The third part of Josh Forman’s 3 part series on gamasutra about storytelling techniques inspired this post, although it’s not required reading. Still, it might help to read his ideas about medium before reading this. Here’s a link.
Anyway, to point:
Games are built on abstractions, both from the design standpoint and the player standpoint. There’s no point in “real life” where pressing X makes a person perform a jump, or a kick, or whatever. It’s an abstraction. Game designers provide a world where players connect the relationship between pressing X and …

I’ve been trying to write a post about video game User Interfaces for over a year. But every time I sat down to really start writing it, nothing substantial ever came out, even though I knew there was a very important idea in there somewhere.
I’ve played hundreds of games over the years I’ve been a gamer. And every time I play a game for the first time, I like to examine the user interface. User interfaces are interesting because they are understood not to be the game itself, but rather, …

I just got back home from a trip to New York City where I saw a preview of the new Spider-man musical,  Turn off the Dark, the same musical that’s been getting all kinds of press lately because of Bono, the Edge, Julie Taymor, huge overzealous budgets, crazy acrobatics and effects, and a production rife with delays and cast injuries. But I didn’t care about any of that. I care about Spider-man, and with that in mind, I’ve got some stuff to say.
Now that I’ve seen the thing I’ve read …