 One of the first magazines dedicated to video games was Electronic Games released at the end of 1981 proclaiming can asteroids conquer space invaders Except there was another magazine in the UK computer and video games that came out at the same time also mentioning space invaders Queen similarities aside each of these magazines exhibit almost fully formed what we understand today as games journalism editorials advertisements product recommendations and industry news This is what we can broadly refer to as consumer writing and is still for better or worse the predominant form Reviews previews strategy guides, you'd know the drill. It just now exists digitally In CVG there is an article on chess that states quite eloquently of all the innumerable games appearing on computers large and small Chess is one of the few which has a genuine existence in the same form outside the computer environment It also mentions how one of the earliest books printed were on chess connecting the magazine to a deeper lineage of games writing Games are enmeshed in culture and can be spoken of with the same reverence as great works of art are So consumer writing must give way to criticism surely our second kind of writing These are people who aren't doing a commodity report or treating games like toasters as Ian Bogas put in his book How to talk about video games, but his works experienced as meaningful objects How much after the first magazines did we have to wait for this kind of writing on games though? Not long In 1983 pilgrim in the micro world by David Sadna was published a book lens treatment on one man's obsession with the game breaker This book is quite remarkable reading like a personal journal a phenomenological account But deeply subjective examination about the act of play itself I served again the balls coming down over there and my paddles here how fast to go a Smooth gesture knows from the outset when it'll get where it's headed as a little pulse is established That lays out the upcoming arrival time a compressed ready set go built into the start of the movement The gesture then feels when to speed up and slow down to attain the target I swing the bat back and forth to acquire its weight Establish a usable rhythm then held in reserve as I await the ball Preparing for a well-timed movement anywhere within the arc of the swing This form of writing has been lost to history for a while instead more magazines pop that for mitzu in Japan in 1986 EGM in 1989 a bevy of official magazines for different consoles and then of course websites The industry needed to make money and so a symbiotic union between writers and developers arose Critical writing has been revitalized though and blog posts journals books YouTube channels people documenting their personal tastes opinions Pilgrim in the micro world is a precursor to those multi-hour retrospectives on YouTube And what is dubbed by some as new games journalism writing emphasizing the player and not just the game Is this where the story ends? Hardly in fact, this isn't even where it begins In the book games game design game studies the author outlines the evolution of writing and games and it mentions None of what I just talked about The interest here instead is the academic discussion of games which for historical reasons never cross-pollinated with commercial writing Three other forms of writing are mentioned instead first theory off the practitioners Writing done by designers and critics on the subject of how to design good games Much like how some of the earliest writing on cinema was done by practitioners this kind of theorizing developed heuristics for others to emulate Think about GDC talks where game developers gather to share technology design strategies and their experiences There's also a growing compendium of books of this time the art of game design game mechanics advanced game design game feel The next type of theorizing is what he calls Exaptation or theory derived from fields outside video games what we will call more simply external theory Psychologists literary critics philosophers media theorists all applying disparate frameworks to understand games It's how flow theory came about a lens from psychology or any number of narrative theories about games Janet Murray's Hamlet on the holodeck Brenda Laurel's computers as theater a lineage of thinkers who view games through the prism of other disciplines The final type of theory is adaptation theory devised for games and games alone Broadly, this is now understood as ludology game studies or play theory Despite being the last canon to develop there are now plentiful books on the subject of games Starting in academic journals like game studies, but also in books like Espinoza cybertext Jesper Eul's half real the rules of play The thing is this is itself not the origin of each of these kinds of writing For example, it goes back to Johan Heisinger's seminal work Homo Ludens in 1938 Where he coined the expression magic circle Roger Kahlua wrote another influential book man play and games where he separates play and games idea and ludus We are still not thinking deep enough though Frederick Schiller wrote about play in the aesthetic education of man in 1794 where he saw games as an antidote to rationality Leibniz saw play as a forum for the investigation of ideas and Nietzsche saw it as the driving force behind the artistic impulse The point being that internal theorizing about play and games predates much of our modern revisionist understanding of a new genesis a Computational bias that sees video games as disconnected from its own past So what is the issue then between consumer writing and