Valve&#39;s Erik Wolpaw On How DayZ And Minecraft Fulfill
&#39;The Promise Of Games&#39;  Among the many highlights from
the Erik Wolpaw/Tim Schafer panel at PAX this past weekend was a
brief exchange where an audience member asked what Wolpaw
thought about the disconnect between authored single-player
games and games that allowed truly personal stories to emerge,
like Notch's Minecraft and Dean Hall's DayZ.  "It's not [about]
single-player vs multiplayer," Wolpaw said, "it's more, can you
have an authored story in that situation? It gets tough. I look
at stories coming out of Minecraft or something like DayZ, and
honestly… it makes me just despair. If I had any guts or honor,
I'd leave the industry." The audience started laughing. "It
seems like it's the promise of games. It's like, 'I have full
agency. Total, total agency.'"  Wolpaw paused. "I'm not actually
quitting my job," he clarified, and smiled.  Schafer picked up
the joke: "He'll be pulling a paycheck, but he's not going to
care anymore. Because DayZ