo, regardless of brand.

Example:
"Yep, I picked up the new Nintendo. You know, the black one with blu-ray thingy in it. Been letting my son practice murdering innocent cops on it. He's getting really good; he got up to 5 stars the other day using only a flamethrower."

The problem with the term "Video Games" is not about the "only for kids" perception, but that "can't be meaningful" perception. This is a perception that is not shared with books or movies.

Well, i think the industry is already trying to force a change, look at 2 of the big threes full titles (i don't know the 360's full title, so help me out with this one)

Wii Nintendo Entertainment System
Sony Playstation 3 Computer Entertainment System

See "Video game" anywhere in there?

But a rebranding is what saved the video game industry initially, which was why the NES was the NES and not the NVGS (nintendo video game system), and (aside from the new controller), calling it an Entertainment system was the best thing they could have done. But in time the same bad press that used to plague the world of video games reemerged, with people bashing titles like GTA, sure the industry is not in any real trouble, but a facelift couldn't hurt