Video Games
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Pinsky’s DOS Days
Over at the New Yorker, James Reith discusses Mindwheel, a text adventure game written by US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky back in the 80s. Once thought the future of fiction, the “interactive novel” now stands as a delightful curiosity you…
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Weekly Geekery
The digital life at sea. The unlikely history of video games. All those YouTubers sound the same. Once again, the Internet is ruining all good things.
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Video Games as Poetry
Space in video games is not, strictly speaking, physical. It’s made of pixels on a screen, and the movement of objects within it are governed by the algorithms of its central processing unit. This artificiality has the ironic effect of…
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A Game About a Memoir About Games
Michael Clune learned about the space between our own minds and those of others through video games. You can bridge that mental space by reading Gamelife, his memoir of a childhood spent playing Suspended and The Bard’s Tale II. Or…
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Digital Technology is Valid Literature
Digital technology is changing literature. Those changes are more than just variations on traditional forms like the novel. Video game storytelling, for instance, is a perfectly valid form of art and yet often lacks recognition in the literary world. That needs to…
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The Rumpus Interview with Matt Bell
Author Matt Bell talks video games, fiction, nonfiction, politics, empathy, and his new books, Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn and Scrapper.
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The Video Game Literati
Tobias Carroll, writing for Hazlitt, dissects the influence video games have had on literature, from writers like Ernest Cline of Ready Player One to Jonathan Lethem and an entire literary anthology, Press Start to Play. We’re only waiting for Franzen to…
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The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Growing Up Gaming
“Is this inclusive or exclusive?” he asked with a creased brow. “I don’t like the idea that we’re being treated as a joke.”
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The Rumpus Interview with Andrew Ervin
Andrew Ervin discusses his debut novel, Burning Down George Orwell’s House, social media and writing, and how video games can serve as a way to understand the post-human world.
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The Rumpus Interview with Matthew Baker
“Master fictioneer” Matthew Baker talks about his new middle grade novel, If You Find This, artists as tricksters, his favorite comic strips, and why children are still capable of believing in impossible things.
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The Narrative of Zelda
In response to the news that Nintendo and Netflix may be developing a Legend of Zelda TV series, Ted Trautman at the Paris Review blog examines the character development and narrative structure (or lack thereof) of video games and wonders…
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Weekly Geekery
Shame. The Internet. Monica Lewinsky. You spend hours killing people, but you don’t feel guilty. So much data. So few uses. All your stories in one little app. Reimagining incarceration. Your annoying Facebook friends have something to tell you.