Links: The 2022 Deutscher Spielepreis, Spiel des Jahres Support, and Sid Sackson in "Fields of Play"

Indirect interaction is therefore a versatile double-sided euphemism, meaning sometimes effective randomness with fake interaction and sometimes direct interaction but, shh, we should not say it. The strange success of this expression is a consequence of a very worrying trend, the idea that we should respect in games the same moral rules we should — and often don't — respect in real life. Or if we don't, we should at least make some effort and use a few long and empty words to fake it. Randomness is unfair in the real world, so there should be no randomness in games. Hitting one's neighbour is bad in the real world, so we should not do it in games.

This strange idea is mostly a way not to deal with the issues of the real world, and derives from a total misunderstanding of what a game is. We play games for the fun of being carried away by the crazy randomness we are carefully avoiding in the real world. We play games for the fun of backstabbing our best friends, something we usually don't do in the real world. It is the exact opposite. If you remove randomness, violence, and intrigue from games, there will be very little left — may be just indirect interaction.