Games for the Mind

As I toy with what I want to do as a mock-up for Uns, I realize that there are plenty of games that focus on delivering the drama, where drama equates to tragedy and disaster.  When I start to think about design, my instincts go in exactly the opposite direction.  I want the hope of happily ever after.

It’s kind of obvious, really, but I want a game that does romance, in the Greek Romance sense Bakhtin talks about in The Dialogical Imagination.  I want a game where, yes, there are all these occurrences between the story’s beginning and it’s happy ending, but I want the ending to be happy.

I know, it is sort of a simple thing, but I want to affirm it, because it’s easy to lose sight of that, and easier to still to realize that there has to be something in the game that facilitates that.  This is where the computer game comparison comes in since plenty of computer games are structured to produce this sense of satisfaction and happily ever after.

Anyway, enough rambling.