9 hours ago, daisekihan said:I don’t want to defend the company, but making it out that the definition of “service game” is as clear as 2+2=4 is just wrong. Neologisms like this tend to be very malleable. You seem to think that the exclusive definition for a live service game being that it connects to a server. But even the Wikipedia article (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Games_as_a_service), a source that is written by the general public and as such should obviously reflect the most common definition in use, says games as a service are defined by their revenue stream, not by being connected to a server.
4 hours ago, daisekihan said:I am not saying that your definition of games as a service is wrong. I am saying that it is one of many definitions. Definitions of words are not attempting to give us an absolute philosophical truth. Do you think dictionaries get their definitions based on absolute philosophical propositions? They don’t. They base their definitions on the way people use words.
I think that's part of the problem right there. Until a concrete definition can be agreed upon, people are going to operate in that grey area to suit whichever side of the issue they are on, whether noble (like Ross's is, in my opinion) or more devious (the industry destroying your games to line their pockets). While I agree in the extremely broad sense speaking that dictionaries, as you put it, are not based on philosophical absolutes, there eventually needs to be some level of "social contract" in what we determine the "proper" definition to be (like just about everything else). There is the Wikipedia article like you mentioned, but that doesn't go deep enough in my opinion. This is why I like Ross's definition, since it's more all-encompassing in a sense, because it doesn't stop at "it's a revenue model", but follows the trail further down to what the actual implications of that are, which I think is important if we're going to define something.
While there could very well be multiple "proper" definitions, that can still contribute to a grey area, and depending on what the issue or topic is in question, and the context of that debate being discussed, still leads us back to square one. While I can appreciate the aspect of "zooming out" and looking at the big picture in the philosophical sense you mention (more than you'd think actually; don't think that I am mocking you for bringing that up), with most things, we eventually have to "zoom back in" though if we're going to get anything done (with anything in life really, not just this topic).
2 hours ago, Ross Scott said:Yeah the actual stakes I agree are silly in comparison to most uses of propaganda, but going back to definitions, that's actually what this is. I mean what's a better term for false information repeated over time for the purposes of influencing public opinion?
While I totally agree that it completely is propaganda, I think the usage of that term itself can be detrimental to "the cause", for lack of a better term, since when most people hear someone else say that something is "propaganda", they tend to just dismiss what that person is saying, thinking that they're a conspiracy nut, or are just blowing things out of proportion. The more rational people might not, and would probably be willing to listen to the merits of the argument itself first before coming to a conclusion, but most people I imagine won't.
Basically, I think how the message is conveyed is just as important as what the actual message is.