From the first page of this I already liked the idea of using Aristotle’s Poetics to break down ideas in games. I used it a lot in my high school Poets and Playwrights class, so I’m fairly familiar with the text. I fully agree, as I think Poetics can be used with almost any medium. I also was interested in the idea of games as more simulation than narrative. One quote that brings this to light is “In temporal terms, narrative is about what already happened while simulation is about what could happen.” SimCity is a good example of this, talking about making a copy of Paris, but changing things. Simulations are very much about exploration: You build, you learn, you figure out different possibilities, and you can easily destroy what you create, at least in the case of SimCity.
