everyone knows the original Pong arcade machine was a videogame, but was it a *computer* game? after all, they didn't base it on any kind of processor, it was all bespoke TTL logic.

@packbat i think that if i am making a distinction between "video game" and "computer game" that I'm trying to specify personal computer (not necessarily Windows, and I don't know if I mean specifically desktop/laptop)

in which case, no arcade cabinet is a computer game

@raindrops but in that case … is Spacewar a computer game? the PDP-1 was definitely not a home computer…

@packbat hmm, fair point. i think i want it to be so maybe your "general-purpose computer" is my actual criterion

@packbat but like, an xbox is a general purpose computer and that doesn't feel "computer game", there's the category "console game" for that

@raindrops yeah, that's tricky…

@raindrops maybe an xbox is a special-purpose computer built out of general-putpose computing hardware?

@raindrops possible definition of a general-purpose computer: a computer designed with the expectation that a significant number of typical users will write their own programs on it

@packbat hmm, i think that might be broad enough.

i would suggest "for it" (on account of punch card mainframes), but that includes automated looms and player pianos, and those are pretty singular in purpose

@packbat might come back to turing completeness, for lack of a better definition

@packbat i wonder if there is a better term for "can compute just about anything you want it to", because turing completeness is a particularly formal tool to apply and requires infinite storage space

@raindrops @packbat the lead developer of idris likes the cheeky term “pac-man complete”