[game_preservation] Descriptive terms for Video Games

[Rowan Kaiser]

I am off the opinion that all words are genres, so yeah, well aware of such
a debate. They only work based on how people use them. If enough people use
them in a certain way...they can't really be wrong, because use is all they
are.


Rowan

On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 6:33 PM, Jim Leonard <trixter at oldskool.org> wrote:


> On 6/15/2011 12:01 AM, Rowan Kaiser wrote:

>

>> On the other hand, there's genre as a social construction, which,

>> regardless of accuracy (how is /Tetris /a *puzzle* game? It's an

>> abstract action game!) is used and will be used. This, Jim, I think is

>> where you had problems with your RPG classification. You may consider it

>> inaccurate, but the social construction is popular shorthand. It is how

>> gamers understand games, I think.

>>

>

> Just because 95% of gamers do something incorrectly doesn't make it right

> :-)

>

> But seriously, this is a long-standing debate in the dictionary world as

> well.  One side believes that words like "doh" and "ain't" and "thru" should

> remain out of dictionaries because they're colloquial euphemisms, whereas

> the other side claims the purpose of the dictionary is to reflect the

> language currently in use.  Companies that produce dictionaries fall into

> the latter camp, so you now have the priviledge of looking up "Doh!" in the

> Oxford English Dictionary, making it an official word of the language, I

> guess.

>

> I don't believe crowdsourcing should govern a field where crowd

> inconsistency is something it is trying to solve.

>

> --

> Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org)            http://www.oldskool.org/

> Check out some trippy MindCandy at        http://www.mindcandydvd.com/

> A child borne of the home computer wars:  http://trixter.oldskool.org/

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