Episode 5: Game, Story, Play & Meet Your Hosts Part II

Every other week, entertainment journalist Sean Weeks picks the brain of multi-ENNie award winning game designer Steve Dee about games as an art form, and how they change us, and how games can rise to that calling and how we can improve our literacy around games.

In this episode Sean decides to make sure Steve has the chops to opine on games, and goes through his work, from his early contributions to Warhammer to his most recent projects. Steve talks about his endless curiosity and desire to push the boundaries are leading him to see beyond what so much of RPGs have done in the past - because perhaps RPG-like experiences and computer RPGs can simply do those things better, or can do it with less pressure on the GM. Steve talks about his goal of designing to reveal this truth, and design games that remove that pressure.

This also points to the difference between the orthogame - a game simply about following the rules for points - and a playful exercise in shared creativity, which is what a lot of RPGs claim to want to be. Looking at the definition of a game we return again and again to the idea of how games and creative exercises both are engaging us in our thoughts and our reason, and that means adopting a point of view and a entering into a system of value and a language for communicating that value. All games involve a sense of pretend and inhabiting a world, and that is part of their appeal: we play games because they let us become something else.