In 2004, Holly Longdale was a game designer on EverQuest, then the champion of a new genre of video game that allowed for multiplayer role-playing on a huge scale. In these online fantasy worlds, players could quest together rather than alone, adding a fascinating new social – and competitive – dimension to the static, offline role-playing that Holly's generation had grown up with. But whenever she could, Longdale would sneak in a few hours playing EverQuest's main competitor instead. That game was World of Warcraft (WoW). "There were so many moments in WoW I was envious of," she says, "and completely lost in. I remember running through Ashenvale as a Night Elf Hunter and the music and the ambience – there was a mood you couldn't deny. Then I saw another player running in the opposite direction, a Druid who buffed me on their way by. That was when I knew I was going to be in this for the long-haul."

In 1985, brothers Dene and Simon Carter vowed to each other that they would one day start their own development studio together. The game they imagined was ambitious, as Simon outlined in a developer diary: a fantasy role-playing game, "populated with compelling and convincing characters with real personality, people who actually reacted to what you did … We wanted each and every person who played our game to have a unique experience, to have their own stories to tell." The idea of a living, reactive game world was an obsession for many game creators (and players) at the time, largely because it had never yet been done. In the 1980s, a virtual fantasy world like this was far beyond the realms of technological possibility. Thirteen years later, they got the opportunity to make the game of their dreams, at their own studio Big Blue Box.

"A scripter was convinced that it would make the scene complete if you could be turned into a wheel of cheese," Larian Studios' lead systems designer Nick Pechenin tells me. The main story of Baldur's Gate 3 is about an invasion of tentacle-mouthed creatures that wouldn't look out of place in one of HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu horror stories, so a sidequest where a disgruntled wizard transforms you into cheese may seem out of place. But moments like this encapsulate why Larian is the game developer that comes closest to capturing the anarchic freedom of real-world sessions of Dungeons & Dragons. More than 20 years ago, before Mass Effect and Dragon Age, before even Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, much-loved developer BioWare made its name with Baldur's Gate and its sequel. "When the original games came out, they were the bleeding edge of what was possible technologically, visually, and story-wise," says Pechenin.

When I saw the announcement trailer for Immortals of Aveum in the winter of 2022, I was surprised by my own interest in the game. Immortals came from an unproven studio founded four years prior by Bret Robbins, a AAA creative director who most recently built a trio of Call of Duty titles: Modern Warfare 3, Advanced Warfare, and WWII. Ascendant Studios, his independent venture, was partnering with EA on its debut game, a first-person shooter in a militaristic fantasy world. On the surface, it didn't sound like something I'd be drawn to. But Immortals of Aveum caught my eye.

Slate has relationships with various online retailers. If you buy something through our links, Slate may earn an affiliate commission. We update links when possible, but note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change. All prices were up to date at the time of publication. Thirty hours into the game, I've already explored ruins, spelunked caverns, raided catacombs, stormed castles, slayed a dragon, and looted countless corpses--but I still barely know why.

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) tools, including natural language processing (NLP) techniques, have become increasingly sophisticated, achieving exceptional results in a variety of tasks. NLP techniques are specifically designed to understand human language and produce suitable responses, thus enabling communication between humans and artificial agents. Other studies also introduced goal-oriented agents that can autonomously navigate virtual or videogame environments. So far, NLP techniques and goal-oriented agents have typically been developed individually, rather than being combined into unified methods. Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology and Facebook AI Research have recently explored the possibility of equipping goal-driven agents with NLP capabilities so that they can speak with other characters and complete desirable actions within fantasy game environments.

Co-founder and CEO Kyle Aulerich partnered with Brynn Mountain to develop the new game concept that integrates their shared passion for adventure stories with interactive gaming. Mythion Adventures was inspired by a series of original stories set in the fantasy world of Aulain. Working with a team of talented illustrators and writers, Aulerich and Mountain created a book and game that invite readers and players to immerse themselves and invite friends to join them. "Mythion Adventures is more than just a game, it's an interactive fiction experience that allows players to become a part of the story and its characters," explains Aulerich. "Players will choose their own path and navigate their way through the twists and turns of the journey to overcome dangers they encounter in this fantasy world."

Eímear Noone got into composing and conducting video game music by accident. One day, while studying music at Trinity College Dublin, a fourth-year student came to the bar she was drinking in with members of the college chapel choir and offered them a few quid to help with the orchestration on a project of his. "I have a vivid memory of sitting on a studio floor somewhere in Dublin writing choral parts with my pals and then singing them," she says. "Six months later my brother calls me in a complete tizzy and says, 'Did you work on Metal Gear Solid?' I was like, 'No!' He says, 'Well, I'm looking at your name on the screen credits right now.' And sure enough, the session she had contributed to for beer money was the soundtrack to Hideo Kojima's blockbusting adventure game. "Years later I was at the Bird's Nest in Beijing at the Olympic Stadium conducting this very piece of music," she says. Noone is now a hugely successful film and video game composer, having contributed scores for directors such as Gus Van Sant and Joe Dante, and for games, World of Warcraft, Diablo III and Hearthstone. In November, she's presenting her second series of High Score, Classic FM's agenda-setting programme dedicated to game music. Underappreciated outside of game fandom for years, the genre is now huge business with dedicated orchestras playing sold-out global concert tours. And Noone is a passionate advocate – very keen to explore and explain the unique elements of the art form. There is, of course, a foundational similarity between game and film scores – they are both composed to accompany and accentuate screened action. But while a film score needs to accompany a two-hour linear experience with specific cues and events, video game music must be there for many hours of play. Most open-word action adventures, the likes of Assassin's Creed Origins, Witcher 3 and Final Fantasy XV, offer over 100 hours of narrative, but many players will spend much longer exploring. Music scores also have two different roles in games: they accompany the non-interactive cinematic sequences that set up the story and occur throughout a game – sort of like short animated movie sequences; and they provide background music while you play. "Cinematic are scored very similarly to a movie or an animated film.

Whether they be written in the annals, painted on canvas, or coded into virtual space, fantasy worlds are captivating. It's as if these stories wield a macrocosmic mirror, consistently challenging us with distorted versions of our own world. Although this distortion is initially confronting, it soon makes it easier to gravitate towards what's at the core of these realms, and what that means in relation to our own. I first played The Witcher 3 about a year after it came out. I was invested in the series when it launched, having already played the other games and read some of the books, but I couldn't put much time into the game -- I was kept busy between studying English at university and working full-time hours at my supposedly part-time job.

It's a role-playing video game that, like many of its kind, allows users to choose and customize their own avatar, including a hairstyle and clothing. Set in a medieval fantasy world, users build up their power as their character travels across "provinces," overcoming obstacles and challenges along the way. What's unique about SPARX -- which stands for smart, positive, active, realistic, X-factor thoughts -- is that it's designed specifically for people with mild to moderate depression. SPARX was developed in the late 2000s by researchers and clinicians at the University of Auckland in New Zealand who became alarmed by the high suicide rate among teenagers in the country. They decided to develop a way to reach out to young people who shy away from seeking face-to-face counseling. The game's original English version is currently available only in New Zealand.