"It is really hard to make it convincing enough that you forget you are playing a video game"
About this Quote
The line lands with the weary precision of someone who’s spent a career chasing authenticity in a medium that’s always one step removed from life. Tim Page, a photographer best known for images that feel dropped straight out of history’s bloodstream, is talking about “convincing” the way a documentarian does: not as spectacle, but as a fragile trust between creator and viewer. The goal isn’t prettier graphics. It’s erasure of the frame.
What makes the quote work is its built-in admission of failure. “Really hard” isn’t a casual complaint; it’s a confession that immersion is less a technical hurdle than a psychological one. Games constantly remind you you’re in control: HUDs, objectives, loot, optimization, the faint gaminess of systems clicking into place. Even “realistic” worlds can feel like dioramas when the player senses the rules underneath. Page’s phrasing implies that the enemy of belief isn’t fantasy; it’s design that shows its seams.
Coming from a photographer, the subtext is pointed: photographs can trick you instantly. They borrow reality’s authority, even when staged. Games, by contrast, ask for sustained surrender, minute after minute, while the player actively manipulates the scene. That interactivity is their superpower and their Achilles’ heel.
Contextually, Page is also defending a standard of emotional truth. Forgetting you’re playing isn’t escapism; it’s presence. The highest ambition of the medium, he suggests, is not to distract you, but to make you feel implicated.
What makes the quote work is its built-in admission of failure. “Really hard” isn’t a casual complaint; it’s a confession that immersion is less a technical hurdle than a psychological one. Games constantly remind you you’re in control: HUDs, objectives, loot, optimization, the faint gaminess of systems clicking into place. Even “realistic” worlds can feel like dioramas when the player senses the rules underneath. Page’s phrasing implies that the enemy of belief isn’t fantasy; it’s design that shows its seams.
Coming from a photographer, the subtext is pointed: photographs can trick you instantly. They borrow reality’s authority, even when staged. Games, by contrast, ask for sustained surrender, minute after minute, while the player actively manipulates the scene. That interactivity is their superpower and their Achilles’ heel.
Contextually, Page is also defending a standard of emotional truth. Forgetting you’re playing isn’t escapism; it’s presence. The highest ambition of the medium, he suggests, is not to distract you, but to make you feel implicated.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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