Why gamers are returning to paper notebooks: the joy of in-game notes

In a column for PC Gamer, the author reflects on what digital games take away from the play experience: the tactile side. Videogames and board games coexist in his life precisely because each fills a gap left by the other. Digital titles allow for complexity that pen and paper could never track, while tabletop games offer physical tokens, boards to assemble, and real people to turn to across the table. Somewhere between these two poles sits a wonderful selection of videogames that make you feel compelled to take notes.

This is not about games that explicitly demand a sheet of paper as part of the mechanics. These are games where the experience simply spills over into the real world as drawings and words. The player decides to keep their thoughts straight by jotting down words, phrases, the location of a treasure to revisit, or an area to investigate more thoroughly. After a while, the odd word or two becomes a full page, perhaps even a map. Arrows let paragraphs send out little runners, setting down roots in blank spaces and fruiting whole new clusters of notes.

One such game is Her Story. Its interface lets you store a certain amount of information: you can add tags for each video clip and keep a handful saved for reference. What it does not offer is a way to note all the different potential search terms a new clip throws up, especially when you are constantly being sidetracked. To stop himself from forgetting, the author reached for his notebook. A record of the victim started to grow, gaining new details with every session, turning the act of play into a personal detective file that felt as real as the game itself.