This topic is for the purpose of discussing #6816: LucianoTheWindowsFan's SNES SNES Test Program in 01:46.26

From movie rules:

Must be clearly definable as a game, which has achievable goals

Should of waited til 4/1.

Yes vote for beating previous submission

Looks like it's your first submission. Welcome aboard, Luciano. ;) So... here's a brief explanation I must put down. And forgive me if you're uncomfortable with all this. In 2016, Moth rejected an earlier submission, concluding that it's "basically Mario's equivalent to Where's Waldo," assuming that the game doesn't have an interesting feel with the clear images coming about. At the time I came up with that reason, I'm not sure now if it's accurate enough to see why that submission got rejected. I found out later that it's "one of around four discovered cartridges once used by Nintendo World Class Service to test and diagnose problems with the SNES and controllers" according to TCRF. Now I'm figuring that SNES Test Program is not a good "game" to TAS because of that. I don't think this submission will make it for publication, very sorry! But don't let all this down... you'll get better eventually. I'll have to refrain from voting for now, though.

Good TAS. Wrong day to submit it.

so did the test work or fail?

so did the test work or fail?

It worked.

From movie rules:

Must be clearly definable as a game, which has achievable goals

Should of waited til 4/1.

Oh no, it is gonna be rejected, I'm gonna do a TAS of Hebereke's Popoitto.

Alright, So instead, I did a TAS of Hebereke's Popoon.

Rejected...you forgot to plug in the player 2 receiver for the super scope.

Are April Fools Day submissions exempt from something?

It's tradition for users on TASvideos to use April Fools to submit movies that have no chance of being accepted, either by being a bad game choice or having really weird goal choices. Notably, there've been a few Test Program TASes submitted on April Fools. So, yeah, for this submission. It breaks the site rules about not being a game, so it can't be accepted into Vault, and there's nothing in the movie that would qualify it for Moons.

I’m going to take the position that this movie does actually play a game, but it’s not a “proper” game that would meet the Vault standard, and it should be rejected on the basis that there is “no user creativity altering the game in any way.” A ‘game’ occurs when a player operating with intentionality within a particular set of rules could potentially achieve perfection. The easiest example to look at is the game of ten-pin bowling. Within the rules of the game, the potential perfection is a score of 300. There are more complex examples, but there is no need to go into all that. Any resource on its own is not a game. Consider a deck of playing cards. The cards are just pieces of paper until they’re given a defined role within a rule set of a card game. Likewise, SNES Test Program isn’t what you would think of as a game, but it is a resource that can become part of a game if you use it as an object within a rule set. SNES Test Program is used for a simple game, but it’s still a game. The goal is to get through all of the tests as fast as possible. Just going through all the tests might be considered ‘work,’ but adding the ‘as fast as possible’ element turns it into a game. There is an objective, perfect time possible that the movie aims to achieve. But now we get to the part where it is not a “proper” game. Because the player just presses a button to activate a very avant-garde story about flipping princesses, color changes, and innumerable stars. Most of the movie is waiting for the animations on level 2 to complete, and a small portion involves pressing buttons as quickly as possible. Essentially it is watching someone else’s art rather than creating art.

By that logic tests in high school are a game.

User movie #65172035436643228 Game or not, the TAS is still unoptimized.

By that logic tests in high school are a game.

Not quite. Although it wouldn't be a major stretch to say that they can be, because the concept is the same as game shows, quiz bowls, trivia games, and related variants. But typically a high school test would lack the intentionality part of the definition. Imitating the actions of a game is distinct from intentionally playing a game.

By that logic tests in high school are a game.

Not quite. Although it wouldn't be a major stretch to say that they can be, because the concept is the same as game shows, quiz bowls, trivia games, and related variants. But typically a high school test would lack the intentionality part of the definition. Imitating the actions of a game is distinct from intentionally playing a game.

What do you even mean with intentionality?

Here's our official definition of gameplay:

An in-game task or puzzle that is meant to be accomplished or solved by a human while playing the game, by sending inputs to the game and getting its reaction.

It was written to help us handle #6466: Masterjun & ais523's NES Super Mario Bros. 3 "game end glitch" in 00:00.78. A game's goal is making the player play it. If a game is entertaining, it is being played. We know it is entertaining if the player prefers it to doing nothing. Some games are more annoying than doing nothing, but the challenge compensates for that, indirectly making them entertaining. If there's no challenge in the game, then it should entertain the player with something else. But that entertainment should remain interactive, otherwise it's not a game anymore. TASVideos is the site that isn't satisfied with simply playing games. Our goal is superplay, or metagaming. We impose artificial challenges to entertain ourselves by solving them, and by watching the resulting movie. This game has no interactive challenge. It has no gameplay aside from running a few automatic events with questionable artistic value. It wasn't designed to represent the artistic taste of the creator, it just either uses placeholder images from actual Nintendo games, or shows purely technical images. Probably there is some entertainment in watching a static image like this: But after you've seen it a few times, watching it again becomes as entertaining as doing nothing. As a result of the above, simply going through all the menus fast does not hold any superplay value, because it's identical to checking out every menu item on a DVD, except there may be something of artistic value on that DVD, while this game exists for purely technical purposes and only allows you to test if your console is functional enough to pass all tests. Probably relevant: http://tasvideos.org/Nach/HistoryOfGamesAndRelevanceHere.html

What do you even mean with intentionality?

