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Fifty Years on, What Exactly is a Videogame? An Essentialistic Definitional Approach

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The Computer Games Journal

Abstract

During the last five decades, videogames evolved into a major component of popular culture as well as a multi-billion-dollar industry. The medium diversified tremendously, currently encompassing simple implementations of numeric games on the screen of a cell phone as well as vast, persistent online worlds on last generation consoles and PCs. In spite of its cultural and economic relevance, few attempts have been made to define what a videogame exactly is. In this article, I endeavour to propose an essentialist definition of videogame, that is, one structured in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions. I begin with a critical consideration of the main theoretical approaches to the medium and the few published definitions. From this analysis, four essential properties are defined and separately characterized. Finally, a definition is proposed, capable of encompassing the medium in both its specificity and variability.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their comments and valuable suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Rafaello Bergonse

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  1. Rafaello Bergonse
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Correspondence to Rafaello Bergonse.

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Bergonse, R. Fifty Years on, What Exactly is a Videogame? An Essentialistic Definitional Approach. Comput Game J 6, 239–255 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40869-017-0045-4

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