Tom Bissell
Tom Bissell
Tom Bissellis an American journalist, critic, and fiction writer, originally from Escanaba, Michigan, and currently based in Los Angeles, California...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
CountryUnited States of America
bored course create designed designers endure games inside intensely obstacle people pile player players work worried
The way games are designed is you create a story, and then you create an obstacle course inside that story, and the player has to endure it to see more. So it's artificial. Game designers are so intensely worried about people getting bored that they pile on busy work for players to do.
angle enjoyed feels games hard home larger modern occupy odd sphere stands video ways within
Sport-based video games occupy an odd space within the sphere of modern home entertainment. Reliably enjoyed by millions, the sport-based video game stands at what sometimes feels like an oblique angle from the larger medium, and in ways that can be hard to articulate.
admitted became beside clear games prior proudly shall
Only in about 2007 or so did it become clear to me that games could stand proudly beside other storytelling mediums, and that's when I became more, shall we say, evangelistic in my position. Prior to that, I don't know how enthusiastically I would have admitted that I game.
feels game love stuff
All the stuff I love most in game storytelling is never the big-picture stuff; it's the stuff that feels like curlicues, stuff that's just there because it's a game and because you can do it.
games
The kinds of games I'm most interested in are narrative games.
action average game games traffic
The average action game doesn't much traffic in thematic grandiosity, but the BioShock games are different.
audience experience games type vicarious video
All video games are games, obviously. They're designed. They're digital. They have rules; they give an audience some type of vicarious experience.
girlfriend games video
Girlfriends, indeed: the anti-video game.
games play video
When I play too many video games I begin to feel chubby-minded, caffeinated, bad.
children school games
We are no longer worried that children are missing school because of video games, though. We are worried that they are murdering their classmates because of video games.
fictional nonfiction piece shows stories work
My fiction-writing DNA shows in how I think about prose, how I think about the page, how I think nonfiction stories should work. And every piece of nonfiction I write, I want it to have fictional texture.
california dreams masks mostly noticed sacramento seemed torn
I'd been in Sacramento a day and already noticed the pervasiveness of its homeless problem. The city seemed like California without the masks or pretense: a place where dreams were occasionally made but mostly torn apart.
aesthetic associated concerns finding formal mostly shocked video
I mostly associated video game storytelling with unforgivable clumsiness, irredeemable incompetence - and suddenly, I was finding the aesthetic and formal concerns I'd always associated with fiction: storytelling, form, the medium, character. That kind of shocked me.
both creative immensely life partner structure time understanding work
I have an immensely understanding partner who does something creative herself, and we both need a lot of time alone. I structure my life around getting my work done, first and foremost. Everything else is secondary. That's the only way I've been able to do it.