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Blogs are informal, and occasionally allow the writer to indulge himself, as in discussing his pet peeves. One of my pet peeves is the misuse of the terms analog and digital to represent non-electronic games and electronic games. I prefer the terms tabletop and video because they are more mellifluous and more directly address what people typically mean when they say analog games or digital games. I use video rather than computer because of the odd notion in many quarters that game consoles don’t count as computers. (They’re just limited and specialized computers, computer wannabes, really.) So I have to use video in order to include consoles. Baseball is an analog game, but sports are not usually what people mean when they talk about “analog games”, nor are they talking about “tag”or other children’s games. They usually mean games played at a table.
Something that is analog is continuous without discrete units or detents. Time is analog although we try to divide it into smaller and smaller pieces. Sound is also analog, although we have been able to divide it into such small parts that we can’t tell the difference between the digitized sound on computers and music CDs as compared with actual sound. ¹(Definitions from Dictionary.com at the end of the article.)
Something that is digital is divided into discrete units with nothing in between. The result of a die roll is digital: it’s a number one through six and cannot be 1 ½ or 2 3/4. Modern computers do everything in “ons” and “offs” (1s and 0s), hence they’re digital.
There are analog computers, such as a slide rule for those who remember such things. In World War II one of the reasons to develop digital computers was to replace the analog computers that were laboriously used to calculate ballistics tables for artillery.
You can see then that many tabletop games are in fact digital. Therefore it makes no sense to use “digital games” for electronic games. Nor does “analog games” work for non-electronic games. I actually used “electronic” and “non-electronic” for a while, but they are too cumbersome. So I substituted “tabletop” where that’s appropriate (again, baseball is not a tabletop game, but is a non-electronic game). And I substitute “video” (or sometimes “computer”) for electronic games.
While I am probably fighting against a tidal wave, I can only say that using “analog” to describe tabletop games and “digital” to describe video games does not make sense.
Analog:
adjective
of or pertaining to a mechanism that represents data by measurement of a continuous physical variable, as voltage or pressure.
Digital:
adjective
5. electronics: responding to discrete values of input voltage and producing discrete output voltage levels, as in a logic circuit: digital circuit
3. representing data as a series of numerical values
4. displaying information as numbers rather than by a pointer moving over a dial: a digital voltmeter; digital read-out
1. of, relating to, resembling, or possessing a digit or digits
2. performed with the fingers
¹Yes I know there are still people who claim that they can tell the difference between analog sound and digital sound, and there are a few nuts who claim that digitized sound is destroying modern ears.
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Pulsipher Game Design
This blog contains comments by Dr. Lewis Pulsipher about tabletop games he is designing or has designed in the past, as well as comments on game design (tabletop and video) in general. It repeats his blog at
http://pulsiphergamedesign.blogspot.com/
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Quote:I use video rather than computer because of the odd notion in many quarters that game consoles don’t count as computers.But since consoles are indeed computers, "computer game" seems the more fitting term. "Video" can be totally non-interactive (VCRs, videotapes)...
There are some analog board games, e.g. various dexterity games, and also stuff like Coin Clusters, Light Speed, etc.
But yeah, in general, using "analog" vs "digital" to mean "board games" and "computer games" is indeed annoyingly nonsensical.![](data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20"><rect fill-opacity="0"/></svg>)
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russ wrote:You can see then that many tabletop games are in fact digital.
Just because dice have discreet outcomes does not mean that dice are digital. Dice are not digital. They exist in the physical world. You move them in a continuous medium. So I don't think you could rightly say that ANY table top game is a digital game. They all exist in the physical realm, are tangible, and move in continuous space (unless you believe that space is discreet, but then we're just re-hashing a philosophical debate that's thousands of years old - which I don't think was your point).
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Martin GUnited Kingdom
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The whole point of the post is that analog/digital isn't a dichotomy between the physical world and the virtual, it's between continuous and discrete outcomes. In that sense, a dice roll in most games is digital: it can only have one of six values. A dice roll in Tumblin-Dice is very much analog though!
