Legitimacy and Interactivity in Games - "Only a game could do this"

09 Jul, 2025

You might've heard that phrase before when people sing a game's praises. Something like "it really utilises the medium to its fullest" or "this could only be a game". Statements like these imply that this is good - that a work has 'earned' status as a game by doing something that utilises its medium - something 'more interactive'. This is a deeply reductive way to look at art, and tends to favour a certain type of interactivity that is somehow 'more impactful'. To understand more clearly what this means, let's define a rough framework.

Active and Passive Interaction

In my own exploration of games, I gradually developed a frameowrk that conceptualises two different modes of interactivity in games: 'passive' and 'active' (I don't know if these are the best terms possible, but it's what I've used for myself). Within this, I use 'active interactivity' to describe an interaction in a game that affects a game's systemic layer (the rules, the numbers, the abstract game state, divorced from its context), and I use 'passive interactivity' to describe an interaction that still interfaces with the game, but has no effect to this 'game state'. It's a fuzzy definition, and relies on an abstract understanding of what this 'game state' even is, so let's use some examples.

In a Civilization game, moving a unit would be an active interaction, but simply moving the camera around to look at the game's landscape is passive - one changes the game systemic variables and that 'game state', whereas the other is simply using the game's interface, with no meaningful effect to the game. Note that this will still change variables within the game's code, and so there is some distinction between variables used for the software and variables that are inherent to the game's design and system. Another example could be wandering around in a Telltale game as a passive interaction, but talking to people as an active interaction (since it affects the game state by progressing 'the story'). You can even see it in board games with something like Rummy where playing your turn is active interactivity, but chatting with your fellow players and resetting the game and shuffling the decks of cards between rounds is passive interactivity.

You might disagree about these specific examples, and I think that makes sense. As mentioned, it's a bit tricky to define an exact separation - is running around in Super Mario 64 active or passive? It's not increasing your number of stars, a very tangible aspect of the game state, but it is moving Mario and positioning him to bring him closer to acquiring another star. It might be better then, to describe it as a spectrum of interactivity, where things can be entirely passive, entirely active, or somewhere between the two, at which point we've opened up a pandora's box of arguing over exactly what level of interactivity something is.

Ultimately though, the point with this framework for interactivity is to showcase that when people say "X warrants being a game" - they mean a more active form of interaction. I don't think people are wrong in making this assertion, but it indicates a judgement of superior value, where a game that primarily uses active interaction has earned the status of a 'real game'. Subsequently, any games that instead skew towards the opposite spectrum can be criticised for "not being a real game".

Walking Sims and Legitimacy

Using active and passive interaction to determine whether or not a game is a 'real game' is ultimately a way of judging the legitimacy of a game, which does nothing but foster elitism and gatekeeping, and discourages creative freedom.

I initially heard the term 'walking simulator' in the comparison between Journey and Dear Esther by Matthewmatosis¹, where he contrasts his positive experience with the former against his negative experience with the latter:

It made me wonder, what exactly is a game? Is Dear Esther a game? Is this some new genre of walking simulators that will really take off?

Since then, I've seen people describe them by saying "I could just watch a playthrough" or "you can just hold 'W'" and any other variety of snarky comment. A similar moment that stood out to me was when watching Raph Koster's GDC talk Practical Creativity² where he describes Gone Home as randomly drawing cards until you get the right card to move on to the next stack of cards.

He clarifies that this is not a knock against the game, but it still comes across as an implication that a game is merely its systemic level that requires active interaction, and that we can ignore everything else. It is a purposefully reductive examination of Gone Home that ignores its narrative and context. Gone Home isn't a deck of cards, it's a specific house, with a specific set of objects to discover, each of which carries some narrative context and meaning. As an aside, I'd like to additionally mention that the discourse surrounding Gone Home's legitimacy was also centred around Gamergate, and that some people claiming it wasn't a real game had a vested interest in undermining its value for the sake of misogyny.

Several years later we have games like Firewatch and What Remains of Edith Finch which use more active interaction in their designs, and they ended up struggling less for public legitimacy because you can choose meaningful dialogue options in the former or play interactive vignettes in the latter (with the cannery vignette being praised especially for how it "used the medium to its fullest").

My point here is not to say Dear Esther was just as good as Journey, or that Journey is actually overrated (in actuality I haven't played the former, and really love the latter). I also actually think both Matthewmatosis' video and Raph Koster's talk are worth giving a watch, and that they include valuable insights. Instead my aim is to point out how this results in a conversation about games that has nothing to do with how they impacted you as art in their own right. Personally, there are other vignettes in What Remains of Edith Finch that impacted me more, and have stuck in my memory for longer, than the cannery vignette. And ultimately the reason I haven't played Dear Esther is still because I think it would bore me. Yet, a game like Bernband, which features potentially even less active interaction provided me with a real sense of place and immersion in an alien world. I think this doesn't just ignore games that rely on passive interactivity, it also does a disservice to games with more active interactivity (like the aforementioned cannery vignette always taking the spotlight because it tackles Lewis' story "in a way only games can"). It's disappointing to see all games undermined by discourse surrounding their legitimacy as games, rather than fully embracing them as an artform, with nothing to prove.

