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By Paola Antonelli, Anna Burckhardt and Paul Galloway
140 pages, flexibound, $39.95
Published by the Museum of Modern Art
store.moma.org

Having been a fan of video games since my childhood—which largely kicked off with Myst in the early ’90s—I couldn’t put down Never Alone: Video Games as Interactive Design, a companion publication to the exhibition of the same name at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) that champions how interactive media has captured our imaginations. Put together by MoMA’s senior curator Paola Antonelli, Never Alone examines the evolution of interaction design through 36 games, from classics like Tetris, Space Invaders and, yes, Myst, to more recent releases such as Minecraft, Portal, Return of the Obra Dinn and Everything is going to be OK, a winner in our 2020 Interactive competition. Alongside images from the selected games are explanations of their significance and sometimes the designers’ thought processes, such as video game designer Lucas Pope’s inspiration for Papers, Please, which juxtaposes the administrative qualities of interaction design with a grim immigration simulation in which players allow or reject potentially dangerous people’s entrance into a fictional country. What’s more, each section of the book introduces the philosophy behind several design concepts, such as the method of input, the player’s role, time spent in games as opposed to time in the real world, and the emergence of games as virtual meeting spaces. Beyond an intriguing art book for designers’ collections, this short read could spark plenty of new perspectives through which interaction designers can approach their craft. —Michael Coyne

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