Drewch – LookingOutwards05

Nitzu (Nitzan Bartov) said something very revelatory (at least to me) during the speed presentations, something along the lines: “In the future, everybody is going to be playing games. If you aren’t playing them right now, it’s because the games you want to play haven’t been made yet. What kind of game do you want to play?”

For a while now, I’ve settled for the idea that not all people play, want to play, or appreciate games, and that’s ok. But now that I think about it, I only thought that way because the way games were going then was mainly formalist games. You really ever only had three flavors on the market: competitive, story-based, and arcade games. Games are reaching more people now than ever before, not only because of technology and accessibility but also because new kinds of games are being made. “What kind of game do you want to play?”

Nitzu wanted to play a Soap Opera VR game, so she made The Artificial and the Intelligent. It’s hilarious, but also thought-provoking, and also a soap opera. I wish I could find videos of another one of her games: Horizon, but what The Artificial and the Intelligent proved to me was that games are for everyone, they just don’t know it yet.

The Artificial and the Intelligent