Jordan Magnuson – "Game Poems and Born-Videogame Poetics"

Hi everyone. Um, welcome back to our second keynote. And

second keynote. And it's become a tradition. And when I say tradition, I mean we tried this out last

year and it worked very well. uh to have uh one academic and one artistic keynote uh because as a field uh cultural

expressions and just the creation of culture is an important part of the humanities.

So to have both an academic and an artistic keynote kind of serves different parts of the field. Uh and

this year we have asked uh Jordan Magnus to come and hold the artistic but also a bit academic because uh we also asked

him to kind of think about interface uh as a concept when talking today. Uh

so we've asked Jordan Magnuson who is a game uh designer and media artist uh whose work explores how video games can

express human experience in poetic and culturally resonant ways. So for over 15

years um he has created award-winning independent games uh such as game poems uh and other interactive works. uh and

he is the editor of the new uh lit online digital literary magazine Game Poems dedicated to exploring the artistic and poetic potential of short

form video games. And also if some of you here have played Papers Please or Minecraft, this guy had something to do with it in

an infrastructural way. Yeah. So without

further ado, welcome Okay, thank you very much. Uh, can

everyone hear me? Okay. Yeah, microphone

is working and whatnot. Um, okay.

Yeah, thanks. Thanks so much for having me here. Um, yeah, I'm I'm uh I'm

me here. Um, yeah, I'm I'm uh I'm currently based at the Winchester School of Art in the University of Southampton.

Um, and as the art school uh affiliation might give away that yes, as as Camila was saying, I'm I'm a maker. Um,

I I come to you not as a traditional academic um but from what I consider to be sometimes the uh the wild west of creative practice. And I can tell the

creative practice. And I can tell the aura is is emanating because there's this nice bunch of empty seats here in the middle in front of me. You know,

it's like you don't want to get too close. that's probably, you know, could

close. that's probably, you know, could be for the best. Um, but yeah, so my my background, um, as Camela said, was in is in, um, independent game design. Um,

and for the last 15 years or so, I've been focused specifically on experimental, uh, game design. Um, which

is, uh, as the name implies, the practice of making games as a form of experiment. So I ask questions like what

experiment. So I ask questions like what are different ways that metaphor can function in video games at the most basic level? Or can story be conveyed

basic level? Or can story be conveyed through simple game mechanics without relying on text or recognizable images?

Or can games make use of electronic literature conventions? What does that

literature conventions? What does that look like? Um can games be used as a

look like? Um can games be used as a form of travel writing? Uh when is a game no longer a game? Can video games

be poems? Right? And then I I try to

be poems? Right? And then I I try to make games that speak to these questions.

Uh so I recently wrote a book about games being poems. Um and so the interplay of video games and poetry has become uh something of a specialty for me.

So what I want to talk about today is how thinking of poems and games broadly in terms of interfaces can help us move beyond rigid

conceptions of digital poetry, right?

towards this notion of born video game poetics and also how interface thinking impacts the implications of this move.

In other words, the question of what's at stake here? Why does it matter if video games can be poems?

And as I said, I'm a maker, so hold on to your hats. Uh, this could be a little bit bumpy. I'm going to be drawing a

bit bumpy. I'm going to be drawing a bunch of disparate things together. um

maybe playing a bit fast and loose with some concepts, but I hope in a way that provides at least some interesting food for thought, right? Both to uh digital culture scholars and also hopefully practitioners as well. Um and I might

throw in a little injunction, you know, just to spice things up a little bit. Um

so you can look forward to that.

Um okay, so quick content warning before we get going. Uh some flashing images on these slides and I'll be talking about games that feature sensitive topics.

Okay, that warning out of the way. Um,

I'll start by telling you a little bit more about myself and how I became interested in this intersection of games and poetry. U, my entryway into making

and poetry. U, my entryway into making experimental games was really making games as a form of personal expression.

About 15 years ago, um, notably before my beard grew in, uh, I started, uh, making little games about the things I was seeing and experiencing in my daily life,

basically, right? Games that tried to

basically, right? Games that tried to capture things like, you know, my experience of fleeting beauty on a crisp autumn day. I want to make a game about

autumn day. I want to make a game about that, you know, or on the other side, you know, that attempted to express something of my experience of loneliness during periods of deep depression.

Uh games about traveling, uh games about difficult political realities, uh games about mundane tasks that nevertheless seemed somehow sacred, like caring for

the grave site of some of of a loved one who's passed on.

All right. And in recent years, uh games inspired by my experience of parenthood.

