We talk with a local game designer about the unique place video games have among art forms.
We’ve had a heavy few weeks, so we thought we’d have a bit of a palate cleanser episode focused on art. Specifically: video games! Specifically, specifically: The unique place video games have among art forms where decision-making, freedom and choice are foundational to the form itself.
The coming of age story is a huge cultural touchpoint across lots of artistic genres, especially narrative art forms. We love reading stories and watching movies about young people transcending the constraints of childhood, finding their power of self-creation, and becoming the person they will be in adulthood. Video games are the only art form where the viewer can actually control that process. (Apologies to Choose Your Own Adventure books, but it’s not quite the same.)
It’s a fascinating thing to think about, and we have the perfect guest to talk about that with us.
Video games obviously don’t just come into being. Like any piece of art, they have creators. And we happen to know one right here in Spokane.
A couple weeks ago we talked to Justin Baldwin, Creative Lead & Cofounder at Moonlight Kids. He’s one of the creators of a pretty popular indie game called The Wild at Heart. It’s described as cute and cozy, but it introduces important themes to kids and other users, like working through childhood trauma.
We talked about:
- The process of making games, starting with getting a publisher and backing, at around 23:49.
- How games offer things that other art mediums don’t offer: interactivity and escapism (starting at 35:15).
- That the secret to a game that is captivating to both children and adults might just be treating children as humans too (at around 38:00).
