I recently made a prototype for a game and some of the playtesters mentioned that my prototype was more of a ‘toy’ rather than a game… But if they could ‘play’ my prototype, and everything you play is a game, what is a toy?

Let’s take a look at this fantastic tone matrix, made my André Michelle. With this very simple so called ‘toy’, people make the coolest tunes and medleys by visualizing shapes, text and lines in the 16×16 matrix. The tone matrix also uses the right mouse button with which you can copy and paste your matrix and rythm and share it with others. If you take a look at what people make and paste all over the nternet, you’ll find that half of the people really tries to make music and the other half is visualising shapes and text. It was not the toy who challenged these people to make shapes or text or great music, it were the people themselves.

A toy is a game without a challenge where the player chooses its own challenge.

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