Why Sam Barlow says "witnessing" can be a powerful game mechanic

gamedeveloper.com:

By now it's no surprise that Half Mermaid studio head Sam Barlow can spin a great yarn. After the back-to-back successes of Her Story, Telling Lies, and now Immortality, you'd be forgiven for thinking he was struck by lightning at some point and his brain was optimally rewired for making full-motion video games that hypnotize players.

But nope! That is exactly what did not happen. In a recent chat on Game Developer Talks, (a webinar series coordinated by Game Developer and our colleagues at sibling organization GDC) Barlow went out of his way to break down the origins of his creative process—and how they fed into one of his most key ideas about game design: that "witnessing" can be as powerful a verb for game design as "jumping," "shooting," "running," or "ordering."

What does that mean? Well if you're going to make any sense of "witnessing" events in games, you don't need to play The Witness, you should instead look up a little Infocom game called A Mind Forever Voyaging, for it is here you will find the first clues to Barlow's design ethos.

In A Mind Forever Voyaging, players take on the role of an artificial intelligence tasked with simulating the long-term effects of a proposed piece of legislation called "the Plan for Renewed National Purpose." The player doesn't pour over analytics of course—they navigate a simulated South Dakota town called Rockville, speak with its residents, and watch how the Plan affects Americans over fifty years.

The game, authored by prolific Infocom designer Steve Meretzky, is Sam Barlow's favorite video game. He was delighted to share anecdotes about being asked about his favorite game at various award ceremonies, only to watch interviewers' faces fall flat as he began describing a text