Tullio Avoledo and Davide Morosinotto are both authors, the former writing adult fiction, the latter children’s books, but they have something else in common: they love videogames and they both sincerely believe that they owe a lot to of their craft to them.

Avoledo affirms that his first professional experience as a consultant for a tech company made him realize how rewarding coding a videogame was when the early gaming machines, such as the Commodore 64, were released. When his love for videogames took hold, he started to understand how close they are to literature: they can convey important ideas, heavy concepts, intense action and a captivating plot, but on a computer screen.

(caricamento...)

The ultimate similarity, the one which convinced him to start working on the gaming series Metro 2033, is that both books and games allow you to make a simple pact with the audience, “I will not bore you”.

Morosinotto, on the other side, loves how videogames allow for a fully customizable experience, in the first person, based on your beliefs and preferences, while a book - no matter how good it is – is, and always will be someone else’s interpretation, which won’t be perfectly matching what your own interpretation might have been.

When the time came to open the discussion to the floor, the one question time allowed for helped confirm their love for both books and games, with Avoledo asserting that the meeting point between the two fields is getting closer and closer. The closing line sounded more like a warning than a suggestion: “Whenever videogames are going to explore reality more in depth, literature will be in real danger. Real danger”. Fans of videogames, on the other hand, may take it as a compliment.