Games Aren't Numbers

Recently I had been hankering for a new cool gadget, in part because it’s been ages since I last got one. I still am without any sort of touchscreen Apple product or even a portable videogame system, not counting my relatively ancient first generation Nintendo DS. I was leaning for a fancy DSi but then the 3DS was announced and I knew I would hate myself if I didn’t wait for that. So I ended up getting myself an Amazon Kindle. It symbolizes the ultimate digitization of my entire life, even books have dissolved into cyberspace.

The Kindle fascinates me. It’s rare to see a new device which does so little to explicitly try to impress its user. There are no flashy graphics, no bells or whistles, no extra anything at all to sexy it up. It just emulates one of the most primitive technologies of our era. The screen not only supports a mere sixteen shades of gray, but sports an abysmal framerate. All of the buttons are uncomfortable and cumbersome except the two enormous ones labeled “NEXT PAGE.” Other than its thinness, nothing seems to be special at all about it. But none of that matters because, after all, you’re only supposed to read books here. It felt weird for me to be using a device which just displays text. Even my calculator in high school had videogames on it. It was refreshing to be free of games for as long as I held my Kindle.

That didn’t last long however, because about a week later Amazon released their first two Kindle games in anticipation for the “Kindle Active Content” program they currently have in beta. As expected, these tech demos aren’t especially mind blowing. They involve shuffling letters around and spelling words. I can’t imagine a lot of other opportunities for games beyond that and crossword puzzles or Sudoku. E-readers like the Kindle are probably the worst possible platform for games, just by looking at the technical capabilities.

This is exactly why I am so intrigued by the possibility of e-reader videogames. I can’t even imagine a game right now that could possibly justify being on a Kindle rather than any other device. This is why I want so much for someone to blow my mind and make one. I’ve seen what the indie community has done when faced with the challenges of other new platforms. So I have no doubt one of those developers will see that grayscale e-ink and those big “NEXT PAGE” buttons and have some crazy idea that suddenly justifies the device’s $190 price tag all on its own.

What will it be, I wonder. A text adventure? An interactive novel? An artsy visual poem? A collection of puzzles? A “social” game? Maybe the API will let developers interact with passages from your book collection. Maybe these hypothetical games can’t even be contained within our present day notions of genre. Now that I’m all excited about this I will be very let down if this doesn’t happen.

As a side note/announcement, I just added my blog to the Kindle store. Unfortunately though, Amazon set their own price for it. If you don’t want to spend $2 a month just to read this then I won’t hold that against you.

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