One world supports several games that have little in common

The argument

Proponents of this position argue that the question assumes a single answer where there is not one. What the game offers is not an experience but a set of parts, and the activities people assemble from those parts are genuinely different from each other. Played one way it is a game of scarcity and threat, in which a player gathers, hides, improves tools and extends their reach. Played another it is a construction sandbox with the scarcity and the threat switched off. It is also played as exploration, as a logic and machinery puzzle using the components the game provides for wiring things together, and as a place to meet people. The argument is that these are not variations in difficulty but different pleasures, and that the game does not require a player to declare which one they are there for. Proponents stress that a player can move between them within a session, that two people can be doing different ones side by side in the same world, and that nobody has to agree on what the activity is. On this account the game functions less like a product with an audience than like a material with uses. Holders of the view argue that this is what explains the breadth of who plays it. Ordinary questions about taste, whether someone likes building games or survival games or playing with other people, do not sort this audience, because the game is not one of those things. Proponents conclude that its popularity is a consequence of not being a kind of game, which also accounts for its reach across ages, since what an adult and a child do in it may have almost nothing in common and neither is playing it wrong.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Critics argue that breadth of this sort is common and rarely decisive, since many games support several styles of play and most are not unusually popular. They also contend that the position explains too little by explaining too much, because a list of everything the game can be used for is not an account of why so many people chose it in the first place, and the reasons offered for each use are the ones the other positions already give. Others note that the uses are not equally weighted, since the great majority of play happens in a few conventional modes, and treating the unusual ones as central misdescribes what the game mostly is.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The great majority of play happens in a few conventional modes, so treating the unusual uses as central misdescribes what the game mostly is. [Rejecting P3] Many games support several styles of play without being unusually popular, so the failure of taste to sort this audience does not distinguish it. [Rejecting C] A list of everything the game can be used for is not an account of why so many people chose it, and the reasons given for each use are those the rival positions already supply.