"Beating" the game - a rant
 

At the risk of sounding anal...

Anyone else here find it strange when people say they "beat" a game? This implies one of several things:

• they physically took the game out back and laid into it with a bat
• the game was playing against them, as in trying to defeat them

I highly doubt the former applies to the everyday language seen on this board and elsewhere on the internet. In the unusual situation where it does apply, that would usually merit more discussion on the incident and should thus be obvious to any reader. The latter situation doesn't apply to any games I can think of. Game AI has not yet reached that level. It simply reacts to stimuli and thus appears to be trying to defeat a human player. I know how convincing it can feel when you're getting your ass handed to you by the AI, but we're a long ways away from that.

You can beat your buddy playing Madden. You can lay the beat down on Bobby the 13 years old l33t kid online in a game of Counter-Strike. You can beat your friend's highscore in Super Mario Bros. You can even beat your monkey in a one arm pull-up race. These all (well, mostly) involve competition.

Now, I understand what people mean when they say that they "beat" a game (OVERCOME, DEFEAT; also : SURPASS -- often used with out b : to prevail despite), but it does nothing to stifle my ire at such lazy language. To me, it sounds so much more appropriate when someone says that they "finished" a game. They started it, they played it and then finished it. That just makes more sense to me to read or hear that.

Yes, I know there's nothing formal about this place we all visit and discuss such topics on, but there's my take. Flame on people.

I have always said "completed." As in, "After I completed Doom3 I was very disappointed."

So I would have to agree with you CT; to say that you "beat" a game is incorrect. I'm just not as disturbed about it as you clearly are.

When I say I beat the game, to me it means that I beat everything that the developers threw at me, I think that when you look at it from that point of view, beat is an appropriate term. Not that finished or completed doesn't work, but beat is a singular syllable, and in todays society, we try to say what we want to say as quickly as possible, therefore we use smaller words.

But when I say I beat the game, I think about the developers putting the AI into a game and what they have come up with, I am better at than the amount of difficulty they placed before me.

Just my take.

I disagree.

In a video game, you are playing against the code, AI, programming.. Whatever. So in essence, when you "complete" a game, you are beating the AI, Code, Programming.. etc. And the game is trying to defeat or beat you. The difficulty level can effect they tenacity the computer shows when trying to accomplish this. So in effect you are beating a game.

Look at it this way.. If you watch hockey, do you say "The Leafs completed the Boston Bruins, or the leafs beat the boston bruins." The leaf players certainly didn't take the bruins out back and beat them with a stick.
As far as that being "Lazy Language", I think it is more of a double entendre. Beat has multiple meanings as many words in the english language. Does parking in your Driveway annoy you? How about driving on a Parkway?

See, I don't see it as playing against the code or the programmers. I am playing a game within the parameters of said code, the rules of the game, so to speak.

The Bruins and Leafs are trying to beat each other, in more ways than one. They don't beat the game of hockey when they win, they beat the other team. The other team who is actively striving to defeat them by trying to achieve their objective (scoring goals) while denying their opponent the same.

I just don't see video games as striving to defeat the player. Well, let me qualify that. Say you're playing an RPG, and at the end of the game you defeat the bad guy and the game is over. Was the AI bad guy trying to defeat you the entire game, or merely waiting there for you to find him and kill him (simplification yes, but it works). The AI isn't playing agianst me, it is simply there as an obstacle in my path. I would say this is truer for more games than not.

However, if you're playing say, Starcraft in a skirmish versus the AI I could see someone saying they beat the computer as both teams in that instance had the same objectives. However, this is not what I am talking about here.

How often do you hear someone say the game beat them because they never finished it? I've never heard that said once. Why not? Surely the player not winning is a victory for the AI, right? But you don't hear it. Ego, perhaps?

This used to bother me, then I got over it.

What about clocking the game, does that get your panties in a twist too?

First off, we are being way too general. Why? Well, if we look at a game of Chess on the computer, the context of being beaten makes sense. The game does indeed beat you. Same with the C&C Series of games. You can indeed be beaten by the AI. Same with sports games, you can be beaten.

