Westworld is a good TV show about a terrible video game

HBO's Westworld is a show about technological anxiety, explored through the lens of a futuristic theme park where you can live out your wildest fantasies with hundreds of almost perfectly lifelike (and increasingly self-aware) animatronic "hosts." It is also, as many people have pointed out, a series about video games. Creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy have explicitly compared the titular park to violent open-world games like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption, the latter sharing a similar Western setting. The designers of the theme park face headaches straight out of the games industry, like pushing out updates before testing for bugs or writing dramatic speeches knowing they'll be cut short when a player just shoots the monologuing character. In addition to overarching questions about artificial intelligence and interactive storytelling, the show aims to hold a dark mirror to present-day entertainment, particularly the violent and hedonistic side of games.