Monday 29 May 2017

On What Games Are

My brother asked me a very interesting question last time I came to visit. He’s an author, and we were talking about why we do what we do.

“If you had to pick two games to demonstrate - to someone who’d never seen video games before - what games are to you, what would they be?”

Originally he asked me to do it in one game, but I couldn't describe the entire medium in one example. Trying to do it in two was much more interesting. You can't describe an entire medium in two examples, but the process of trying to do so is very telling about your perspective as a developer.

I’m going to talk about the two games I chose, but this piece is only partly about the games and why I chose them. It’s also about why the question is interesting in the first place. Eventually it’s a question about Ian Bogost and whether or not games can tell stories.

But I digress.