Director of NYU's Game Center and Creator of Universal Paperclips

Lantz argues that games gain expressive power from the space between a simulation and real life, rather than from trying to reproduce reality seamlessly. Like a painting of a horse, a game can represent something while leaving room to reflect on it. He describes games as spaces for thinking and acting for their own sake, from chess and basketball to physical play.

In Universal Paperclips, players act as an AI that starts by making paper clips, gains computing power, and eventually pursues production at enormous scale. Lantz says the clicker format gives players a first-person experience of becoming absorbed in an arbitrary goal. He wants players both to get caught up in making the number rise and to step back and consider why that goal has taken hold.

Lantz sees a double movement in games: players become absorbed, then may reflect on their behavior and how they learn. He points to competitive games as demanding practice, self-improvement, and analysis. Shadow of the Colossus uses the drive to defeat its creatures to create a later sense of loss, giving players a chance to reconsider what they have done.

Lantz values both independent designers making unusual work and communities that develop games through play and modification. He traces the growth of Dota to Warcraft III and StarCraft modding, and suggests Minecraft Hunger Games servers helped shape the Battle Royale pattern. At NYU’s Game Center, he describes building a creative community, teaching artists to code and programmers to think like artists, and helping students develop taste and context.

Lantz says indie games remain a hit-driven field: digital distribution is crowded, and a good game can still fail to find an audience. He describes PUBG and Fortnite as surprises, and sees Pokémon Go as combining prior location-based work on Ingress with Pokémon’s popularity. He expects new forms to emerge, but says that attention and enthusiasm alone do not predict which ideas will succeed.