My first concept was for a game in which you were a prisoner of war and simply had to escape. If you were caught, you'd be brought back to the prison. The idea was for a non-combat game.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think plenty of games - from 'Thief' to 'Zelda' - have shown that sneaking around can be fun.
I think 'World of Warcraft' shows that people today still like a good fantasy hack and slash game. I always thought that a lot of computer fantasy games leapt into complex party-based play somewhat prematurely.
There are at least two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other, infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play.
Game theory is a branch of, originally, applied mathematics, used mostly in economics and political science, a little bit in biology, that gives us a mathematical taxonomy of social life, and it predicts what people are likely to do and believe others will do in cases where everyone's actions affect everyone else.
I created something that became a phenomenon without becoming a prisoner to it.
The biggest kick I get is to communicate with those who are exiled from the game - in hospitals, homes, prisons - those who have seldom seen a game, who can't travel to a game, those who are blind.
The basic idea of Games With a Purpose is that we are taking a problem that computers cannot yet solve, and we are getting people to solve it for us while they are playing a game.
'Modern Warfare,' 'Black Ops,' these are all the next level of video games. The people are more detailed, the fighting is more exact, and I can't speak for every gamer out there, but I know when I play, I feel like I'm actually in the game. It's that intense.
The kinds of games I'm most interested in are narrative games.
I grew up playing war. We threw dirt and rocks at each other. We'd lead attacks. We'd break up into squads. It became a neighborhood thing for a while, our neighborhood against the other neighborhood. There was always a war breaking out somewhere.