Um, these little expressive games I make utilize very simple graphics most of the time. Uh, and they typically take less

time. Uh, and they typically take less than five minutes to play through. Uh,

they don't require twitch reactions.

They don't tend to have clear rules or objectives. They're not challenging

objectives. They're not challenging usually in a typical video game sort of way, but maybe in other ways. Um, their

games about slowing down, paying attention, being present in the moment, um, and sort of seeing the world with new eyes or seeing something in a fresh light.

And somewhere along the way, I became interested in in thinking about these games through the lens of poetry. Um,

and it might have been because, you know, some of these games started getting passed around a little bit. Uh,

critics would sometimes talk about them as being quote unquote poetic. Um,

sometimes in the context of discussing similar games from other creators. Uh,

some of you may be familiar with games like Jason Roar's Passage, um, or Ian Bogus's A Slow Year, um, or Tale of Tales the Graveyard.

Um, but what it actually meant for these games to be poetic or why it mattered, uh, was never really very clear. Um,

throwing around the word poetic felt mostly like admitting a loss for words, right? Um, where I was looking for

right? Um, where I was looking for specific language to talk about my creative practice.

Now the idea that video games might be poems is not an idea that has seen a lot of consideration in game studies uh much

less in the broader culture. Right? When

scholars have occasionally compared video games and poetry, they've generally arrived at heartwarming conclusions like poetry may never take the shape of a

video game. Absolutely not.

video game. Absolutely not.

Um, and now of course within electronic literature, digital poetry has been a a vibrant creative field for some time.

And if we dig around a bit, we can find some examples of digital poems that connect certain video game conventions with poetic intention. um things like Jim Andrews Arteroids that's sort of a a

word-based version of the classic Asteroids game or Jason Nelson's game game and again game uh which is self-described as a

digital poem and retro game.

But most of these examples are contingent on the idea, right, that the chief thread connecting digital and computational poetry to written and or

oral poetry traditions, right, is the thread of linguistic sounds and symbols, right? Words and language.

right? Words and language.

But video games as poems without the use of poetic language, that's basically a nogo, right? an

outrage against the quorum to quote game scholar Ptor Kuminski which I love this phrase an outrage against the quorum right that's games and poetry

uh video games are games right not poems um and I think what this shows us is the limitations of thinking in terms of

categories and taxonomies right we have these two categories here video games u made up of computer code and moving images and poems made up of

words and never the twain shall meet, right?

All we can imagine is that if if they're um in terms of their synthesis, right, is that if we push really hard to try to bring these categories together, we can

get a little sliver of overlap here. um

in the realm of digital poetry as long as video games can very literally remediate right poetry's native medium of words.

Um and so as scholars like uh Stanley Fish have pointed out right we pay a certain kind of attention to something we consider to be a poem and a very different kind of attention to something we consider to be a video game.

And I think this is where thinking in terms of interfaces rather than texonomies can help us. Um, now

obviously the word interface has been used by a lot of different people in a lot of different ways to talk a lot about a lot of different sorts of things, right? We have everything from

things, right? We have everything from literal control panels and screens to philosophical and aesthetic thresholds.

And what I want to draw in here is the digital humanities tradition of thinking of interfaces in relation to texts and media but as broad sites of mediation

right as developed by scholars like Lev Manovich, Katherine Hails and Alexander Galloway.

Galloway in the interface effect writes, "An interface is not something that appears before you, but rather a gateway that opens up and allows passage to some

place beyond." Um, and I love that

place beyond." Um, and I love that phrasing, the idea of a gateway or threshold, uh, because it it shifts our attention away from the interface as a visible

surface, right? And toward the kind of passage it

right? And toward the kind of passage it makes possible, right? For me, this isn't just a

right? For me, this isn't just a theoretical lens. It's a way of thinking

theoretical lens. It's a way of thinking about how I make things. Uh, right, of noticing what kinds of experience, uh, what kinds of experiences my games mediate, right? and how they might

mediate, right? and how they might mediate different kinds of experiences.

If we consider poems and video games, these things are clearly on the one hand objects, right? Um they do appear before

objects, right? Um they do appear before us, right? On paper or on a screen,

us, right? On paper or on a screen, right? But when we step back from the

right? But when we step back from the specific examples and look at poems and games broadly speaking, right, they're also examples of different types of gateways and thresholds, right, that

open up and allow passage to, you know, some place beyond.

