F&#k the Average [Player]

From a 2007 interview by one of my favorite storytellers, Nick Hornby, with David Simon (creator of The Wire):

David Simon: My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.

This is henceforth the epigram to chapter one of my internal how-to-write-for-games manifesto. It's all about the exposition, baby! Or, more to the point, slaughtering all of it in the crib and cleverly squirreling off the rest in the environment.

For the record, chapter 2 of my game writing guide is (courtesy @DoctorSpooky) this awe-inspiring counter-example: