Videogames need to stay relevant to the outside world, not cling
on to introverted scenes  There’s an Anthony Burgess line that
has stuck with me over the years: “And death, terrible as
prunes”. It’s by a writer who has grown up in fear of the fruit
(I don’t recall why), so much so that to him prunes are a dark
symbol. The gag, of course, is that they’re just silly little
purple things you eat. The subjective perception and the
objective reality are different.  Lately, I have been feeling
something similar about games: that both industry and academy
are full of symbols that seem like part of a Very Important
Conversation, but to which the outside world doesn’t relate, or
finds vaguely ridiculous.  Take CLOP. A sequel to QWOP, you play
it by using four keys to control each leg of a horse and try to
make it gallop across a level. It’s almost impossible to go
farther than a few metres because of the unforgiving physics,
and the end results are often wickedly hilarious.  On face
value, CLOP is a memorable thing t