Perhaps more famous for living under Iran’s Ayatollan Ruhollah Khomeini’s death-fatwa for his 1988 novel, The Satanic Verses, than the book itself (or anything else from his 18-title catalogue, for that matter), Salman Rushdie is nonetheless what those in the literary industry would consider something of an authority. 

So it’s kind of nice to see him talking about games as a legitimate narrative vehicle. In a video interview over on Big Think, the writer talks about Red Dead Redemption, after watching his son play it. 

“One of the things that’s interesting about it to me is the much looser structure of the game and the much greater agency that the player has, to choose how he will explore and inhabit the world,” he says. “That really interests me as a storyteller. I’ve always though that one of the things the internet and the gaming world permits as a narrative technique is to not tell a story from beginning to end [but] to tell a story sideways.”

He’s not about to advocate kids dumping books for games, though. “These games, they sometimes require lateral thinking , they sometimes require quite skilled hand eye coordination,” he adds, “but they’re not in any sense intelligent in the way that you want your children to develop intelligence. To make the mind not just supple, but actually informed.”

He’s kind of got a point. Pope Alexander VI wasn’t killed by a magic apple, despite what any game would have you believe, kids.