To put it another way: does it make any sense to say a game of Tigris & Euphrates played with a board on a table is analog but one played here on BGG is digital?
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- Edited Mon Oct 31, 2011 1:01 am
- Posted Mon Oct 31, 2011 12:56 am
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To me analog vs digital can be summed up as:
"Can I immediately stab someone in the face (not that I'd necessarily do so but the option should be there) with a game component (or another handy suitable item) when I am playing the game and someone screws me over with their in-game decisions?"
If the answer is yes... I'm playing an analog game. If the answer is no... I'm playing a digital game (aka: a non meatbag puncturing game).
Physical face-to-face gaming is superior to me as it brings out the social aspects of boardgaming. Online/video/computer or other types of non-ftf gaming are much weaker and less satisfying experiences.
LAN type computer gaming I suppose still theoretically has the potential for inflicting actual physical harm but there is a digital layer there between us as we face the computer screens so I still would rate that as fundamentally digital and inferior to ftf (fist to face) boardgaming.
I know there are dictionary type definitions of analog vs digital but for me it comes down to the actual gaming experience and how much of a visceral experience I get from the the various intertwining personalities sitting around the table playing the game.
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domcrap wrote:You messed up the quoting: Lewis wrote that, not me. But I agree with him.russ wrote:You can see then that many tabletop games are in fact digital.
Just because dice have discreet outcomes does not mean that dice are digital. Dice are not digital. They exist in the physical world. You move them in a continuous medium. So I don't think you could rightly say that ANY table top game is a digital game. They all exist in the physical realm, are tangible, and move in continuous space (unless you believe that space is discreet, but then we're just re-hashing a philosophical debate that's thousands of years old - which I don't think was your point).
I think you're mixing up the continuity of space (i.e. the dice physically fall on an analog plane, the surface of the table or box lid or whatever) with the discreteness of the result (the exact position of the die has no relevance to the game, only which of the 6 surfaces is facing up).
(Same with, e.g., flipping a coin: the exact position it ends up in is analog/continuous, but the result we care about (heads or tails) is binary/discrete.)
If some board game actually used the exact position of the dice as some significant data for resolving stuff (e.g. the Tumbling Dice example), then indeed that game would analog. But most board games do not; they only care about which of the faces is uppermost, and the continuous space position of the die is filtered out or ignored as irrelevant to the game.
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- Edited Mon Oct 31, 2011 9:24 am
- Posted Mon Oct 31, 2011 9:23 am
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qwertymartin wrote:The best once-sentence summary I know of.
To put it another way: does it make any sense to say a game of Tigris & Euphrates played with a board on a table is analog but one played here on BGG is digital?
Darren M's point of view isn't about the game, it's about where it's played. (So a Wii game played face-to-face, as so many are, is analog?) The "FTF" and "online" labels take care of that.
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- Edited Mon Oct 31, 2011 12:40 pm
- Posted Mon Oct 31, 2011 12:38 pm
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russ wrote:Quote:I use video rather than computer because of the odd notion in many quarters that game consoles don’t count as computers.But since consoles are indeed computers, "computer game" seems the more fitting term. "Video" can be totally non-interactive (VCRs, videotapes)...
There are some analog board games, e.g. various dexterity games, and also stuff like Coin Clusters, Light Speed, etc.
But yeah, in general, using "analog" vs "digital" to mean "board games" and "computer games" is indeed annoyingly nonsensical.
"Computer" would be more fitting, if so many people didn't exclude consoles from the term when used in relation to games that there are likely to be misunderstandings. Just as "bi-annual" is the fitting term for "once every two years", but so many people misunderstand it to mean semi-annual (twice a year) that we can't use bi-annual any more for fear of being misunderstood. "Verbal" means "with words", that is either written or oral, but so many people use it to mean oral (spoken) that using "verbal" risks being misunderstood. And so on. Words change for the worse, sometimes.)