And notably, they are generally gateways to very different sorts of places, right? Very different sorts of

right? Very different sorts of experiences.

poems broadly speaking uh and I'm thinking here especially of lyric poetry and I'll come back to that um mediate subjective and intimate human experience right they they open gateways to things

like memory emotion reflection personal call to action u when we think of in the domain of poetry I often think of uh this quote I

I love from Annie Dillard why does death so catch us by surprise and why love the kind this the kind of terrain that poetry leads us into. All right. Video

games, by contrast, have historically mediated fast action out of world experience, right? Spaceships flying, rackets

right? Spaceships flying, rackets hitting balls, avatars colliding in space, right? They're often they often seem to

right? They're often they often seem to be about building things, uh, collecting things, and especially blowing things up.

Uh so when we think of games and poems as formal categories, it's easy to get caught up in the material differences between media which leads us towards this impass where video games can't be

poems because they don't incorporate enough poetic words.

But if we shift from category thinking to interface thinking, if we stop thinking what is this thing and start asking what kind of gateway does it open? Um, I think that actually helps us

open? Um, I think that actually helps us to break down the impass. Um, because

it's not that hard to imagine that the basic building blocks of video games could be reconfigured as gateways to other kinds of experiences than what they've traditionally mediated.

In this light, imagining video games as poems isn't about games needing to suddenly incorporate poetic text or word play in order to sort of masquerade as

poems, right? Rather, it's about using

poems, right? Rather, it's about using the native properties of video games, their operational logics, their rhythms of interaction, their capacities they

already have for ambiguity uh to mediate poetic expression.

Um, now if we want to reconfigure the interface of video games to look more like the interface of poetry, then we need some way to think about what you

might call the interface architecture, I suppose, of each one.

All right? By which I mean the underlying design logics or mediating structures that shape how each form creates passage and experience.

For video games, we might turn here to the concept of operational logics as defined by computational media scholars Noah Wardrop Fuin and Michael Mataus.

Operational logics are a unit of uh analysis concerned with the meaning of such basic things as collision detection, avatar movement, and resource counters. essential video game elements

counters. essential video game elements that like words can be used and reused in a variety of games in a variety of contexts. Are you are people familiar

contexts. Are you are people familiar with operational logics? Is this

something people have run across? Not so

much maybe. Okay, just curious. Um at a macro level, right, operational logics helps help us to discuss why basic video game building blocks are associated over

and over again with particular types of meaning. Right? So for example in video

meaning. Right? So for example in video games sprites overlapping on screen right which is collision detection even the word collision detection right it's almost always it's almost always

used to represent physical objects colliding in the world of human meaning right so why is that right sprites overlapping on screen don't automatically have to have any kind of

connection to objects colliding in physical space right um are there alternative possibilities for these logics we'll come back to this Right.

Um, now if operational objects are one way to describe how video games mediate experience, um, lyric tendencies or lyric characteristics are one way to

describe how poems mediate experience.

Uh, we might be less used to thinking of poems as interfaces uh, than video games since we often talk about interfaces of course in the context of new media and computer

screens. Um but of course uh Katherine

screens. Um but of course uh Katherine Hails reminds us in writing machines that all texts are interfaces thresholds between material form right and embodied

readers.

The poem in this sense is a sort of machine for mediation, right? Its

typography, line breaks, uh rhythm, pacing, its very particular use of devices like metaphor, hyperbole, poetic address, right? All structure the

address, right? All structure the reader's passage between language and feeling, language and meaning, language and felt experience as they read the poem.

So the question then becomes can these traits and tendencies of poetry what I will call the interface architecture of lyric poetry

be made to operate in video games.

Um and that's what I want to examine now drawing on part one of my book um as a guide. Um and I will mention here that

guide. Um and I will mention here that this book is completely open access. Um,

so if you want to dive into any of this in a little bit deeper way, right, um, you can grab a free copy from gamepebook.com.

gamepebook.com.

Um, so first of all, why do I keep referencing lyric poetry? Uh, well, as a reminder, right, lyric poetry is basically what we talk about when we talk about poetry most of the time, uh,

in the Western world at least, right? It

just rules out things like long epic poems and the most experimental forms of poetry.

All right. And um I'm going to skip this slide actually due to time. I'll check

how Yeah. Um so what is lyric poetry and how does it work? It's relatively easy to to sketch, you know, a quote unquote interface architecture of lyric poetry thanks to the work of a myriad of poetry

scholars, people like Virginia Jackson, Jonathan Culler. You can say things

Jonathan Culler. You can say things like, right, lyric poems are short.

Lyric poems are bound to metaphor and ambiguous imagery. They're hyperbolic.

ambiguous imagery. They're hyperbolic.

They're subjective. They make use of poetic address. They exist in a ritual

poetic address. They exist in a ritual space rather than narrative space. They

juxtapose signifying meaning with material meaning.

