Dear Esther as you know is a game that came out recently that involves you walking around an island and being told a story.

Debate whether or not this "game" is technically a game or not has been put into question recently, and I am here to share with you my point of view.

A game by definition is "A form of play or sport, esp. a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck."

By definition alone, dear esther is not a game, no skill or luck is involved, you are just being told a story and holding down the w key.

By the definition of video game which is: "A game played by electronically manipulating images produced by a computer program on a television screen or display."

One could misunderstand this easily and say, well, yes it is a video game because it is electrionically manipulating images, etc, etc, but you would fail to take into consideration the word "game", which brings back the first definition into this one, so again, no Dear Esther is not a game.

Now let's remove the literal meanings, Dear Esther has controls, a story, a world to explore, yes, but there is no gameplay in said game, it's just you holding down the W key, so really, it's a walking simulator, which is not enough for me to consider it a game, it's like walking through an art gallery really, with one of those audio recordings you play at specific parts to get a commentary about it.

I've played Dear Esther, the story is unique to say the least, yes and the enviorments are absolutely amazing, but it isn't 10 dollars amazing, especially since you are literally holding down the W key for an hour, and I have to add, it is the most frusterating thing when you are walking down somewhere and it's a dead end with no commentary to add to it, you just wasted time exploring, so there is no reward for exploring except getting bored and frusterated, which they just added to increase the length of the game, so really the game is about 20-30 minutes.

Should you buy Dear Esther? Depends, if you are desperately looking for a game to just calm down (not de-stress), sure why not, if you like looking at pretty vistas while holding the W key for an hour with a semi decent story, sure, would I? I did but I would not recommend this thing to anyone.

I call it a thing because, no, I do not categorize this as a game, because it's a story, with a world to walk around in, there's no gameplay, just... Story. Unique? Definately. Genre innovating? Hell. No.

Dear Esther, is not, a game.