Nerd World - TIME.com

The Perfect Ender's Game Video Game

There are a few sticking points to making Ender's Game -- The Video Game a truly satisfying experience.

1) Hooking up the world's Xbox 360s, Playstation 3's and Wii's to an actual functioning robotic space armada which really slaughters billions of actual living alien beings for real as you play unknowingly from your home.

2) Hiding the above fact until the final cut scene, so players can feel the appropriate sense of cosmic irony and crushing genocidal remorse after wiping out an entire species in the final boss battle.

3) Finding enough wipe out-able real alien enemy species to ensure maximum replayability.

4) Determining how many gamer points are appropriate for wiping out an an entire alien species. (Xbox 360 only.)

Yep, it's a challenge to make a video game from a story about a video game that turns out not to be a video game but a real thing (but the player thought all along was a just a video game). But if something is worth doing, it's worth doing right.


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About Nerd World

Lev Grossman

Lev Grossman blogs about anything and everything that could be plausibly labeled geeky--science fiction, fantasy, video games, comic books, tech stuff, and so on. If it could get you beaten up in junior high, it's fair game. Read more

Matt Selman

Matt Selman has worked on eleven seasons and over two hundred episodes of The Simpsons. He currently serves as an Executive Producer. Read more

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