criticism between so-called theories of first second and third order abstraction? There seems to be a gulf of indifference and even suspicion between the theories of the first and the second order and their representatives Due to their low level of abstraction theories of game design are regarded with a certain condescension by social scientists and humanists vice versa Many game designers and theorists of game design doubt the general value of any theories with a higher level of abstraction In other words these denominations of writing however developed they get seem to be more and more isolated from one another There is no synergy cross-pollination integration of ideas and knowledge What evidence is there of this well firstly if you look up any academic work on game studies You will notice their reference one another almost exclusively this is to be expected However, the same is true of other domains as well GDC talks refer to other GDC talks the blog is fear to other bloggers In fact even youtubers refer to one another like they are often insular academic canon. It's fascinating really Communities developing around ways of talking about games Of course, there are those who cross party lines, but the majority of these disciplines seem unaware of one another's histories Case in point is myself I'm on YouTube clearly But I was much more familiar with game studies blogs and books about games than I am about writing on YouTube Watching videos by youtubers documenting their own history is interesting because it seems wholly removed from the broader context of game studies Instead of Heisinger or Kahlua or Schiller you have people citing sequelitis G4 TV But also magazines and websites The best that I can tell is that this writing derived from the enthusiasm that informed early fanzines and magazines Which then bridges the divide between consumer and critical writing What happens when these worlds do collide though and what are the benefits of integrating different forms of writing? Let's take the Luda narrative dissonance debate an internal theoretical concept that somehow seeped into both critical and commercial writing It refers to a disconnect between gameplay and story and was coined by Clint Hawking a practitioner writing a critical piece on Bioshock on his block a first-order theorist the designer of Splinter Cell and Far Cry 2 doing criticism that generated internal theory that went commercial The hilarious thing about this is that there are articles and videos on the topic for how this word is overused Perhaps the one time a concept crossed boundaries. Is this defensiveness? Territoriality the term sounds ridiculous and pretentious sure But it is only one of hundreds of terms in game studies none of which have really permeated games writing How many references to procedural rhetoric do you hear in casual writing about games? The thing is this term forces people to think about games differently to articulate responses to its encroachment The discussion around it is the very evidence. We need for why this cross-pollination is a good thing to begin with We just need more terms Is this the fault of academics who don't promote their ideas enough stuck in their ivory tower perhaps gamers who don't educate themselves about a medium They have dedicated their lives to or maybe it's all our faults for not knowing one another's histories On the practical front Genova Chen is a designer whose games at that game company have benefited from theories both external and internal His first game flow was informed by the psychological principle of the same name and journey was inspired by the hero's journey of Joseph Campbell An experience so emotionally resonant that people still talk about across writing disciplines inspiring other games Theory and practice can inspire new avenues of creativity in one another. I Suspect to many watching the most pressing issue with games writing would have to do with how corporations have taken over and Commoditized writing how games journalism can't be trusted All of this is valid sure But this falls exclusively within the purview of commercial writing because it is beholden to those interests The way to break free of that is to engage with traditions that exist outside that sphere where money is still a consideration sure But not the primary motivation So how does one go about doing this developing a literacy about these traditions on the practitioner front? There are countless videos on GDC's website and YouTube channel, but also lists of books relevant to game design I've linked below For an overview of game studies the podcast game studies study bodies has dozens of episodes dedicated to different books Which can serve as a reading list for foundational books in game stuff Also, there's the site game studies, which has years of open access academic articles In the blogosphere the site critical distance compiles weekly pieces pulled from a diverse array of writers again going back years Another journal to check out is well played including three books filled with some of their best essays There are countless YouTube channels dedicated to critical writing about games, which I suspect many of you will be familiar with At this point there are more books essays and articles out there than any one person can completely consume That's inspiring except for the part where much of this writing seems insulated from each other My perhaps naive hope is we can take small steps towards unifying these languages Not for some false reconciliation But so that a more spirited discussion can happen in a common tongue to investigate a medium We are still trying to understand