WARNING! WARNING! MUCH INCOHERENT RAMBLING FOLLOWS!
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Whats a dvd menu? Its an interactive medium but not a game.
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Well, your toaster is also interactive. As is your washing machine.
I know that some years back a few visual novels were released that could be played with the DVD player. Sometimes DVDs come with mini-games, like a variation on memory.
Games usually have an equivalent to a dvd menu, a game menu. I'd compare it to paratext in literature. It's not part of the experience, the text, but it's part of the work. But no, pure paratext is no literature, just as much as a game menu is not enough to make a game.
We have words to distinct between text and literature. We don't have the same thing for video games. Would you call a virtual long corridor that has walls decorated with family pictures a game? It'd be the equivalent to a family photo album or to a letter from a relative. We wouldn't call the latter literature. Or as Peter254 pointed out, security camera footage doesn't make a movie (though movies can consist of it).
But Dear Esther, as a book, I'd call literature. So why wouldn't I call Dear Esther, a game, a game? Maybe artistic intention comes into play...
I don't know if you agree with Shuyin, but he said that home design software could never be thought to be something like a game because it was never intended to be a game. But if that's true, wouldn't the opposite be equally true as well? That if something was thought to be a game, then it is a game?
Man, I'm rambling on today. I haven't much of a point, just some loosely connected thoughts. Maybe you can get something out of it...
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There is no other term for it. Interactive literature?
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I think when there's no other appropriate term for it, then "game" will have to suit just fine!
Maybe one day we'll stumble upon a more accurate one.
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A choose your own adventure also ventures into the realm of pass or fail scenarios resembling a game.
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That's interesting. Are you saying that choose-your-own-adventure books resemble games more than Dear Esther does?
BTW, what's an interactive painting?
