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So why another game blog? Why now?

 

The answers are personal and, I hope, timely, at least in terms of discussions about games.

 

The personal: My dissertation (English Renaissance prose/poetry romances) is almost done, and so I've got both a bit of time and the serious need for distraction. I'm adjuncting a light teaching load, and, to be honest, I've lost the thrill of writing about Spenser and Sidney. So a little intellectual exercise in the very different and very similar direction of game "criticism" may help interrupt the feeling of a mental "grind." (Plus, I just got an XBox and a much more powerful PC, so I have to justify playing with them. And then there's the not insignificant fact that I got sucked, both willingly and unwillingly, into Warhammer Online, so I'll need somewhere to decompress.)

The timely: Quite a few things have made me pay attention to both what's happening in game design lately, and, even better for an academic geek, on the game journalism side. Bioshock, GTA IV, Metal Gear Solid 4, and, especially, Braid have all made the question of what/how/if games "mean" anything even more insistent.

 

And, even better, there are some great people writing about games now and looking for more and better ways to talk about them that goes beyond reviews and "game journalism." Shawn Elliot (of GFW 1Up), Michael Abbot (The Brainy Gamer), Leigh Alexander, L.B. Jeffries, Ian Bogost, Jeff Howard, Roger Travis, great stuff at Gamasutra, The Escapist, GameSetWatch, First Person... just the ones off the top of my head. I get the feeling that game talk is on the edge of really starting to mature and push itself (and maybe even some developers) into a much more thoughtful register, and I want to get my two cents in.

 

So, a blog.

 

Besides, there are a couple of things I want to try, and why not here where I can hopefully get cheap and easy feedback?

 

1) Think carefully about Braid. I want to test out all my fancy lit'rary training on this wonderful little thing that bored and alienated at first and then surprised me by not letting go.

 

2) Read the books. A few books on game theory, design, and interpretation have caught my attention, and, since I doubt I'll find a local reading group interested in Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism or Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives (it even has a chapter on Spenser!), I'll start my own.

 

3) Puzzle the relation between games and fiction. The latter's become my job, the former's been a life-long obsession. It's time to introduce them to each other.

 

And there's my introduction. Oh, Come All Ye Commenters! I pray that the Miyamoto on high will grant me the wisdom to write something worthy of reading!