Contributions to a new book about video games.

A few months ago I was asked to contribute my thoughts to a new book tobe published by a projected called Public Beta. My input took the form of answers to a series of questions -- hence the title of the book, Difficult Questions About Videogames. The book is now in print, I'm happy to say, and I just got my copy yesterday. You can buy it here from Amazon.co.uk.

The contributors to the book are among the leading lights of game development: Dave Perry, Robin Hunicke, Aleks Krotoski, Demis Hassabis, Noah Falstein, Helen Kennedy, and many more. Their answers to thequestions range from the incisive to the flippant, and cover the whole spectrum of thought about video games from the highly practical to the purely theoretical. Among the questions we were asked were:

• What is a video game? (and what isn't a video game)
• How can you tell if a video game is rubbish?
• Why do you play video games?
• What will video games become?

My answer to the question "Why do you play video games?" was simply this: "To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. I'm not kidding."