On creating games that are not fun to play

Recently, in the first Blogs of the Round Table podcast, readers were encouraged to imagine what their favorite book would look like as a video game. Corvus Elrod, the site’s organizer, referred to The Unconsoled, a novel that was a difficult read, but well worth it. Others imagined games inspired by similarly dramatic works of art: Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brother’s Karamazov.  Corvus, et al., ended the conversation considering the possibility for creating games that are purposefully not fun to play. Read the rest of this entry »

Being Nothing

I thought a good way to start off this blog would be by acknowledging the catalyst for it, and so this first post is an entry for Corvus’ monthly Blogs of the Round Table. The topic for January is Putting the Game Before the Book: what would a “piece of literature look like if it had been created as a game first.”

When I first saw this topic, I knew I had to post. A few independent video game developers and I are working on a mod in which we try to do just that. Whereas most adaptations repurpose a literary work into the wonderful world of videogames, we are trying to create a game that is the equivalent experience of the literary(1) work. Read the rest of this entry »