What’s a Macguffin?
“One man says, ‘What’s that package up there in the baggage rack?’ And the other answers, ‘Oh that’s a MacGuffin.’ The first one asks ‘What’s a MacGuffin?’ ‘Well’ the other man says, ‘It’s an apparatus for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.’ The first man says, ‘But there are no lions in the Scottish Highlands,’ and the other one answers ‘Well, then that’s no MacGuffin!’ So you see, a MacGuffin is nothing at all.”
- Alfred Hitchcock
The Macguffin is a term Hitchcock used for a plot device – the thing that got the plot going, but didn’t really matter to the real action of the movie. In Psycho, the Macguffin was the money Marion Crane’s character stole. In Star Wars, it was the Death Star plans hidden in R2-D2’s databanks. Somehow, this throwaway “nothing” is at the center of some of the best movies and literature in the world.
What is Macguffin Games?
For us, games live at an the intersection between interactivity and stories – not only the story the game tells us, but the story of you playing the game and learning from it. It’s a new space relative to other kinds of media, and we’re thrilled to be working in it.
Macguffin Games was founded by Scott Macmillan in late 2008.
Contact Information
Please contact Macguffin Games over email at “info” @ this domain. Scott is also on Twitter as @MrMacguffin.