An analogy I use a lot is just like, a game is like a sort of a messy bedroom that needs to be cleaned. But there’s an element of, um, you have to, you just feel this urge to-to sort of like, sort it all out, clean it all up, put it all in its place, take care of everything. In fact, I’m thinking Tetris, for example, is essentially a cleaning game. Like, the whole of the-the uh-the gameplay involves these uh, malordered objects coming down into a space creating a sense of disorder, and you’re trying to coax order out of it all the time in order to sort of just keep it clean, keep it away, and that there’s something fundamental about that pressure. Why do you want to do that? Because you just sort of do, right? In game design, we often talk about agency as a sort of important part of games, but for me, actually I find urgency is more so. Agency is sort of a, an easy way of saying, getting to do fun stuff, but if you’re doing fun stuff essentially in a vacuum, it doesn’t kind of matter. Whereas if the vacuum is requiring something of you, then it does matter, then the agency all sort of makes sense. Um, and - yeah, so urgency for me is more of a, more of a constant, if you like, than the fact that you do things in games. Of course you do.
