I’ve played close to 300 hours of Stardew, and it’s because it makes me feel peaceful, cheerful, satisfied. It’s like deeply breathing. There is something serene about the soundscape, the way it feels when a day begins with rain, or you crack open a geode, or wrestle with a difficult fish.
Ideally, I’d want to write a book about Silent Hill 3. The game deals a lot with violence, the human condition, and birth—all things that I write about a lot. But I have only ever watched my husband, Kenny, play this game, and absolutely could not play it myself—it’s technically difficult and scary.
I’d say half of everything I write concerns a character’s survival through some kind of game, often one they’ve made up. As a kid I used to deal with all my problems by treating life as a game, and I still do sometimes as an adult I admit. I’d say many of us do. It’s powerful but dangerous; imagination is a savior but it’s also damning.
I was in awe at the prospect of a same-sex marriage in this world. It was so casual—less than casual, really. The game, being a program, didn’t have any opinion whatsoever about whether my female player-character married a female non-player-character.
There was a little icon of a square on the screen. And I was the square. And it was the first sense of existing as a multiplicity (obviously, I didn’t think of it in those terms at that age).
We think video games are literature, and so why shouldn't there be literature about video games? That's the question we're hoping to answer here. Read more.
