Marx and Sam, both mixed-race Asian American roommates at Harvard, team up with a true gaming genius Sadie to form a game-making partnership. These
three are much more than just technical experts, they are true artists who create
beautiful and deeply engaging worlds within worlds with complicated moral dilemmas, and story lines that show remarkable depth and maturity. It turns out that there are multiple categories of gamers in the larger video game world, and Marx, Sam and Sadie are what’s called “Literary Gamers,” for whom reading and playing games are the same, both developing imagination and empathy. The stories they create are highly literate and absorbing and require players to make difficult, ethically nuanced choices and then accept the consequences of the paths they choose. A self-described lifelong LiteraryGamer, Ms Zevin has shown us the virtues and benefits of time spent navigating a carefully constructed virtual world, replete with drama and pain and beauty like our human world. I came away thinking it’s not so bad for today’s anxiety burdened young people to take a break in a place where they can take risks, make mistakes, suffer the consequences and go back and try again.
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is both well written and well narrated, and I highly recommend it.
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