The Happy Medium

Continue to bloom

I asked some of my favourite people for two sentences on the future of video games. Anna drops a truth bomb, Rich Grilloti gets Gary-Busey-level zen on us, and Cactus reps for weirdness. Enjoy!

Anna Anthropy

“I envision a world where we have as many hobbyist game authors as we do hobbyist writers or artists. The proliferation of tools like Game Maker, Scratch, and Construct—and the ones that will follow them—means that big industry publishers will no longer be able to act as gatekeepers to our boundless medium: I’m looking forward to a future of more diverse stories being told by more diverse authors, not just man-boy nerds making games for other man-boy nerds.”

Rich Grilloti (Pixeljam)

“A creative renaissance is under way and will continue to bloom in
brilliant, amazing ways. The description “video game” will lose its
meaning as the activities, experiences, and challenges inspired by games
converge and show up throughout our lives in exciting, enjoyable,
practical, and otherwise unexpected ways.

Also, quite possibly, the act of playing roles and identifying deeply
with well-created characters in believable ways will spark a
recognition of the character we’ve been playing and have been identified
with throughout our own lives. Attention will spontaneously withdraw
out of the mentally created persona to rest completely in itself,
revealing our true nature, the shared oneness of Being. What is seen
cannot be unseen, true peace is at hand.”

Cactus

“My biggest hope for the future of indie games (or games in general) is to see a game that personally hits all the right notes with me. There are movies, music, comics, art and books out there that I feel truly represents what I’m looking for in entertainment, but no single game. I feel this says a lot about how narrow the output of games is at the moment.”

(I asked Cactus to elaborate)

“Well, that’s hard to pinpoint. I think in general that games rarely take themselves seriously. I really like weird things, and whenever something’s weird in a game, it just turns whacky. I would want to play a game that feels like a different view on reality, or maybe even a completely different reality. Something alien, something that is new to me. Life is all about having cool experiences, so why would I want the same experiences over and over, even if they get bigger and better?

I do try to add this feeling in my games. Not so much that I explicitly try to keep people from being able to laugh at what’s going on in them, but rather that I try to let those who want to take them seriously be able to do so too. And I also try to never end anything with a punchline or something that explains everything to the player. A lot of times I enjoy things I don’t understand more than things that I do understand, they stay longer in my mind as I try to get a grip of what the hell they’re all about, or just because I realize that they’re completely beyond me and that sometimes makes me admire them in a way.”