video games are literature now (and they have been for ages)

Summary

The narrator argues that video games have long been capable of functioning as literature—not simply as entertainment, but as works that can change a player’s perspective and leave them with new thoughts after the experience ends.

The idea becomes personal through several formative games. While recovering from a serious illness, the narrator discovers Chants of Sennaar, a puzzle adventure about learning the languages of different groups in a tower. Its visual style, language-deciphering puzzles, and gradual progression draw the narrator into its world and provide a welcome escape.

The narrator’s childhood attachment to Monkey Island helped shape the belief that games could be as absorbing as books. Its humor, music, pirate setting, and wordplay-based sword-fighting stand out as memorable creative choices. Later, BioShock made a similar case for games as art to a wider audience. Beneath its shooter mechanics, it explores political ideas, personal freedom, and transhumanism.

Finally, the narrator describes playing Cairn after a period of creative frustration. What first seems like a climbing simulator becomes a story about its protagonist, Aava, confronting trauma and trying to prove to herself that she can endure a seemingly impossible climb. The physical act of climbing and the mountain’s scale reinforce the story’s emotional themes.

Artistic Techniques and Concepts

• Gameplay as storytelling: Mechanics can express a character’s struggle rather than merely accompany the plot. In Cairn, climbing makes the protagonist’s effort tangible.
• Puzzles as a way into a fictional world: Chants of Sennaar makes language-learning and decipherment central to the player’s role.
• Layered meaning: BioShock combines action-game conventions with political critique and questions about free will and transhumanism.
• Distinctive style and tone: The narrator praises Chants of Sennaar’s visuals and Monkey Island’s music, humor, and imagery-based fencing.
• Emotional transformation: The narrator defines “literature” broadly as art that leaves its audience with lasting thoughts or a changed outlook.
• Cultural recognition: The essay traces games’ shift from being dismissed as children’s entertainment to being treated as a serious art form, and imagines future creators pushing the medium in new directions.

The narrator also recommends several other games as examples of powerful, literary experiences: This War of Mine, What Remains of Edith Finch, Soma, and Disco Elysium.

Creators and Contributors

No individual game developers, writers, or other creators are named in the subtitles. The narrator refers to the developers of Chants of Sennaar, contemporary writers who make games, and people who recommended Cairn, but does not identify them by name.

The games mentioned are Chants of Sennaar, Monkey Island, BioShock, Deus Ex, Half-Life, Disco Elysium, Cairn, This War of Mine, What Remains of Edith Finch, and Soma.