On Genre Gaming (or, Why They Should Never Ever Make a ‘Game of Thrones’ Video Game)
Too late for that plea , apparently, but here’s why basically any video game based on A Song of Ice and Fire,* George R. R. Martin’s gloriously grimdark Take That to the heroic fantasy genre and real-life medieval romanticism, is doomed to failure. The issue comes with the psychology of video games themselves. A video game is meant to be beaten , to at least give some sense of accomplishment for putting time and (rarely more than minimal thumb-twirling) effort into it, whether five minutes beating the next level of Peggle or fifteen bajillion hours grinding towards Blizzard’s latest glass ceiling in World of Warcraft . Even when a game is fundamentally depressing (rarely) or at least a big mind screw you can at least say “well, even if the ending was shit/confusing/nonexistant I still figured out Puzzle X” (*ahem* Braid and Limbo, otherwise quite excellent games). No specific spoilers, but A Song of Ice and Fire is far and away not conducive to that kind of narrative. It becomes...