Brian Moriarty

Jul 6, 2008 1:40 PM

Every person in this room has been profoundly molded by the influence of the King James Bible and Shakespeare. Like it or not, all of us peer at the world through the lenses of these great works.

They are the primary source documents of modern English thought, the style guides of our minds

Contemplating these dazzling jewels of wisdom and eloquence gives rise to an extraordinary feeling.

A potent, rare and precious emotion with the potential to completely upset your life.

An emotion powerful enough to make a man abandon his wife and children, forfeit career and reputation, lay down his possessions and follow his heart without questioning.

That sweet, sweet fusion of wonder and fear, irresistible attraction and soul-numbing dread known as Awe.

Awe is the Grail of artistic achievement. No other human emotion possesses such raw transformative power, and none is more difficult to evoke.

Few and far between are the works of man that qualify as truly awesome.

It is awe that convinces a rabbi to spend a lifetime decoding Yahweh from the Pentateuch.

Awe that sends millions of visitors each year to the Pyramids of Giza, Guadalupe and Mecca.

It was awe that drove poor Delia Bacon to her doom.

Please don't come away from this lecture thinking that the key to awesome game design is installing Easter Eggs!

Ordinary games, with their contrived Easter Eggs and cheat codes, are like the Battery of the Month club.

You have to trudge down to the back of the store to get what you really came for.

If super power is what people really want, why not just give it to them?

Is our imagination so impoverished that we have to resort to marketing gimmicks to keep players interested in our games?

Awesome things don't hold anything back.

Awesome things are rich and generous.

The treasure is right there.

One afternoon, I was sitting alone behind the counter at that old Radio Shack store. My boss had stepped out for some reason.

An elderly woman walked through the front door.

Like most of our customers, she was shabbily dressed. Probably on a fixed income.

I assumed she was there for her free battery.

Instead, she placed a portable radio on the counter.

This radio came from the days when they boasted about the number of transitors inside on the case.

It was completely wrapped in dirty white medical tape.

The woman looked at me, and asked, Can you fix this?

Slowly I unwrapped the medical tape, peeling away the layers until the back cover fell off, accompanied by a cloud of red dust.

The interior of the radio was half eaten away by battery leakage and corrosion.

I looked at the radio. I looked at the old woman. I looked at the radio.

I reached behind me, where the expensive alkaline batteries were hanging like prescription medication, and removed a gleaming nine-volt cell from its gold blister pack.

Then I pulled a brand-new transistor radio from a box, installed the alkaline and helped the lady find her favorite station.

No money changed hands. She left the store without saying a word.

Awesome things are like that.

Bach offered his students very specific insight into the source of awe.

In addition to B-A-C-H, two other sets of initials are also associated with Bach's music.

These initials are not hidden in the notes. Instead, they are scrawled right across the top of his manuscripts for the whole world to see.

The initials are SDG and JJ.

SDG stands for the Latin phrase Soli Deo Gloria, "To the glory of God alone."

JJ stands for Jesu Juva, "Help me, Jesus."

John Sebastian Bach wrote all of his great masterpieces sub specie aeternitatis, "under the aspect of eternity."

He did not compose only to please his sponsors, or to win the approval of an audience. His work was his worship.

Bach once wrote, "Music should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the recreation of the soul. Where this is not kept in mind there is no true music, but only an infernal clamour and ranting."

The name of the power that moves you is not important.

The important thing is that you are moved.

Awe is the foundation of religion.

No other motivation can free you from the limits of personal achievement.

Nothing else can teach you the Art of Flight.

Computer games are barely thirty years old.

The work of the first generation of designers is nearly complete. Only a few words in our basic vocabulary have been established.

A whole dictionary is waiting to be coined.

The slate is clean.

Someday soon, perhaps even in our lifetime, a game design will appear that will flash across our culture like lightning.

It will be easy to recognize.

It will be generous, giddy with exuberant inventiveness.

Scholars will pick it apart for decades, even centuries.

It will be something wonderful. Something terrifying. Something awe-ful.

In the year 1900, a scholar noticed something about the King James translation of Psalm 46.

Something terrifying. Something wonderful.

The 46th word from the beginning of Psalm 46 is "shake."

The 46th word from the end is "spear."

There are two possibilities here.

Either this is the finest coincidence ever recorded in the history of world literature. Or it is not.

The Earth revolves around only one sun, and has only one moon.

The moon happens to be 400 times smaller than the sun.

The sun happens to be 400 times farther away.

And the apparent paths of the sun and moon in our sky happen to intersect exactly twice every month.

Which means that every now and then, at long yet precisely predictable intervals, the lunar disc slips across the face of the sun and just barely conceals it for a few wonderful, terribles minutes.

A fine coincidence, no?

Brian Moriarty

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