I’m not sure the suggestion of a game in which one cannot ‘get the top score’ makes sense. It seems contradictory - ‘is there an optimal path through the game which is not the optimal path through the game?’
Can you have games where the ‘path’ to a top score, the optimal play, varies from game to game? Sure. Not every game carries it to quite the extent of Nethack, but most do it to some extent. Non-random games like go or chess are generally the exception, and they can be trivially randomized. But each specific game can be seen as ultimately deterministic: given the output of the random number generator this time, the ideal path is such-and-such. You, the player, may not know it, but that’s your fault.
Can you have games which deceive the player about what the best possible score is? Sure. The original Donkey Kong promises that you can play indefinitely; but go too high and the game will always crash. The upper bound is not where one thought it was. Or there are political games in which one tries to prevent 9/11 (IIRC); of course, the game must sooner or later defeat you, like those old arcade games.
What would it mean for a game to have scores players couldn’t reach? If in Mario, there is code to paint a picture of a 1-UP on a corner of the screen surrounded by unbreakable blocks, then in what sense is the player missing out on 1k points (or whatever). If a cut scene depicts a hostage dying, then how ‘could’ I have saved it? What if I can choose between a cut scene depicting hostage A dying, and hostage B? What if it’s in-game, and there’s a timer or rescuing A triggers the death of B?
Or what if there is a trove of 1 million points coded in, but the only access is to type in a true contradiction? Would the world record holder for Mario really be missing 1 million points off his score just because he can’t come up with one? (Yes, there is a number equal to his score+1 million; but there’s an infinite number of integers. What makes score+1 million special? All the lower number are special because it’s possible to manipulate a given blob of code to display characters we interpret as those lower numbers; but we can’t get it to emit any images of higher numbers, and that’s that.)
If you choose one sub-game, then there’s optimal play for that; if you switch between them, then there’s still optimal play, it’s just you need to weight it if there is no canonical ultimate score (just like with utilities).
If there aren’t any scores or sense of progress at all, I question whether it’s a game at all, or whether it merely bears a Wittgensteinian family resemblance. If you and I push around piled pieces on a Go board just for the pleasure of watching the piles build and collapse and form swirling patterns, we’re doing something entertaining (maybe) but who would call it a game? To call life itself a game is to either commit a tired weak metaphor, or to drain the word game of all meaning.
I’m not sure the suggestion of a game in which one cannot ‘get the top score’ makes sense. It seems contradictory - ‘is there an optimal path through the game which is not the optimal path through the game?’
Can you have games where the ‘path’ to a top score, the optimal play, varies from game to game? Sure. Not every game carries it to quite the extent of Nethack, but most do it to some extent. Non-random games like go or chess are generally the exception, and they can be trivially randomized. But each specific game can be seen as ultimately deterministic: given the output of the random number generator this time, the ideal path is such-and-such. You, the player, may not know it, but that’s your fault.
Can you have games which deceive the player about what the best possible score is? Sure. The original Donkey Kong promises that you can play indefinitely; but go too high and the game will always crash. The upper bound is not where one thought it was. Or there are political games in which one tries to prevent 9/11 (IIRC); of course, the game must sooner or later defeat you, like those old arcade games.
What would it mean for a game to have scores players couldn’t reach? If in Mario, there is code to paint a picture of a 1-UP on a corner of the screen surrounded by unbreakable blocks, then in what sense is the player missing out on 1k points (or whatever). If a cut scene depicts a hostage dying, then how ‘could’ I have saved it? What if I can choose between a cut scene depicting hostage A dying, and hostage B? What if it’s in-game, and there’s a timer or rescuing A triggers the death of B?
Or what if there is a trove of 1 million points coded in, but the only access is to type in a true contradiction? Would the world record holder for Mario really be missing 1 million points off his score just because he can’t come up with one? (Yes, there is a number equal to his score+1 million; but there’s an infinite number of integers. What makes score+1 million special? All the lower number are special because it’s possible to manipulate a given blob of code to display characters we interpret as those lower numbers; but we can’t get it to emit any images of higher numbers, and that’s that.)
It can make sense if the game does not have a one-dimensional score. World Of Warcraft, The Sims, Second Life, D&D… Life itself, for that matter.
If you choose one sub-game, then there’s optimal play for that; if you switch between them, then there’s still optimal play, it’s just you need to weight it if there is no canonical ultimate score (just like with utilities).
If there aren’t any scores or sense of progress at all, I question whether it’s a game at all, or whether it merely bears a Wittgensteinian family resemblance. If you and I push around piled pieces on a Go board just for the pleasure of watching the piles build and collapse and form swirling patterns, we’re doing something entertaining (maybe) but who would call it a game? To call life itself a game is to either commit a tired weak metaphor, or to drain the word game of all meaning.