Now, it's important to note that all of these are just tendencies, right? Not hard and fast rules, but

right? Not hard and fast rules, but they're wellestablished tendencies within lyric poetry.

So again, the question is, can these lyric characteristics can this lyric interface be made to operate in video games? Right? even video games that

games? Right? even video games that don't feature any words. This is a question I've been exploring with my game making practice for many years at

this point. Um, and also looking out for

this point. Um, and also looking out for in other games.

So, if we start at the top of this list with something very simple, this idea that lyric poems are short doesn't seem all that exciting. Um, I've already mentioned that many of my games only

take four or five minutes to play through. Um, this is a clip from my game

through. Um, this is a clip from my game Loneliness, uh, which explores a single emotion through the barest possible mechanics. Right? You move around, you

mechanics. Right? You move around, you see groups of squares interacting in different ways. You approach them, they

different ways. You approach them, they flee, there's a little bit of an arc.

Um, and then after a bit, the game is over.

So what, right? Why what difference does it make that these games are short? Why

does it matter? Um, well, I would argue that poems being short is actually an important part of what makes them poetic interfaces. Um, you can see this if you

interfaces. Um, you can see this if you compare lyric poetry to longer forms, right? Like epic poetry, the novel,

right? Like epic poetry, the novel, right? We're talking about the

right? We're talking about the difference that of of something that takes hours to read um or or listen to versus something that takes minutes,

right? So the contrast is quite striking

right? So the contrast is quite striking and helps us to recognize that the short length of lyric poems far from being accidental right plays an important part

in establishing the lyric as a recognizable kind of interface a gateway to something compact and potent.

And this idea becomes even more striking in relation to video games where as you probably know many popular games take you know 50 to 100 hours or more to play

through. All right. So in this landscape

through. All right. So in this landscape people are often puzzled or disappointed by short games. Uh right for a video game audience interested in things like entertainment challenge narrative and

what have you. It's hard not to read a two short game as anything but a rather obvious failure.

uh which is a perspective you see clearly expressed here in Marcus Rickert's interactive parody of Jason Roar's short momentum moray game Passage has anyone played Passage are people

familiar have you heard of passage no maybe a couple people okay I try to basically keep it since we have you know limited time limited examples I'll be talking about a couple of games from my

own practice a couple of games that are a bit more wellknown um so hopefully you might recognize some of them but if not I'll try tell you, explain the games a little bit

as we go. So, um, when it comes to video games, people often see, um, a short length as limiting or as outright unacceptable. U, right, but but read

unacceptable. U, right, but but read through the lens of lyric poetry, the short length of games like Passage or loneliness, right, is not an accident or a failure at the level of narrative or

gameplay or entertainment, right? but

actually an important characteristic that positions these games as lyric interfaces in video game form.

Works that want to be read not once but many times, right? Works that defy you to read them and not have plenty of time for reflection. Works that beg you to

for reflection. Works that beg you to pay attention and consider their every sound, every image, every interaction, right? Just like lyric poems have always

right? Just like lyric poems have always done.

Um, but let's move on to something maybe a little bit more interesting and look at how lyric poems utilize metaphor and ambiguous imagery as part of their DNA and how that might map to games. Right?

So metaphor at a basic level is just one thing compared to another thing. Um,

right and lyric poems push back against indexical realism against literalism.

Right? They rely instead on metaphor and establish ambiguous meaning via image, context and comparison.

Right? So you have things like the famous maybe slightly cliched metaphor now hope is the thing with feathers for example um right it takes this contract

abstract concept of hope gives it feathers makes it this animated moving living physical thing right um this is what metaphor does it enriches words and

concepts help us helps us to see things in a new light right video games um have always had this dream of being gateway ways to very

literal sorts of experiences, right? They they've always been had had

right? They they've always been had had this desire to achieve, you know, higher and higher fidelity and sound rendering, graphics rendering, physics rendering, right? To to get to this point um where

right? To to get to this point um where you're in this sort of hyper realism, right? Where you don't need metaphor at

right? Where you don't need metaphor at all. There's no use for metaphor, right?

all. There's no use for metaphor, right?

You're this person running around in this environment with a gun. What you

see is what you get. uh right but game poems can work outside of this literalist paradigm right by intentionally utilizing simple visuals foregrounding metaphor and seeking to

make the familiar unfamiliar in the way that poetry does right so as an example I'll talk about um dysphoria which is a short game by ananthropy about gender

dysphoria and the experience of transitioning um and most of the games I'm going to mention today right don't utilize text again because I'm interested in this idea of born video game poetics that isn't focused on

words. Um, but I do want to give one

words. Um, but I do want to give one example of how game poems can use text strategically alongside other components, which is what dysphoria does. Right? So, dysphoria is made up of

does. Right? So, dysphoria is made up of a series of mini games that cleverly force a comparison between the semantic meaning of a given word or phrase

and the interactive representational meaning of the given miniame itself.

