Over the Christmas and New Year break, I caught up with a little reading. In Independent By Design—a book speaking to several small development studios and individuals who are making games a little differently (we ran some excerpts in 2016)—there's a Q&A with New Yorkerwriter and critic Simon Parkin.
"I must have been 16 or 17 when I started to think that there are people writing these games that I love playing," he recalls. "How did they start doing this? Who are they? Where do they live?"
Personally, in my teenage years, games were primarily playthings, brief distractions from college essay writing and driving lessons, alternatives to an evening sucking on a bottle in a nearby park with pals when money was tight. I don't think I began to consider the creators of these experiences until the final years of the PlayStation 2 era, and the beginning of generation seven: Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solidsequels, Fumito Ueda's pairing of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, and distinctive works from the likes of Goichi Suda and Keita Takahashi.
Read more on Waypoint.
Advertisement