More like vague-deo games.

Tim Rogers' articles on Kotaku are rants. You click the link to open the article and you're faced with 20 pages or so of text. It's intimidating, but for them brave enough to read through there is usually a gem or two of game philosophy that Rogers has worked from every angle, polishing and polishing the thought until it shines like a star. Of course, you might not agree with his point, but I've always found the articles entertaining and rewarding. Still, I haven't bothered to seek out his other works, so yeah.

Anyway, this most recent article is, I think, brilliant. In it, Rogers has attempted something that I haven't heard of anyone else trying to do. Whenever I talk about a game, it can be difficult to describe the more abstract parts of it. I think everyone has this problem. It's like, you know, how Luigi kind of skids a little bit more when you stop than Mario does. It's like when the action slows down in Arkham Asylum and the camera changes angle when you do a really cool move. It's like how the old Sonic games are awesome, but the GBA games suck.

What Rogers has done is defined those abstract concepts. The buzzword he's made up is friction and he's made a dictionary of video game friction: A Frictionary.

This is important! If everybody used these terms when describing a video game, entire sentences, paragraphs, ESSAYS could be avoided in attempting to explain what until this point have been vaguely terms "game mechanics." Finally, we can start using solid, dependable words, instead of floaty descriptors like "the gameplay is good." We can use this Frictionary to make a better world!

Let's do, everyone. Together.