Highlights:
On the exploration of frustration
“I want to express myself by drawing from the full palette of human experience. I want to explore frustration; maybe it’s richer and more interesting than people have given it credit for.”
On subverting common wisdom
“It's very orthodox [now] for game designers to be concerned with software design. Frustration, confusion, any of the things that we’d construct as standing in the way of the function of a piece of software, are deemed bad in game design. So as a way of railing against that, I try to make games that do that overtly.”
On reinforcing humanity in game design
“I remember when Jonathan Blow shipped The Witness, there was no field of view slider in the menu. And there was this colossal backlash in the community of players. Like raw anger. And I'm not completely unsympathetic to that anger, but I do have the idea that the more we can remind people that there are human beings behind video games, the less they’d feel that way.”
On art as a safe container
“Art is a container to experience and express emotions that you don’t want affecting your everyday life. Most people want their day-to-day to be low-amplitude, and then when they’re in an environment for experiencing art, that’s when you can feel the high-amplitude emotions safely.”