So, as an example, in the first miniame, we're presented with something that looks like it's sort of a classic puzzle game sort of puzzle, right? We have to figure out how to move or reshape our

avatar to get through this barrier.

But it quickly becomes clear that the challenge is impossible with the tool set that the game gives us, right? And

as this realization hits us, we're presented with this text.

I feel weird about my body.

So our abstract interactive experience, right, must now be reinterpreted in light of this text. And the text itself has to be interpreted in light of this interactive experience, right? And in

the process, I'd say the abstract representation, the interactive experience, and the text itself are all enriched, right? the the perplexing

enriched, right? the the perplexing angular shape of the avatar takes on new meaning, right? Um when juxtaposed with

meaning, right? Um when juxtaposed with the word body, and the word body takes on new meaning as well, right? We're

worlds away from this.

Um and just to reiterate, of course, you don't have to use text in order to resist literalism or emphasize metaphor in games. Um, as one example, my game

in games. Um, as one example, my game Freedom Bridge plays with metaphoric meaning by comparing a square and some red pixels to a recognizable image of barbed wire.

Okay so move on and consider the next lyric characteristic here um, hyperbole. All

right, so broadly speaking, there are two kinds of hyperbole at work in lyric poems, right? First of all, we have explicit

right? First of all, we have explicit hyperbole. And this is what most people

hyperbole. And this is what most people are aware of when like when Brad Street writes, "I prize thy love more than whole minds of gold." Right? So this is

hyperbole as a kind of exaggeration.

Um and now video games don't have much p patience with hyperbole. Uh, right. For

video games that are interested in very narrow definitions of realism and literalism, hyperbole is what gamers in the know called call call unrealistic,

right? But game poems can utilize

right? But game poems can utilize hyperbole intentionally.

Um, so like in loneliness here where as you present these squares, right, all the other squares run away from you or seem to run away from you um as you approach them, right? And that's clearly

not intended as a literal representation of loneliness or how loneliness works, right? Um, seen through the video game

right? Um, seen through the video game lens, this is unrealistic, right? Um, but seen through the poetry

right? Um, but seen through the poetry lens, it's an intentional overstatement that's attempting to indicate something about a subjective experience, right?

Very different lenses. Um, and then beyond explicit hyperbole, lyric poems have an implicit hyperbolic character even when they're more reserved

because of their short form and tendency towards direct truth claims, right? Um,

sometimes they're making grand claims or sometimes they're asking you to care about a blade of grass, right? And

either way, they constantly risk the reader responding with either a snicker or a shrug of their shoulders, right? Why

should I believe or why should I care?

Um, so take this observational poem by William Carlos Williams. Munching Uhoh, that can't be good.

munching a plum on the street, a paper bag of them in her hands. They taste

good to her. They taste good to her.

They taste good to her.

And this poem, it seems that we're expected to take plums and the proposition they taste good to her, right, as somehow revelatory, right? Like this simple pleasure should

right? Like this simple pleasure should be central to our experience of the world.

Once again, we've been taken through a gateway to some place far away from most video games, which are typically concerned with grand scale, grand gestures,

grand objects, right? But game poems can incorporate

right? But game poems can incorporate implicit hyperbole just as well as lyric poems can. Um, this is Ian Bogos Slow

poems can. Um, this is Ian Bogos Slow Year, an Atari 2600 game that presents four short vignettes inspired by the seasons.

The process of playing a slow year goes something like this. I presume no one here has played a slow year. Okay, so

you start the game and don't understand what to do at all.

You then search for instructions and you eventually find instructional haikus buried deep inside the physical book that comes with the game.

So you attempt to decipher the instructional haikus while returning to the game. And eventually after a lot of

the game. And eventually after a lot of patience and pulling out half your hair, you determine that the goal of this first vignette is to painstakingly catch leaves as they fall off this autominal

tree.

Right? So all of this for a falling leaf, right? The game as an artifact

leaf, right? The game as an artifact seems to practically scream at the player, pay attention to this falling leaf. This is important,

leaf. This is important, right? And that's actually precisely one

right? And that's actually precisely one of the reasons that poets make use of hyperbole in lyric poetry, right? To

call attention to the little things around us, right, that we might otherwise overlook.

