Each year brings fresh, competing demands on our attention. For many companies, holding a person’s attention for the length of a film or a book is no longer sufficient. The profit imperative demands a greater sacrifice. Enter video games, which are second only to social media in their ability to assume residence in our daily routines.
The business models are distinct, of course: Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram seek to engage us long enough to harvest personal information, which can be used to sell us stuff we might want. Many video games, by contrast, aim to so deeply immerse us in their worlds that we are compelled to purchase digital clothing, furniture, weapons, and subscriptions that allow us to exhibit our tastes and interests online.
The medium has followed this trajectory for years. But, in 2022, the long-term effects have become clearer. In many cases, games are no longer a mode of pure distraction; they demand ongoing investments of time, money, and attention, which are meant not only to satisfy the player but also to appease developers’ shareholders. Ideas refined in the gaming industry are becoming commonplace elsewhere; some new cars require owners to make a one-off payment, or to take up a subscription, to unlock features such as heated seats, high-beam assist, and color-changing paintwork (the automotive industry’s answer to avatar skins). And yet, amid this bleakness, artists find a way to prioritize craft over the balance sheet, producing games that enchant, unnerve, and delight. Here, in no special order, are some of the year’s best.
Elden Ring
(PC; PlayStation; Xbox)
In the days following the release of Elden Ring, a vast, vibrant fantasy game directed by the renowned Hidetaka Miyazaki, competitors expressed some bewilderment at its success. Elden Ring’s rules, they argued, were too opaque. Its world—partly imagined by George R. R. Martin, and full of glittering streams, bubbling marshland, and gust-carved hills—was too confusingly open. And, like much of Miyazaki’s work, the game was absurdly difficult, its challenges liable to discourage all but the most tenacious newcomer. It’s true that Elden Ring ignores many of the principles of high-budget game design. And yet there is a powerful magic in its approach. This is not a world built to flatter tourists; it does not lead you by the hand through trials of carefully escalating difficulty. Rather, it seems to exist independently of your presence. How you explore is a matter of personal choice, and you alone must contend with the consequences.
Image courtesy Half Mermaid Productions
Immortality
(Android; iOS; PC; Xbox)
For the past few years, the game designer Sam Barlow has been perfecting a fresh, nonlinear form of storytelling, which bridges the gap between film and games. In Immortality, you sift through live-action footage drawn from three unreleased movies, each of which stars Marissa Marcel (Manon Gage), a fictional starlet who’s gone missing. You browse the trove of unsorted clips via an interface that mimics a Moviola film editor. Pause the footage, click on any actor or prop of interest, and the camera transports you to a related image from another clip—either a scene from one …….