Your comment <b> They don't beat the game of hockey when they win</b> doesn't hold water with me. I don't beat "computer games" when I beat C&C, I beat the enemy at the time.

I do agree with your comments about the RPG's though.. I just finished KOTOR II and don't consider myself beating the final boss or the game. I consider victory in RPG's to be "finishing the game".

Also, I do consider the game "beating" me if I don't finish it because it was too hard.

I guess it is personal preference when it comes to how you describe "victory" in a game.

I think we are all getting a little to worked up about a figure of speech. English is full of them. They make communicating better. I would rather tell someone i "made out" with a beautiful person than tell them that i "repeatedly and sloppily open mouth kissed a beautiful person", even though "making out" to me sounds like i just got away with something.

So... you agree with me? The hockey comment you made is a bit confusing (the argument not holding water bit).

I stated above that when two competing entities are striving for the same goal (chess, hockey, typical RTS games) the term "beat" applies. I guess I'm mostly commenting on how people use it as a general term. I know it is semantics, but hey, why not strive to the best we can? Linguistic laziness, as it were. Yeah, yeah, I'm anal, people who know me realized this long ago. :D

I totally agree that you don't beat the game itself, but we use it, you're gonna have to live with it. They're right, English is full of language like that.

Well, complete may be a better term for the process, it's easier to say "I beat the game" than "I completed the game"..

Damn, thats 2 syllables I can spare..

:D

You lost me on that complaint. I suppose I see the semantic nuance you're going after, but it's firmly established as an alternate usage for the word "beat" in the parlance of our times. It's like trying to wage the war against ending sentances with prepositions. Sure you can argue about it being grammatically incorrect, but so many people do it because it's less cumbersome and so many figures of speech use it that it's not really worth spending much time on it.

Additionally, I feel that beat is basically a synonym for defeat in this case and there is a sense of victory when I finish a game. It's not quite as directly applicable as if I had some form of finite opponent, but the meaning is clear.

It is just gaming jargon. Much like "owned", "hex0r" etc. If you choose to argue on technicality you can find faults with these terms aswell.

Ah, i do say i've finished a game when i beat it. Oh well, good luck trying to change people's vocab.

Videogames are an opponent. They aren't just virtual worlds. If they were virtual worlds we would be playing videoworlds instead of videogames. Even single player games are opponents. When you do finish the game, you've beaten it. Simple as that!

-Lasereth

I always say "I beat [game]". Why? I don't know. Either way, you know damn well what I'm talking about :)

I agree with Lsereth. Video games are an opponent. They present a challenge to you and more or less say, "here.. beat this," whether it's a new level, more enemies coming at you, whatever.

Game = challenge = versus = competition.

Beat. It actually fits perfectly.

Hmmmmmmmmmm. I say "beat games" myself so I'm not sure I agree with your point that it is linguistically incorrect. That being said, I also believe that language evolves. When something falls into common usage most linguists accept it as "correct."

Dictionary.com has "To defeat or subdue, as in a contest" and I think that if I am playing a game and I complete all of the objectives I've beaten it.

This post should have had a vote setup. That way we could have had a little informal and unscientific result. :)

It's just a figure of speech, get over yourself. See there? that was a figure of speech too. I don't mean for you to physically position yourself over yourself, I mean for you to quit being anal about petty stuff like that. If you took the literal meaning to everything everyone has said, you would be a very sad individual.

I think one mostly uses beat because it's short and, in older games, one usually played against the computer or a single computer controlled boss. So, you "beat" the last dude or what ever and, in turn, beat the game. That's just my guess on its history...

I clocked Tekken for the 156th time this morning. Clocked. Tekken. 156th time.

It is actually 100% grammatically correct to say you "beat" a game. If you want a real grammar pet peeve try correcting everyone who uses "conversate" for a few weeks. You'll make enemies.

Is "defeated" okay to use?

The conversate thing is annoying because people are using it to try and sound smart by using a big word. But they are using the improper one

What about "came on the face of"? As in, i totally came all over HALO 2's face.

Silly semantics.. Beat it, completed it, won, finished, etc, all the same to me.