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domcrap wrote:You refer to the format, to existence in the physical world, not to the game itself. If Wits and Wagers were played online does it suddenly become a digital game? Surely a game is one or the other, not both "depending"? "Digital" existed long before electronic devices and the electronic virtual world existed (notice dictionary meanings 1 and 2).russ wrote:You can see then that many tabletop games are in fact digital.
Just because dice have discreet outcomes does not mean that dice are digital. Dice are not digital. They exist in the physical world. You move them in a continuous medium. So I don't think you could rightly say that ANY table top game is a digital game. They all exist in the physical realm, are tangible, and move in continuous space (unless you believe that space is discreet, but then we're just re-hashing a philosophical debate that's thousands of years old - which I don't think was your point).
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Martin GUnited Kingdom
Bristol
Don't fall in love with me yet, we've only recently met
- The other thing that's interesting here is that table top games, while living in the 'analog', physical world, tend to have a small number of discrete variables that are known to and controlled by the players. On the other hand, video games which live in the 'digital' world often have many, fine-grained variables that are hidden from the players. In some senses, a board game simulates a digital process in the physical world, while a video game like an FPS simulates an analog process in the virtual world.
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- Edited Mon Oct 31, 2011 1:28 pm
- Posted Mon Oct 31, 2011 1:20 pm
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qwertymartin wrote:The other thing that's interesting here is that table top games, while living in the 'analog', physical world, tend to have a small number of discrete variables that are known to and controlled by the players. On the other hand, video games which live in the 'digital' world often have many, fine-grained variables that are hidden from the players. In some senses, a board game simulates a digital process in the physical world, while a video game like an FPS simulates an anaolog process in the virtual world.Very true - every FPS computer game attempts to simulate continuous space (and as far as the player is concerned, it IS continuous space - the individual discrete spatial steps are MUCH too tiny to distinguish).
And don't forget about time:
Every real time computer game is analog/continuous with respect to time, whereas every turn-based board game is discrete with respect to time.
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Following this, there are maybe not too many, but some, real "analog" games. I tried to create a geeklist for these, feel free to add more ...
Stepless, stageless, analog - Games with continuous "signals"
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qwertymartin wrote:The other thing that's interesting here is that table top games, while living in the 'analog', physical world, tend to have a small number of discrete variables that are known to and controlled by the players. On the other hand, video games which live in the 'digital' world often have many, fine-grained variables that are hidden from the players. In some senses, a board game simulates a digital process in the physical world, while a video game like an FPS simulates an analog process in the virtual world.Good point. And add to that the difference in design between most tabletop games and most (traditional) single-player video games. The tabletop games tend to emphasize the psychological, the player vs. player, while the video games tend to emphasize the puzzle. It makes sense for puzzles to have hidden aspects, while the player vs. player games give more control to the players.
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qwertymartin wrote:The whole point of the post is that analog/digital isn't a dichotomy between the physical world and the virtual, it's between continuous and discrete outcomes. In that sense, a dice roll in most games is digital: it can only have one of six values. A dice roll in Tumblin-Dice is very much analog though!No. Calling the physical game analog is dumb. I've never heard anyone talk that way except in this post.
To put it another way: does it make any sense to say a game of Tigris & Euphrates played with a board on a table is analog but one played here on BGG is digital?
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Martin GUnited Kingdom
Bristol
Don't fall in love with me yet, we've only recently met
- I'm confused by what you're saying then. In your first post you seemed to be arguing that board games can't be digital because they exist in the physical world. But if that is not what you meant, what is your distinction between analog and digital?
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domcrap wrote:No. Calling the physical game analog is dumb. I've never heard anyone talk that way except in this post.I've seen it a lot, often by computer game people. Google for "analog games" and you'll see it used in places besides this post.
Jeez, even Scott Nicholson does it, alas: :/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1YbwTFu4fA
