Comment by kibwen

> In a video game you're not just the audience you're a participant.

I'm not about to say that games don't occupy an interesting point in space to the degree that they invite (or require!) you to actively participate in the art rather than passively observe. But I still contend that such a stark division is artificial.

When I spent my youth running around the worlds of Mario Sunshine or The Wind Waker, whatever narrative or gameplay experience the games presented was secondary to the worlds themselves that stoked my imagination. My fondest memories were imagining myself being in those worlds, at which I spent hours upon hours, using them as a canvas for creativity well beyond what the limited game mechanics could allow. And that wasn't directionally different from how I experienced the Harry Potter series in that same era, spending countless hours daydreaming that I was in that world. It didn't matter that the latter was a book, it was interactive to me nonetheless, as well as to legions of others, as the piles upon piles of extant fanfiction can attest.