Having said that, books are inherently more random-access than non-arcade games. They have much less state; one of the things I thought was interesting about Lego Star Wars is that it managed to avoid state almost entirely.

Hmm, rereading what you actually said, I guess I’m veering off on a bit of a tangent again. That Oblivion example is an interesting one: there too, it shows both the strength and weakness of games, in that (unlike with books) at least you have the possibility of creating a different kind of character, if not the time.

I’d say that the failing, however, is perhaps 90% the game’s, and 10% ours, that we don’t re-play games more. I do know people who will go back and play Morrowind or Oblivion for tens of hours, and I actually wish I had time to do that. I think the central problem may well be time–whereas it takes no more than 10 minutes to contextualize and re-read my favorite parts of, say, Herodotus, it would take multiple hours to do what I’d really love to do with Oblivion and create a different kind of character and get that character to one of my favorite parts of the story.

Very interesting indeed.