Can video games be more than empty amusement? Tolkien’s On Fairy-Stories suggests they can: as secondary worlds of subcreation where escape, recovery, and a return to the primary world are possible.

In this opening episode of Mythic Mind Games, Dr. Andrew Snyder introduces the show’s manifesto. Drawing on Tolkien’s account of fantasy as subcreation (not mere make-believe), he argues that rightly ordered games can participate in the perilous realm of fairy-story: places where we meet truth, risk getting lost, and may bring recovered value back into ordinary life. He contrasts cinema’s finished spectacle with the participatory imagination of books and players, asks when games edify versus merely amuse, and sets the philosophical warrant for reading video games as paths toward wisdom rather than only entertainment.