I often work in games and games-adjacent media. But I’m a terrible player of games. It takes me an unreasonably long time to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing. I never remember what all the buttons do. My approach to controllers could be charitably called “flailing.” So I often quit on games. There are usually two points when that happens. The first is early on. The beginning of playing a new game is always a struggle, as I try to push through all of my confusion, while a voice in my head shouts, “Hey, isn’t this supposed to be fun? Are you having fun?” If long enough and loud enough that answer is always no, often this is where I will bounce off of a game. If I can push through that rough initial phase, a moment comes when things snap into place. The fighting with the controls eases up and I can start to sink into what the game wants to be. In this second phase, I can genuinely start to evaluate the question “are you having fun?”

What counts as fun can be difficult to determine. I often find that there's a sweet spot which I call "pleasant confusion" -- I know I'm not fully understanding something, but I have enough of a picture to push forward and figure out what I'm missing, or I've come to care enough about the story that I will push through whatever confusion still exists. It's a tricky balance. When it's off, when the difficulties are too great or my investment is too low, this is the second place where I'll often give up on a game.

But if something gets its hooks into me, I will persist all the way to the end - even if there are parts of the game I find frustrating. The storytelling, relationships, and character work in Baldur’s Gate 3 is so good, it was worth slogging through all the combat (seriously, what I wouldn’t give for a “Skip Combat” button.)

The worldbuilding of Cyberpunk 2077 is extraordinary. Keanu Reeves and Idris Elba? In this economy? I played it through to the end, even though after I while I found the world too grim and depressing to want to spend that much time in.

Every once in a while, the rare game will get its hooks into me so much that I'll find myself thinking about it when I’m not playing it, mulling over its world and themes and story, eager to get back to it and explore further. And if it can keep up this feeling all the way to its ending, I become an evangelist.

So, reader, go play Blue Prince. Immediately.

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On the surface, Blue Prince seems like a very simple game. You play as Simon P. Jones, a 14-year old boy. Simon’s grand-uncle Herbert Sinclair has just died and named Simon his heir. You stand to inherit his home, Mt. Holly Estate, a grand 45-room mansion, under one stipulation…that you find the hidden 46th room. Mechanically, the game is a cross between and deckbuilder and a roguelike; each round, you enter the house and upon selecting a door, you are given the choice of three floor plans (i.e. blueprints, get it?) for what lies on the other side. There are constraints on how many moves you have, and what you can do inside those rooms. But each room you discover tells you a little bit more about your grand-uncle, his home, your family, and the mystery of Room 46. At the end of each day, the house resets, and you have to start all over again, choosing new floor plans and discovering new clues.

I spent a lot of the first phase of this game in my usual struggle. What's going on here? What does any of this mean? I can tell there are puzzles here, but I don’t really know what I’m looking for. After flailing through a few frustrating rounds, I decided I needed to slow down, to take more time examining the rooms I chose. I started to see a pattern, a massive puzzle hidden in plain sight. I set about trying to solve this puzzle, focusing on finding each new piece, and this kicked me into the second phase. But as I explored the manor further, found new rooms, and unlocked new combinations, the puzzle gave way to something else, something bigger. Because hidden all throughout the house were hints and clues to a crime, a coverup, and a personal tragedy. Suddenly, all of the puzzles and challenges had a point, a narrative grounding, one based intimately in Simon’s family, the country he lives in, and the history of the world he belongs to. The depth of the worldbuilding is extraordinary, and even more impressive is how it all connects back to a simple relationship between Simon and someone very close to him.

When I finally found Room 46, I expected the game to be over. Instead, it blossomed out into something even deeper. I won’t give any more details for fear of spoilers. But I will say that this is only the second time I’ve been moved to tears by something in a game (I’m looking at you, Life Is Strange).

This one’s going to stay with me for a long time. One thing I keep coming back to is the extraordinary power of building a highly detailed world, then smashing it into bits and hiding the pieces of it for players to uncover and piece together on their own. This is the same principal that makes Alternate Reality Games so powerful, and Blue Prince is one of the best examples of it I’ve seen in a more traditional videogame format. When I finally was done and eager to talk to others who felt the same, I was thrilled to discover that immersive experience desiger Nick Tierce had taken his appreciation for the game to amazing lengths at this year's San Diego Comic-Con.

It's also got a killer soundtrack that will make you obsessed with the sound of a bass clarinet.​

Recent Media

Pluribus is incredible, and it’s so nice to have a show where when you sit down to watch a new episode, almost anything is possible. I’m also enjoying some of the interactive marketing. Do any of you know who's running this campaign? Is it one of you?

I love me a historical show, so Death By Lightning was perfect catnip. Matthew Macfadyen and Michael Shannon are predictably fantastic, and the rest of the cast are heavyweights - Betty Gilpin, Shea Whigam, Bradley Whitford and a career-best Nick Offerman, who does the impossible by making you have feelings about Chester A. Arthur.

There’s a popular internet joke about how men are always thinking about the fall of the Roman Empire. That’s not true for me - I’m always thinking about the American Revolution. So you know that the new Ken Burns documentary, cleverly titled The American Revolution, has been at the top of my list. So far, so great, and I wouldn’t be shocked if I follow it up with a long-overdue rewatch of The Civil War. (Or maybe Baseball, to get through the long off-season.)

One nice surprise in the new Burns doc is that one of the talking heads is William Hogeland, who has written a number of books about the time period that I’ve come to love. They’re all great, but I would recommend “Declaration,” a surprising and illuminating dive into a little-known conspiracy that enabled the ratification of the Declaration of Independence, or “Autumn of the Black Snake,” an account of the US Army’s first official war against a coalition of Native Americans in the Ohio Valley, told from multiple viewpoints. For you "Hamilton: The Musical" nuts, I recommend “The Hamilton Scheme” - you know how in Act 2 of the show, Hamilton is so focused on “getting his plan through Congress”? This is that plan, explained and untangled, and how it led directly to a lot of the problems we still deal with today.

Bill tells me his next book is about Aaron Burr, which I am awaiting eagerly. We've also chatted about how there really needs to be a prestige TV series about the Whiskey Rebellion, if anyone wants to hear the pitch.

The Postmaster Is Coming

I haven’t had much to say about the project we’re currently calling “THE POSTMASTER,” but things are moving behind the scenes. I will have something to share publicly very soon, so go sign up here to be the first to hear about it. I did do my first vague talking about the project as a guest on the No Proscenium podcast a little while ago (my segment starts around the 1:16:00 mark.) And a couple of months ago, there was a research trip.

What games have you played that you’ve loved? That you’ve ragequit? Are you also capitvated by multi-hour documentaries full of slow-pans and plaintive fiddle music? Do you have a favorite historian? Or any strongly held feelings about Chester A. Arthur?