Where are we at? Okay. Hyperbole is

deeply interconnected with another central characteristic of lyric poems, which is their subjectivity.

Right? So, when we say the lyric poems are subjective, what we mean, of course, is that the subject is placed at center stage, right? Um, in other words,

stage, right? Um, in other words, they're they're personal and expressive.

They often involve a first-person speaker, right? And they often privilege

speaker, right? And they often privilege an exploration of the speaker's inner life. or inner world.

life. or inner world.

And the contrast here is to historical forms like the epic, right, or the drama which are concerned to different extents with quote unquote objective, right?

Objectoriented outerworld relationships and meaning.

As an example, um here's the start of May Sartin poem. Now I become myself.

It's taken time, many years, and places.

I've been dissolved and shaken war in other people's faces.

Right? So this poem presents a typically lyric concern with inner life and inner reality. Right? Which can't be

reality. Right? Which can't be objectively judged. Right? Um now

objectively judged. Right? Um now

sometimes people get tired of the subjective subjective nature of lyric poems, right? Um all the expression of

poems, right? Um all the expression of inner feelings yada yada yada. Uh right?

But the subjective interest of lyric poetry is actually uh quite an intriguing consideration when considering video games. Uh right

because video games have always been primarily concerned with objective reality, object-oriented reality, the outer world, right? Spaceships flying,

rackets and balls colliding, people driving cars and shooting guns, etc. Right? So against this sort of backdrop,

Right? So against this sort of backdrop, a game poem like Tale of Tales the Graveyard, which is a short game in which you guide an old woman through a cemetery, um in case you haven't played

it, right, is striking for how it seeks to foreground not physical objects in space, right? But the experience of a

space, right? But the experience of a subject of a subject wandering through an inner landscape, right, of experiences, memories, and emotions,

right? Aside from being black and white,

right? Aside from being black and white, the graveyard actually looks pretty similar to what you might see in a in a typical 3D action game, right? If you

think of something like Super Mario or Tomb Raider, right? But rather than the smooth, fluid

right? But rather than the smooth, fluid movement you've come to expect in games like these, right, moving our avatar in the graveyard is a slow and excruciating

process, right? Instead of running

process, right? Instead of running through the landscape, just kind of interacting bodily with everything you see, which is the video game norm here,

you can only sort of plot forward and reflect on your situation.

And that turns out to be precisely the point, right? When we reach this bench,

point, right? When we reach this bench, the old woman sits down and a long folk song plays out in her head. And there's

nothing at all to do in the world of objects while this song plays out.

Right? So the game really hinges on the moment of realization that the objective relationships on display are not the ones that matter here. It's the old

woman as subject who's interesting, right? Her inner life, her memories, her

right? Her inner life, her memories, her spiritual beliefs, right? Um, this is a video game imagined as a very different sort of passage or gateway from what

we're used to.

And you can see this same emphasis on subjective inner experience in games like loneliness and passage as well.

And of course, what each of these games ultimately facilitates is the player reflecting on their own life, which brings us to poetic address.

So poetic address is more complex and ambiguous than pros address, right? Um than simple communication.

right? Um than simple communication.

Poems often read more like you're overhearing something. There's this

overhearing something. There's this long-standing idea of utterance overheard in lyric poetry. There's often

the question of who is speaking to whom or to what. And the answer often has multiple facets. Right? A fictional

multiple facets. Right? A fictional

speaker may be addressing a fictional audience or sub object, right? Um, but

that fictional speaker may be speaking for the poet themselves in some sort of direct way, right? And the fictional audience may actually represent the poem's reader, for instance.

Right? So, as an example, here's Goth's wandering wanderer's night song.

Above all summits, it is calm. In all

the treetops you feel scarcely a breath.

The birds in the forest are silent. Just

wait. Soon you also will rest.

So who is the you in this poem?

Is this intended as a simple fictional address or is the poet addressing the reader directly or is goth actually addressing himself

here?

I'd say all three modes of address are present in the poem. Right? And needless

to say, the question of ambiguous address and who is speaking to whom is not a primary concern of most video games which are typically foreground

other questions like who is shooting whom and who is building what.

All right. But games can very much invoke this idea of poetic address.

Right? So one concrete way they can do this is through ambiguous shifting of perspectives. Um so this is a technique

perspectives. Um so this is a technique I utilize in a few of my games. most

explicitly in Portraits of My Child, which is a tightly constrained Pico8 game about my son's first months of life.

So, the controls, objectives, and representations are ambiguous throughout this game. Um, but in the first set of vignettes, the player has what essentially amounts to sort of a

third-person perspective on various representations of my infant son and attempts to guide him in some way through the sequence of of birth,

breathing, and breastfeeding.

