As the closing keynote of the 2008 Montreal Games Summit, independent game developer and thinker Jonathan Blow, previously a Game Developer magazine columnist and an IGF winner for his time-bending title Braid, offered a striking deconstruction of a major video game conceit: that they can offer profound experiences through traditional storytelling forms. Blow argued that, in fact, the interactivity of gameplay -- and its requirements of "fun" and "challenge" among others -- is in fact ...

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