While the structure of this writing is more lax, the narratives it weaves through the interviews are more entertaining. It’s a keen middle ground between “Play Matters’ ” abstraction and “How Games Move Us’ ” rigid structure.
I liked that the writing was able to go anywhere with the next sentence and actually fit a flow. It was funny how she mentions Karla’s film for college being centralized around a briefcase, which immediately made me think of Pulp Fiction. A few sentences later, she’s mentioning how Quentin Taratino had fallen from his graces in regards to his work.
By the second interview except the author was dropping a lot of names that I couldn’t differentiate. The chapter said “Brendon Chung,” but the body had introduced about 3 others before the page was finished. As if the chapter titles were written first, then the author went to meet these people, and interviewed part of their studio. The way it’s written this book could be a walking-simulator type of video game or a movie, not necessarily a documentary, with narration. Especially the part with Nina Freeman. It feels like a Wes Anderson or Coen Brothers’ movie, with the awkward imagery displayed between the characters. Ironic that most of those people interviewed had some previous inclination to film and video, but chose to make games.
Overall I think the real point made was the desire for self-validation. Those interviewed all had a strong passion for their medium. Not necessarily video games as a medium, but their life choices that lead them to create said video games. They created their games and in some cases were rewarded with what they sought. Karla had her agenda; Brendon wanted to support himself and work with his friends; and Nina wanted to share her experiences. Video games, with their greater accessibility, were a much more accommodating practice to these goals than film. While movies can require extreme budgets in production, games can be made as simplistic as possible from the ease of a home computer; the real necessity was the passion to create.