February 2012 has seen the release of Dear Esther, a pure-story first-person game that started life as an experimental Source mod in 2007. It has often been a controversial title, with questions centering around whether or not it truly constitutes as game. This article considers the major objections to this, and argues that all of these fail when Dear Esther is considered alongside other major game titles of the last few years. It is concluded that the traditional theoretical dialetic between game and nongame is redundant and Dear Esther should rather be seen as both a logical extension to traditional game design, and an illustration of how far the medium has evolved over the last decade.
