Do you consider text adventures as video games?

[Leeroy ST]

This depends on whether you consider electronic/video pinball machines video game arcades. 

[fultonbot]

Yes, they are video games unless the output to teletype and not a screen, then I guess they are "printer" games?

[youxia]

16 hours ago, mr_me said:

Right.  Playing frisbee isn't a video game but it is a game even without score or winners and losers.  But regarding text based or video based interactive stories, is there enough game play to be called a game?

Most text adventures are have puzzles. Solving them gets you closer to your target, which is "winning" or "completing" the game. Making a good map and guessing the vocab are also a part of the challenge. The fiction layer may be brief or verbose, but underlying mechanics are still the same.

[JamesD]

I kinda saw them as computer games rather than video games, and the two were distinctly different in my mind.
Video games were more arcade like, and computer games involved more strategy, deeper game play, and often a slower pace.
I'd have to say it depends on the game

[mr_me]

They're all video games if the game depends on video graphics.  I don't think you could have a turn based strategy game like civilisation without video graphics and since it's a game it is therefore a video game.

Edited September 18, 2020 by mr_me

[carlsson]

But what is video graphics? Take a game like Rogue, Hack, NetHack which in its most primitive forms use ASCII in forms of vertical and horizontal bars, dots, letters and numbers. Additional colours if the system supports those. Sure it is more graphically oriented than a plain text adventure, but still it doesn't use any graphics symbols designed specifically for the game or even general purpose graphics, whichever those would be (filled diagonals, quarter blocks, rounded corners, card playing symbols, filled circles etc).

[mr_me]

Ascii graphics is graphics.  Now if the game doesn't depend on that graphics being displayed on a video display; I'm thinking of some of the early star trek games that plot a map on a paper terminal; than you might not consider that game a video game.  Rogue needs a video display.

Edited September 18, 2020 by mr_me