Hobbyist and Solo Developers and Legitimacy

Em Reed's talk/article Reframing Abundance³ opens with multiple examples of comments you might get as a non-commercial game developer:

“That’s a good start. You can use those skills on a real project.” “It’s free and it only takes 10 minutes to play!” “Obviously your work is valuable, but I’m talking about people who want to make a career doing this.”

These comments critique non-commercial game as illegitimate, with many of these games preferring designs that feature passive interactivity. This preference could be because commercial development is largely associated with mass appeal, and that active interactivity is largely associated with 'good game design', which prioritises hooking players, providing flow states, and being 'satisfying' or 'fun'. This is ultimately easier to sell, and therefore better at being commercially successful (which is another form of legitimacy that is far too prevalent as well).

A lot of games you'll find on itch.io use tools like Twine or Flickgame, or are a linear visual novel. You'll find some work being done using Bitsy that ekes out a little more active interactition, and you'll find your fair share of walking simulators too. Not seeing these as legitimate games (you might still see them as games, but not "real games") does active harm to the artform of games by gatekeeping a huge community of developers and artists from the conversation. Now I'm not saying that a game made in Bitsy will have the same mass appeal as Baldur's Gate 3 (and again, mass appeal or popularity also doesn't make a game more legitimate or better), but I think more people would be willing to try them or take them for what they are if there was less gatekeeping about what a "real game" is.

Everything is Interactive!

Let's return for a moment to that original phrase: "Only a game could do this" I really enjoyed a submission for the Bitsy-Haiku Jam on itch.io called Slowly⁴. It's a short game that ultimately takes only a few button presses, all of which have to be done using the rightward arrow key. It doesn't feature "real" gameplay, and there's no choices to make, except when next to press the arrow key. It's just a few screens of pixel art, a few words of text, and a few button presses, all working in harmony in a beautiful way. Now, does this warrant being a game? Does it 'earn' the use of the medium of games, rather than some other medium? In my opinion, no! You could make this into a small booklet or zine using the visuals and text and have essentially the same experience. Even the interactivity is kept intact, as you could choose when to flip the next page. Did I say that right? Am I claiming that a book would here be as interactive as a game? Yes! Then what's the point in differentiating between the two? While I have my own thoughts on the subject of categorisation and genre definition, I'm going to leave that question for you to ponder over - why do you think a distinction between games and another medium is important?

However, my point is that anything and everything is interactive in some way. We don't live in a static world, and we certainly don't experience the world in a static way. We experience and interpret the world every moment that we're alive, and even just looking at a wall is interacting with that wall. The discourse around games as a medium has presented games as unique compared to other forms of art because it is interactive. This is what makes games unique, this is what makes games special, and so if you're making a game, it better utilise this, because otherwise, why make a game? But it simply isn't true - all art is interactive.

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How It Affects my Design

I want to briefly touch on a more personal reason why I care about all this. I recently released a game called To Catch a Heron. Even after finishing it, I'm very happy with it, and I felt very creatively satisfied by it. It dabbles with some interactivity by including a single dice roll that determines the outcome of the narrative, which I find interesting because it's a minimal approach that hopefully enhances its impact, and creates a sense that the player has no control, which works in tandem with the writing to create an interesting story and theme. I could've made it just text, or I could've added more mechanics, but I didn't, because this felt like the right balance for the idea. This is probably the first time I've made a game by myself where I haven't felt an external pressure to legitimise my work by adding a more active interactivity. Not that I've made particularly actively interactive games, but I always felt the sense that none of my games 'earned' being a game, and I think it's sad that it took me quite a few years to accept my own work as legitimate as games and art. I'm happy I've reached that point now, but I'd like to believe that we can work towards sparing other developers, designers and artists this (honestly fairly self-deprecating and stressful) process.

I haven't examined this thoroughly, but a different trend that I see happening is a recurring point of public discourse that proclaims, "Finally! Games are art!" In my own speculation, there are multiple contributing factors to this, but one symptom to me is this strange problem of game legitimacy, where games have to prove themselves to be a real medium over and over again. It's a tired discussion, but I think it's one that will keep happening if keep portraying games as 'the medium that does interactivity'. It needlessly gatekeeps certain games by putting them on a pedestal, it ignores the interactivity present in other artforms, and this discussion over legitimacy does nothing but distract from discussing these games as art.

Footnotes