Rick Moody‘s “The Ice Storm” wasn’t simply a story to me.  It was a literary work of import, genius and wit that sticks with me to this day. Like my favorite stories by John Cheever and David Foster Wallace, I felt as I read the book that I knew the characters and could empathize with them. And having grown up in Buffalo, New York, I really understood the weather, the darkness that the storm wreaked upon that Connecticut town. The Hood family’s loss of innocence all took place when the country itself was losing its innocence.

So what does this have to do with videogames?

The New York Videogame Critics Circle has various goals. But a constant goal is to elevate the genre because we feel that the best games can be seen as popular art.

There’s no one better than Rick Moody to present the Herman Melville Award for Best Writing in a Videogame on February 11. He knows the written word. He lives it every day. You can see it in his other tomes like “The Black Veil” and “The Four Fingers of Death.”

So we’re thrilled to have Rick Moody present the Award.

This year’s list of nominees for writing comes from both the world of big budget games and from the land of indie games. But they have one thing in common: they moved us deeply. That’s not easy to do because the best writing affects a writer as well. As Eudora Welty wrote, “We are the breakers of our own hearts.”

We still have just a few tickets left for the Brooklyn event. They’re free. Get them right here.

-Harold Goldberg, Founder