Then in the second set of vignettes, the game's low resolution graphics give way to even more ambiguous blocks and washes of color, right?

Right? And a shift a shift that that perhaps indicates a change in perspective from a vantage point outside my son to maybe my son's vantage point on the world. But the mechanics of

player interaction kind of complicate this interpretation.

Right? And then the final set of vignettes further complicates questions of perspective by including vignettes from both first person and third person perspectives.

some of which can be read either as representing my son's perspective on another person or another person's perspective on my son,

right? And I employ these ambiguous

right? And I employ these ambiguous perspective shifts intentionally, right?

In order to set up a kind of triangulated address between the game's player, myself as the game's creator, and the various evocations of my son, right? The game in my mind doesn't

right? The game in my mind doesn't represent either a single perspective or a simple shifting perspective, right?

But rather an ambiguous set of perspectives within perspectives, right? Designed to continuously raise

right? Designed to continuously raise questions of how the self relates to the other and who is addressing whom.

Okay, last lyric characteristic for today. um which is heavily dependent on

today. um which is heavily dependent on all the other ones we've talked about so far, which is the that lyric poems tend to exist in a ritual space rather than a narrative space.

They don't tell a story so much as they make truth claims about the world and a kind of ritual moment.

So if you think of a poem like Maya Angelou, still I rise. You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your

hatefulness, but still like air I'll rise.

Poetry scholars will say that there is something going on here besides narrative, right? the poem uh that this poem

right? the poem uh that this poem represents uh utterance more than narrative and not fictional utterance, right? But a kind of real life utterance

right? But a kind of real life utterance in a ritual context, right? And that's

very common for lyric poems. Uh so much so that we tend to assume that most poems, even highly ambiguous short poems, are making some kind of truth

claim about the world. Um, so you have poems like Ezra Pounds in the station of the metro. The apparition of these faces

the metro. The apparition of these faces on the crow of in the crowd pedals on a wet black bow. All right. And this poem has been read as a multi-layered commentary on the human condition

despite its brevity and ambiguity. This

is the entire poem here.

Um, and now we know that many video games in addition to being long, right, have a strong emphasis on narrative, right? But can they also be gateways to

right? But can they also be gateways to these poetic realms of ritual moment and truth claim? Right. Um and if you look

truth claim? Right. Um and if you look here, this is Pep and Bar's a series of gunshots, a very simple game involving a series of urban and suburban vignettes

where as a player you press any key and you see a window light up and hear the sound of a gunshot.

Right? You can do this once or twice and after a few scenes like this, the game ends.

When it was released, a series of gunshots got a lot of attention and praise for its treatment of gun violence. Right. David Ruden wrote an

violence. Right. David Ruden wrote an article for Killcreen titled, "A series of gunshots calls out senseless gun violence in games." Right? And Paulo

Perchini called it a minimalist gym that may be the most poant playable commentary on gun violence to date.

And I don't disagree with these kinds of statements, but the statements are also interesting because if we read this game literally as a simple piece of representational media, the only clear

claim that it's making is something like shots were fired.

Right? So I would argue that the game is in many ways closer to Ezra Pound's ambiguous metro poem than it is to being a traditional commentary. Right? So why

do we want to read the game as making a truth claim? Right. Why do we believe

truth claim? Right. Why do we believe that it's saying something about gun violence beyond what it depicts representationally?

I would argue that the reason we tend to read the game this way is precisely because it has transformed into a lyric interface. It is a poetic gateway. It is

interface. It is a poetic gateway. It is

short metaphoric hyperbolic and ritualistic. Right? in the time-honored

ritualistic. Right? in the time-honored tradition of poetry.

So the question I asked at the beginning of this talk was can the interface architecture of poetry be me be made to

operate in video games and we've only had time to look at a few examples right but I think the answer is clearly yes

and so and this is exciting to me and and this is I I dive into I dive into this in in quite a bit more detail in my book.

Right? So I point you there again if you want to go into more details um then we can go to it through in a 45minute talk.

Right? But this is exciting to me because it allows us to sort of define this idea or one idea right for a born video game poetics and to develop a framework for thinking

specifically and concretely right about how we might conceive of something as a game poem. And there are a couple of

game poem. And there are a couple of other characteristics that in the book that I haven't um talked about at all.

But um yeah, so more thorough thoroughly in my book, right? Um but this project for me

book, right? Um but this project for me isn't primarily about categorization.

All right. Um it's not primarily about defining a new class of artifacts that sits between video games and poems.

rather it's about how we can articulate video games as gateways to new types of experiences.

