Additional Reading: Expository Cutscene Where the Narrator Infodumps Out of Hyperfixation
ANMLY issue 37: A Soft Reset: Queer Writers of Color on Video Games (2023) edited by Summer Farah
I’m partial to JS Wu’s “Untitled” and Gyasi Hall’s “The Earth Dies Twice: Death and Difficulty in The End is Nigh”
“Boss Fight” (2023) by Sarah Khatry
If you love artmaking of any kind, might I suggest an essay on the psychological road rash induced by “soulsborne” games?
Anything off Jacob Geller’s Youtube channel
“The Future of Writing about Video Games” is a banger, of course, but so are “Bad Graphics” and “I Want to Tell You About My Favorite Fight Scene”
White Magic (2021) by Elissa Washuta
The book isn’t about games. That won’t stop me from recommending “In Him We Have Redemption through His Blood” and “Oregon Trail II for Windows 95/98/ME & Macintosh: Challenge the Unpredictable Frontier”
“Playing Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain” (2019) by Jamil Jan Kochai
Another brilliant piece if you enjoyed Kochai’s “Cathartic Warfare”
“The Field of Dreams Approach: On Writing About Video Games: An Interview with Tony Tulathimutte” (2017) by Graham Oliver
“Clash Rules Everything around Me” electric boogaloo
Critical Hits (2016) edited by Zoë Jellicoe
Duh
“On Playing Video Games, Productivity, and Right Livelihood” (2016) by Janet Frishberg
“A Harvest of Ice” (2016) by Joseph Spece
Video Games for Humans: Twine Authors in Conversation (2015) edited by merritt kopas
The State of Play (2015) edited by Daniel Goldberg and Linus Larsson
Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter (2010) by Tom Bissell
And so, so much coming out of the Cleveland Review of Books. Like this one, and that one, and this other one, and more.