Video games have become a medium of storytelling, says graphic novelist Dan Goldman

Dan Goldman, a writer for graphic novels and video games, draws comics and editorial illustrations, and crafts transmedia experiences for Wired magazine, Random House, IDW Publishing, Time Magazine, Hachette Books, Entertainment Weekly and New York Magazine. About his first visit to India, as a special guest for Mumbai Comic Con 2014, he writes in an e-mail interview, "I am writing you from a hotel in Goa with a very loud ceiling fan. I'm enjoying it immensely already, and so excited to meet people at the Comic Con once I've had a fish-curry-rice or two."

How far have video games come since the 80s?

I think video games have evolved from amusement to their own storytelling medium, some more sophisticated than films. In fact, I think interactive experiences are the future of storytelling entirely, beyond games even. I've been fascinated by the development of Oculus Rift and similar advancements in consumer virtual reality as a storytelling device rather than simply a game. That said, I am an avid gamer (particularly PlayStation and Nintendo) with a love for good stories. My recent favourites are Heavy Rain, The Last of Us, the Bioshock series, the Legend of Zelda series and Red Dead Redemption.

In one interview, you said: 'I believe in other types of consciousness and other levels of reality that we are too limited to perceive existing all around us..' could you shed some more light on that?

I think humans are self-limited by society into choosing a simplistic consensus reality that does not account for a wider range of sensory experiences. That means anything that is not 'normal' can be easily dismissed, and we become ashamed of our individual experiences with the divine or extra-normal and hide them from others. They become 'fringe' culture and experiences.

I believe direct experience with the divine is the root of religion that society has stepped in to replace, making lions into sheep that we may be controlled and led by institutions and governments, instead of thinking for ourselves, forcing us to live in their world rather than creating the world we wish to live in. There is a much better future around the corner that media and government and business and religion are desperately trying to keep us from discovering for ourselves.