LogFAQs > #930229115

I would say one of the big requirements is that it has to be something that could not easily be replicated outside of the "video game" format.

Take something like "battle chess", it's basically chess with some graphics and funny animations. Maybe a bit of a story. Future chess programs add things like "puzzles" and such but those are things that a chess expert can make for people in real life. Chess programs are just graphical interfaces for an analog game and it's hard for me to call those video games.

Now we have visual novels. The actual interactivity in these is pretty varied. Some of them (to my knowledge) have like a minigame tossed in or so... that's like there's a game inside a book type deal. A lot of them are a "choose your own adventure" type deal, but again, I feel like that is something we've already had with actual books. You can argue that you can't easily generate the same "feel" as a visual novel due to how they incorporate sound and music into it, but I still think that is still stretching the definition of video game.

On virtual representations of analog games though. There are a lot of them and not just sports game series with a controller that uses button combinations or play schemes, but just motion control or purely reflex/hand eye based ones like Wii sports etc. Can you go outside and try to hit a baseball? Sure, but the experience you have on the Wii doing it is a lot different and you are doing something mechanically in the game that is different in real life.