New Vegas director Josh Sawyer says games can and should pull on artistic inspirations from 'anywhere and everywhere': 'Greek plays, they knocked it out of the park thousands of years ago—why not look at them?'

Videogames: They're cool because they make us feel things—like how cool it is to be a cowboy—or think about things—like which things are worth carrying around while being a cowboy.

Or at least, that's what Obsidian design director Josh Sawyer says in his latest YouTube video, adding yet more yield to his recent crop of game development wisdom by explaining the place of artistic inspiration in the game design process.

In the video, Sawyer responds to a question from a viewer who'd noticed that most of his YouTube uploads are primarily focused on systems design in granular, mechanical terms and wanted to know where and how much he draws on artistic inspiration.

Asked whether game design is more a process of injecting art into design systems or designing systems around art, Sawyer provided what he said is "sort of the copout answer": Artistic inspiration, he sa...