Though there’s much more to be said about violent games, the idea that it’s “easier to simulate war than to simulate peace” is one I brought up with a parent with whom I was discussing his children’s tastes in games. He had never considered that the nature of computation and simulation could contribute to what he had seen as an aesthetic (if not also moral) design choice. This seemed to open him up to thinking about games differently, to see them as software and realize that software is better for some sorts of things than others.

It’s too bad that point is not made more often, in places it could be read by people that may not have a good occasion to consider it.

Also, uh, where’s the piece for which you were interviewed?

Good answers though.

Good Grief

That said, now that I’m the one interviewing people for features, I have to say that your answers are absolute GOLD. These are the kinds of interviewee responses I dream about getting. (Coming from an academic background may skew my sense of what counts as good journalism, though.)

Given the extremely leading tone of the questions, I have to assume that the interviewer just wanted somebody to echo back what s/he already planned to write. Someday that writer will need to learn how to rethink an article when the interviewees turn out to have more valuable things to say than originally expected.