Interactive != social. All video games are interactive, i.e. the player is always interacting directly with the game. This is obviously different from passive noninteractive entertainment like TV and movies.
Some games are social, meaning that you are interacting with other people in a shared artificial world. Degrees of socialization vary, obviously.
* MMORPGs let you share the world with thousands of people, none of whom you will (probably) ever actually meet in the "real world".
* Games like Madden or Mario Kart let you play with a grand total of four people, but you are all sitting on the couch in the same "real world" room. (Not counting XBox Live, I suppose.)
* "Pick up games" are hard to quantify as social or not. I'm talking about games like Unreal Tournament, or quick joins of Warcraft or Starcraft. Sure you are playing against other real people, but you're not really socializing. You are for the most part interacting with the computer interface, the oppponent might as well be a really smart bot. But some people tend to form communities around this stuff, and that is most definitely a social function that is at least spawned by these games.
And obviously, there are plenty of single-player games that are not social at all. Unless you want to count the online communities that form around these games, also.
Some games are social, meaning that you are interacting with other people in a shared artificial world. Degrees of socialization vary, obviously.
* MMORPGs let you share the world with thousands of people, none of whom you will (probably) ever actually meet in the "real world".
* Games like Madden or Mario Kart let you play with a grand total of four people, but you are all sitting on the couch in the same "real world" room. (Not counting XBox Live, I suppose.)
* "Pick up games" are hard to quantify as social or not. I'm talking about games like Unreal Tournament, or quick joins of Warcraft or Starcraft. Sure you are playing against other real people, but you're not really socializing. You are for the most part interacting with the computer interface, the oppponent might as well be a really smart bot. But some people tend to form communities around this stuff, and that is most definitely a social function that is at least spawned by these games.
And obviously, there are plenty of single-player games that are not social at all. Unless you want to count the online communities that form around these games, also.