Right? Um the beauty to me of interface thinking is that whenever we talk about interfaces, we're reminded that things don't exist

in a vacuum, right? Um we're talking about things connected to other things, things connected to people, right? um it

changes the emphasis from what is this thing right to what is this thing for?

What does this thing do? What kind of experiences does this thing mediate, right? Um and this is where I think the

right? Um and this is where I think the higher stakes are. Um because as we've discussed, games have most often been gateways to violent adrenaline-filled

object-oriented experiences, right? Um,

and the reason for that, I think, is ultimately inseparable from the various systems that video games are deeply entangled with. Right? If we look over

entangled with. Right? If we look over the landscape of video games, broadly speaking, it's easy to agree with Galloway's claim that the virtual is no longer a site of emancipation, right?

But rather a mechanism of oppression, right? Games tend to perpetuate the

right? Games tend to perpetuate the values of the systems and infrastructures they inhabit, right?

attention economies, platform capitalism, extractive markets of data and labor, right? They're interfaces

that take us into worlds which teach teach us over and over again to value mastery optimization accumulation and

destruction to see the world as system, object, and resource.

Right? So, the idea of a game poem is exciting to me not primarily because it posits that a video game can have this or that formal characteristic, right?

But because it positions video games as or attempts to position video games, right, as a legitimate medium of poetic expression, right, which offers us hope of video

games that are gateways into very different sorts of experiences, right? Environments, emotions,

right? Environments, emotions, encounters perspectives ideologies and politics compared to the landscape that is currently before us.

Right? which offers us hope of video games maybe that are sites of emancipation to borrow Galloway's language.

Poems says Mary Oliver are not words after all but fighters for the co cold rights let down to the lost.

Poetry says Alice Walker is the lifeblood of rebellion, revolution and the raising of consciousness. Right?

These are the sorts of games I want to make. These are the sorts of games I

make. These are the sorts of games I want to see more of in the world. Games

that are fires for the cold, right?

Games that are the lifeblood of the raising of consciousness.

Um, and to get there, we need to explode the idea not just of what games are, right? Um, but also what they are for,

right? Um, but also what they are for, all right? What sorts of mediations they

all right? What sorts of mediations they facilitate, what sorts of interfaces they can be.

All right? Okay. And there's another interface on the other side of video games that we also have to explode, which is the interface between people and the means of creation, right?

Because of course these things are inseparable, right? If we want to see

inseparable, right? If we want to see new types of games being made, we have to invite new types of people to make games, right? Um, and that's ultimately

games, right? Um, and that's ultimately what excites me most about the idea of a game poem, right? and where I think the highest stakes are in reimagining how games can be made,

right? The idea that anyone can sit down

right? The idea that anyone can sit down with a small accessible tool and craft a tiny expressive game in a similar fashion to how they might jot down a

haiku or doodle on a napkin. Right? This

is a really exciting idea to me, right?

And something that I think is quite subversive in when it comes to video games, right? And spreading that idea is a big

right? And spreading that idea is a big part of why I wrote this book. Um, and

it's why I regularly give workshops showing how anyone from any background, right, can make a game poem from scratch in just two or three hours, right? And

I'm actually giving one of these tomorrow in Oslo. Um, I've also started a community of practice around this idea, right? encouraging artists and

idea, right? encouraging artists and poets um and uh people from all sorts of backgrounds to make tiny expressive video games. And as Camila said um we've

video games. And as Camila said um we've just launched a new online literary magazine u which you can check out at gamepoloems.org and the first issue is coming out uh

just next month actually. So that's

quite exciting. Um so injunction time.

So you know where I'm going. At the

beginning of this talk, I promised you an injunction because hey, injunctions are fun. Um, but also because I do think

are fun. Um, but also because I do think there are real ethical and political stakes here. Uh, right. So, my playful

stakes here. Uh, right. So, my playful injunction is this. If interfaces are gateways, right? and and game poems can open new

right? and and game poems can open new gateways for video games. Um, and anyone can make a game poem,

then go make a game poem, right? Um, help us build some new

right? Um, help us build some new gateways.

All right. Um, I'm going to leave you u with an adapted quote from Annie Dillard, uh, which of course she's talking about

poetry, but maybe this is what we can imagine. Why are we playing video games

imagine. Why are we playing video games if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened, and its deepest mystery probed? Why are we playing video games

probed? Why are we playing video games if not in the hope that the creator will magnify and dramatize our days will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of

meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries so we may feel again their majesty and power.

So, thank you very much and uh yeah, thank you for putting up uh putting up with me and for having me here.