I don't play games for the power fantasy of being able to do whatever I want, at any time, for any reason. For that level of freedom, close your eyes and use your imagination.

No game is as powerful and free as your life and your imagination. We must accept that. It isn't a flaw. It's a fact. It's the nature of the form. When you paint on a canvas, your ideas generally go inside a frame on a flat surface. You "make life" (to steal a term from the game Go) adhere to those conditions.

A game is simply another kind of canvas. The conditions are different from those of a hemp rectangle at the museum, covered in oily pigments. But the artist—and the viewer—is constrained nevertheless. That isn't a fault. It is the meaning of art that it cannot say and do everything at once.