I contacted Bissell to ask him what he thought about the potentialities of video games as literature, and began by telling him how much I’d loved the literary quality of the Hitchhiker’s Guide game.

What I felt about Hitchhiker’s Guide was, this is fun in the way that the sense of discovery in reading is fun, except that I am interactively making it happen; I’ve unlocked this revelation. And seeing you talk about this game reminded me of that feeling, something I hadn’t thought about in a long time.

People are doing genuinely cool stuff with games as a storytelling medium right now. There’s this eerily affecting game out from Telltale Games called The Walking Dead—the game version of the TV series. Obviously it’s got zombies, and so it’s both incredibly violent and upsetting, but, unlike most zombie games, you’re not just constantly pulling the trigger. It’s not a shooter. It’s not a shooter. In fact, it’s using the devices of one of the purer, more literary game genres out there: the old-school, point-and-click adventure game. You walk around static environments, looking at stuff, picking stuff up, and talking to people. That’s really what the game is about: talking to people, forming relationships. The relationship between the two main characters (a disgraced black academic and a little girl) is genuinely affecting. I wouldn’t put it on the same level of affecting-ness that you’d find in a really good literary novel, but there are times when it comes tantalizingly close to that. So it’s a writer’s game, in that sense. It’s a game that manages to create high drama out of deciding whether or not to cut a little girl’s hair, believe it or not, because if he keeps her hair long, a zombie will be able to grab it. And you have to have this conversation with her, and sort of allow her to see why she needs to get her hair cut without really telling her why, because you don’t want to alarm her. It must sound like pulpy nonsense described in this way, but the way the game humanizes these people really pays emotional dividends.

More and more, I’m seeing that games are mining good, old-fashioned human anxieties for their drama, and that’s really promising. Games, more and more, are not just about shooting and fighting, and for that reason I’m optimistic and heartened about where the medium is heading, because I think game designers are getting more interested in making games that explore what it means to be alive. It’s one of the reasons I’m happy to be doing this, and hope I can keep doing it.

How long will it take before we see a game that has the quality of a literary novel? That pushes the same buttons, as it were.

It depends what you mean by “quality.” There’s never going to be a direct one-to-one ratio here, you know. But there have already been a few games that approach something akin to the “literary,” at least for me. One of the games that I’m really looking forward to—a game that I actually worked on a little bit—is called The Witness, which a game designer named Jonathan Blow is going to release in the fall. Jon is a member of the game world’s genuinely provocative advance guard. I feel no hesitation in calling him a genius. I wrote a little bit for an earlier version of the game, and so have had the privilege to play it quite a bit. I can say it’s really going to be a special, and possibly even groundbreaking, experience. It’s an incredibly personal, strange, and moving work of art. It’s a first-person walker, I would say, in that you have the typical first-person viewpoint but you don’t have any tools or items. You have only your virtual eyes and your non-virtual brain to help you out. All over the island are these amazing interactive puzzles, which start off seeming fairly simple but, by the end, become impressively complicated and elaborate. But they always make sense. Jon’s goal in the game is nonverbal communication. It’s how his puzzles teach you to pay attention to what’s around you without using any words. It’s also kind of about physics, insofar as I can tell! The first time I played it, I looked at Jon and said, “This is the next step.” It might be the game that finally moves people who think games are a waste of time to say, “I get why this medium is important, and why people are so fascinated by the possibilities here.”

Right? And if games become a thing like, “Oh! They tell really good stories in these now!” Oh my god, there will be a total stampede.

Sure, but now that I’ve worked on a few games, I’ve grappled with the degree to which games are not really a writer’s medium. Film’s not really a writer’s medium, either. Good writing certainly doesn’t hurt, but it’s not the thing that saves the day. I’ve been quietly lobbying for games that are smart and intelligent, even if they’re about blowing lots of shit up. At the same time, though, pure storytelling is never going to be the thing that games do better than anything. Games are primarily about a connection between the player, the game world, and the central mechanic of the game. They’re about creating a space for the player to engage with that mechanic and have the world react in a way that feels interesting and absorbing but also creates a sense of agency. So writing, in games, is about creating mood and establishing a basic sense of intent. The player has some vague notion of what the intent of the so-called author is, but the power of authorship is ultimately for the player to seize for him or herself. This goes for any kind of game. I think good game writing is a process of getting out of the player’s way. You give him or her just enough to work with narratively, but ultimately you let the player tell his or her own story.

A kinetic, direct element that you wouldn’t have in a novel.

Yeah, or a film, for that matter.

A hands-on-ness.

“Immersion” is the big watchword that game people use all the time. But to me it’s not a matter of being “immersed” so much as it is simply being interested. (A game designer and academic named Richard Lemarchand made this argument beautifully at the G.D.C. [the Game Developers Conference] a couple years ago.) And you can be interested in all sorts of ways. One of the frustrating things for me in the last few weeks has been seeing the “video-game violence” debate. There’s been a dispiriting lack of recognition of the sheer number of games out there that aren’t violent, that are thoughtful.

I’ve been asked a few times to weigh in on the “violent video games” debate, but I hesitate to because I feel like the N.R.A. set a trap by shining a spotlight on video games. Which isn’t to say that I think that games are entirely blameless. Games, generally speaking, are probably way too violent.