I know this is a little late, but here are the notes I took-

Oren doesn’t like the player attachment argument.
Charles doesn’t like the valorization of outcome argument.
Frank brings up the idea that it is required for a good game, and if its not a good game it wont be made.
Charles agrees with frank that there are experiences that are more or less game like.
Robert asks if playing house would be a game.
Charles thinks it would be a game, in Rules of Play reader there is an article about the games following rules.
Robert asks if a game wouldn’t be an artifact.
Charles says that games don’t have a particular medium, so you have to look at the way humans approach it, by dumping it into artificats.
Frank says we shouldn’t define games as a particular category, along film, theatre, art, because it doesn’t sit along that line.
Charles asks about cross platform ones, ex. Performance art. There will always be a huge spectrum that games fall along.
Frank wants to know what is at stake. It’s a pratical issue to see how culture looks at games. How do we approach games in a practical way. Games clearly are a form of aesthetic object, just like poetry film, blah blah blah. Charles maybe floating the idea that they are hybrid form, but frank doesn’t like that, because that’s how they have been looked at, but they are not hybrid. Its hard to understand games and things that came before games. Like figuring out how NYU approaches video games, and some like the hybrid nature, following other departments.
Charles thinks gameness should be studied in a vacuum, because they are a hybrid.
Frank disagrees thinking you should look at others too.
Kunal thinks this is right on to start thinking about games. You have to buy into games for it to exist, like you buy into candyland. Will Wright proves you can stretch the quantifiable and it still is a game. What game don’t you have to be attached to for it to still be a game?
Josh was thinking that anything can be a game according to this.
Lea says my favorite is traffic is not a game. These are just wide categories that can hold too many games. The definition is very practical. This is a quick little section in the diagram.
Oren says you can remove the attachment from the diagram and it will still work as a diagram.
Frank brings up Avedon and Sutton who mention disequilibria outcome.
Kunal brings up the guy who just talks in Counter Strike as opposed to shooting people. That can ruin the game.
Charles said the definition must apply to good and bad games, not just good games.
Charles brings up a diagram which he made about the article, giving 4 examples that Juul didn’t talk about.
Oren said Solitaire doesn’t have real attachment.
Everyone disagrees.
Charles brings up the idea of playing a game badly stop it from being a game.
Frank talks about how people play solitaire all the time to win. Everyone would rather win then lose. People desire to win, if you don’t have desire it doesn’t go.
Frank brings up Will Wright who is considered the preeminent game designer and his games don’t fill the definitions. He considers them toys or tools, even simulations.
Robert talks about how these people are trying to make a space for games to really be studied.
Frank talks about people who would disagree with the idea of looking of games as winning and losing conditions. Frank thinks these people are wrong because win conditions and loss conditions are very important. Because masterpieces really on these properties to be games, and the playful interactivity is more of a surface model. Playing space marines is very different from starcraft. Frank is drawing some model on the board comparing the two by depth and surface levels.
Charles is arguing the depth of starcraft vs simcity.
Frank asks if I spend 6 months painting my warhammer 40k figurines, am I playing warhammer?
Charles is saying they are both deep systems, even though they are different. You are playing the game when trying to model your city.
Oren offers to take Will Wright out of the equation as he is a simulation designer.
Frank brings up Starcraft visualization images. Starcraft at its deepest level looks like this rather than monsters and space marines running around that makes it a quintessential game. This is what it looks like to a serious player. Reads from the reading in Transmedial Gaming. Games have always been about computation.
Bob talks about chess of the materials vs chess as the rule set. It can be played on the computer and still feel like chess.
Frank says chess is digital, it’s a collection of logical symbolic operators and rules that define how they act. Football is about making space quantified. Its digital. Its about the field. Soccer is about inside the goal and outside the goal. Important to playful vs deep play. Games are algorithmic functions. Thinking about the world through algorithms and computation. Games are always digital culture.
Bob says Football coaches think algorithmically, players don’t. their thinking is different from the coaches.
Frank says all players will think computationally. Don’t know where this argument goes.
Kunal says what will wrights games say about these games, is when I play chess I play how I want to, its usually more social and talkative. I play more expressively than computationally. What do we call what will wright makes? (TOYS?!)
Dirk talks about the deep play systems and computers.
Frank strives for deep play and thinks he is more of a formalist in his approach. WoW is a good example of something is inarguably successful as entertainment, but has these things that are flaws. Good to have formalist approach, and say look at these flaws. The kinds of places WoW is flawed, like outcome and valorization and player attachment. Its hard to be motivated bc game is steady state. You can kill dragon and he will return 5 hours later.
Dirk says how EVE online you can have influence, but not as successful, But critics love it.
Frank talks about games with real world outcomes, Juul deals with it by using negotiable consequences. Mentions SL and MMOs, and real world outcomes, but not enough time. Other things to talk about: Games becoming main stream, Superbowl ad.
Bob talks about TV and highbrow shows when it started. Had them because expensive and affluent only owned. When got cheaper more got, and popular stuff became norm. Games have been opposite, highbrow has snuck in as became more mainstream.
Charles said how everyone is a gamer, playing some sort of game.
Frank says games are for aspbergers sufferers.
Rob thinks its largely generational. IBM presented a training system through designing a variety of games. They are doing it globally through people playing a game. Games are becoming a space that people are using for a variety of uses.
Frank thinks games are the defining art form of the 20th century. Maybe we are where games are the thing. That everyone is using them, maybe we will pass through it, and move beyond it. And they will never be like movies and music.
Charles mentions how music only recently became ubiquitous.
Josh talks about how games you have to be active in.

Break

Played MetaGame.