#STEAM THE MAGIC CIRCLE SERIES#

This rapid feedback loop engages our proprioception, that is our sense of embodiment and physicality. A digital game takes input from the player 60 times per second, resolves it with a potentially very complicated rule set, and renders a new image of the game state. Playing a game is an act of exposition.ĭigital games take many of the powers of traditional analog games and ramp up both the rate of interaction and the complexity of the underlying systems.

#STEAM THE MAGIC CIRCLE SERIES#

The game designer Sid Meier once remarked that “a game is a series of interesting choices.” Navigating these choices shapes the course of play, revealing who we are and how we think. For most, games are like chocolate: a guilty pleasure consumed secretly. Despite that ubiquity, games are rarely discussed with the same reverence as other media like films or books. Nearly everyone has played a game at some point in their lives. Games occupy a strange place in our cultural consciousness. Our brains grab onto them because they are structures that exist to be avoided. What even is a game? What is fun? My take on the appeal of games is also simple, if paradoxical. The reductively easy answer is simple: They’re fun! But why are they fun? Do they have to be fun? As we dig deeper and deeper, we find more questions. Why do people love games? As the Game Maker for The New York Times, I grapple with this question every day.

Steam the magic circle