User:Thijshijsijsjss/Gossamery/Game Poems

This entry concerns a parallel between video games and poetry explored by Jordan Magnuson. He gave a Games Now! talk at Aalto University, which was recommended to me by Alessia. I had been peripherally aware of this 'genre' so to say, and it seemed like a natural area to explore after / amidst reading lots of material inspired by the Oulipo. In fact, it is summer break right now, and had been hoping to find some inspiration for a game project. So alas, I admit: this entry's existence isn't intellectually pure, but rather also motivated by the hopes of igniting a spark within me. But is that really intellectually murky? This reader as an excuse for endeavors of curiosity, is that not what I set out to do?

Games Now! lecture

• Watched on: 2024-07-30
• Watch it here on YouTube

Magnuson considers video games not as a subset of games, but rather 'an amorhous cloud of overlapping bits and pieces of lots of different traditions and types of media'. One such medium being poetry. Traditionally, the link between these is in words and language. However, Magnuson argues this excludes many games that are still perceived as 'poetic', even without the use of language. Examples of this include Passage (Jason Rohrer) or Loneliness (Jordan Magnuson). There are also examples of game poems that do use text, e.g. dys4ia (Anna Anthropy, itch.io), though this is not the main focus of this talk. Instead, a framework for game poems is given, 7 tendencies that are often characteristics of such games.

• Game poems are short.
• Game poems juxtapose implied meaning with material meaning.
• Game poems are bound to metaphor and ambiguous imagery.
• Game poems are hyperbolic.
• Game poems are subjective.
• Game poems make use of poetic address.
• Game poems exist in a ritual space, rather than a narrative space.

The Book

• Read on: November 2024 - ...
• Read it here

[Notetaking in progress]

Further resources:

• Extra Credits episodes on Loneliness (and mechanics as metaphors).