On the Line

By Kent Sutherland

When Digital: A Love Story starts, it asks you to enter your screen name and then to enter your real name. I don’t know if any other game has said: “OK, that’s nice, but who are you really?” What was your thinking here?

I wanted to have these sequences where Emilia addresses you by your own name; and what I was hoping was that it would pack an emotional punch—that it would work better than just calling you by your screen name, since that’s a little impersonal. What I wasn’t expecting is that everyone actually puts in their real name [as their screen name].