In the keynote: address entitled “The Interactive Parallel Universe,» given at the 2007 Hollywood and Games Summit, novelist and game designer Clive Barker insisted upon the potential of game design as an expressive medium for creative artists of all types. Barker repeatedly paraphrased the poet and mystic William Blake, whose character Los declares in the poem Jerusalem that “I must Create a System or be Enslaved by another man’s”. Barker gave his own gaming spin to this dictum, revising it to “create your own laws or be enslaved by another man’s,” encouraging both designers and players to break preconceived rules of the artistic status or potential of games in order to reach “undteamed·of territories unique to the medium.”
Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives
Jeff Howard
The Inreractive Parallel Universe Clive’a Barkera
