It’s hard to conceive of an artistic medium more ephemeral than video games.
In the opening pages of his book Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter, Tom Bissell writes with undisguised melancholy, “One game designer told me that, due to the impermanent and tech-dependent nature of his medium, he sometimes felt as though he were writing his legacy in water.”
Yet here we are, on the eve of Elden Ring’s release, marvelling at the staying power of the games that Hidetaka Miyazaki and his team at From Software have developed over the past decade. To build a robust and enduring piece of artwork is to stage a revolt against the existential truism in the first chapter of the book of Ecclesiastes that “There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.”