The same physical act can have different meanings depending on the intent of the person doing it. A person can drive a car for Uber with the intent of doing work. A person can drive a car for NASCAR with the intent of playing a game. A person can drive a car as an actor in a film with the intent of creating art. The way I'm using 'game' is consistent with how it's used in ordinary language. There was a Simpsons episode (“Bart the Murderer”) in which Skinner became trapped under a pile of newspaper and dribbled a nearby basketball. He says, "I made a game of it. Seeing how many times I could bounce the ball in a day, then trying to break that record." Just dribbling the ball is not a game, but when he acted with intent toward a potential perfection within a set of rules, he was playing a game. The author of this movie was not trying to test an SNES; he had intent to use the resource for a game (a very bad game). Someone could take a frozen turkey and use it as a football and play a game with it. What matters is how the resource is used. I'm just saying I think that the movie should be rejected because the gameplay lacks user creativity rather than rejected for not being a game at all.

I'm just saying I think that the movie should be rejected because the gameplay lacks user creativity rather than rejected for not being a game at all.

Obviously you're not claiming this should be accepted, but your comments regarding considering this submission as a "game" did make me pause and think. Disclaimer: I understand the site's current stance on the following topic. While I don't completely agree with it, I can respect the perspectives which guide the current rules. I'm not looking to start a debate, I'm truly just curious. So how do these intentionality and user creativity perspectives affect your thoughts regarding board game/edutainment titles validity for publication on our site? They are currently not allowed, but many of them could easily offer an opportunity for user creativity. Paraphrasing your own comments; because the software in this submission has been treated as a game, you believe that it can be considered a game. While I can follow your logic, it does introduce a comparison point regarding intention of software like this submission vs. Board Game/Edutainment titles...Namely, what its intended use actually is. This submission's "game" is simply software intended to test a system and wasn't intended by the developers to be a game from the perspective of the user achieving some goal that challenges the player. Board game/edutainment titles, however, typically are intended to be games with defined challenges that must be overcome (even if the purpose of the game itself is to reinforce the learning of some educational topic). _{End of curiosity question.} My thoughts regarding this submission. I tend to lean toward a more inclusive perspective of what our site should consider publishing. However, when we are considering whether or not something should be deemed a game for the purposes of our site, I feel that a developer's intended purpose for a particular piece of software takes precedent over what the user actually does with that software. In my opinion, this submission's ROM should not be considered a game by our site as the software wasn't intended to be a game by the developer. It is software designed to challenge the system, not to challenge the user who happens to be operating the software.

We definitely treat the process of TASing as a game for ourselves, but aiming for fastest speed, or any kind of perfection, does not turn the very piece of software we're TASing into a game, if it has no interactive challenge inherent to it, independent from our metagaming/superplay approach.

The Family Feud TAS shows creativity well beyond what would be expected of a game-show game, and that is relevant to my position. No one would expect something like SNES Test Program to even play a game, but they should be open to the (small) possibility that someone could use it to play a game (created by the author) in an unexpected and entertaining way. This particular movie definitely does not do that. But a future movie could, in theory. Related precedent is the Super Mario World ACE, which codes custom mini-games and uses its own method of completion. What if the exact same thing had been done with SNES Test Program instead of SMW? If the site created a rule that ROMs must have been originally intended to be used as games (e.g., no test programs), I think that it would contradict the site's philosophy encouraging the creation of gaming art. I think Pokemon Plays Twitch is a related precedent, because it is the inverse of what is happening here. It took a resource intended to be used as a game (Pokemon Red) and converted it into a non-game (chat text display). It is considered a creative and technical masterpiece. The issue is that becoming a non-game places it outside the site's jurisdiction. But I'd think the inverse—converting a non-game (like a test program) into a game (through total control or otherwise) with the same level of expertise shown in PPT—would be encouraged if it meets all additional site rules.

Does Microsoft Word count as a game if you could find ACE in it?

Does Microsoft Word count as a game if you could find ACE in it?

What is still unclear about what I've written? If you use Word to type an essay, like most people do, you're doing work. If you and a friend used Word to see who could press the X button the most times in one minute, you'd be playing a game. If you somehow inserted your own code into Word to allow you to play pong in it, that pong would obviously be a game.

That doesn’t make Microsoft Word a game though.