Rethinking Interaction

Some would call me a nerd. Others, a savant. Since the ripe age of five I have been playing video games. The first time buttons acted as extensions of my mind was when I picked up an X-Men game for the Sega Genesis. Since then, like millions of other people, I have played hundreds of games, some good, most bad. When I was five, video games were just ending their Freshman year in the entertainment market. Now, they've graduated with top-honors, filling our culture with twirling man-foxes, blue rodents who run fast, and some of the best stories that I dare say have been written in the past two decades. With this evolution, we must begin thinking about where this industry will go next, and what can we do as players to help designers create a future fresh with ideas.

I believe this question of direction begins with the simple principle behind video games and games in general: invention. Today, the most popular video games rely on our fingers to press switches that transmit messages to a virtual world reactive of our mind's interpretation of it. What the world throws at us we must react to throw back in a manner we deem fit to progress within it, thus inventing new avenues to walk down within each world. If we fail to react in the way that the world would like us to, we must try and try again, rewinding time and learning that failure is simply not an option. This is the very basic concept behind most popular video games of today and, more importantly, was the blue print for which video games were designed. With knowing this I pose a new question. What's next?

In taking this course I hope to build upon my knowledge of game design and apply it to a concept I've been curious about: interactive video. This essentially brings together the cinematic qualities of live-action film and the choices one must make throughout the course of a video game. What I wonder is how can this marriage of design principles be crafted flawlessly so that the player doesn't just choose path A or B and watch an actor perform the result of said choice. How can the player feel that the character on screen is an extension of themselves and that they as a player can shape the world around this character and not simply watch this person existing only as a machine responding accordingly to prompts? Herein lies the journey I wish to take throughout the course.