Note: This piece was originally published in 2018, by gameindustry.biz, as part of their “Why I love” series. See the full article here:
My part on Nethack is faithfully recreated below.
NetHack
Mark F. Domowicz - Creative Director
I remember distinctly how I felt when I played Super Mario Bros. back in 1985. To me the Mushroom Kingdom was alive. It existed. I didn’t see sprites on screen, as much as I saw hints of the much deeper modern-day Alice In Wonderland that it was. I imagined and I participated. I filled in the blanks that the limited technology of the day left for me. Much as how the big-screen boogeyman is scariest when you don’t see him, The Mushroom Kingdom, and Zebes, and Hyrule, and so many of the video game worlds of that era, were the most real to me in their least articulated forms.
I was young then. The way I experienced video games was different from the way I experience them today. Partly because I’m an adult, and mostly because I’m a game developer, playing a video game now is some parts analysis, some parts appreciation, some parts criticism, even some parts envy. It’s almost no part escapism or immersion or wonder. It’s not that I enjoy games less. I just enjoy them differently.
But is that it really? NetHack was the first game in my adult, game-industry professional, life, that made me ask, “Am I too old to imagine? Or are modern games too preoccupied with fidelity to let me?” When I played NetHack for the first time, I was immersed in its universe to a degree that I’d not felt since I was a kid. Because the only “graphics” in NetHack are alphanumeric symbols, it was my own imagination doing the hard work. And because the mechanics are axiomatic and intermingling, the narrative wrote itself, just in time, before my eyes. It was the closest computer approximation to playing live Dungeons & Dragons that I’d ever seen before or since. It was, and remains, to my mind, the video game equivalent of reading a good book.
My love for NetHack has reached deep into the entirety of the “roguelike” genre from which it was borne and which it helps define. Roguelike features direct my interest in games to play, and roguelike ideas color my design sensibilities. My last title, Archangel, even has a “permadeath” mode - one of the most defining features of the genre.
But as my appreciation for the genre ever grows, and as the beauty and infinite depth of the best roguelikes continue to inspire me, it remains that I love NetHack the most. It was NetHack that brought me back to my childhood and gave me something back that I had lost long ago. It was NetHack that reminded me why I fell in love with video games at all.