Videogames for Humans by Merritt Kopas

Videogames for Humans Reviews

• 
  Kalin

  ~ I literally squealed with joy when I found out what Videogames for Humans is about. An entire book on Twine! And Twine games! And the people who make them! Why, welcome to Wonderland! :)))
  
  Thing is, I have a friend who's been thrusting Twine onto me for the past couple of years; yet I, partly disappointed by the low tide of people's interest in pure text reading, partly excited about the new opportunities offered by
  visual novels, have been neglecting it, probably thinking thoughts like, "What can another textual tool bring to our waning medium?" Who knows? Sometimes, I can't quite trace my own thinking.
  
  Anyway, finally I've found something that will guide me through Twine without (I hope) all the pain of trial-and-error, excitement-and-disenchantment, hit-and-miss. I hope. ;)
  
  ~ The opening essay, Eva Problems' thoughts on Rat Chaos, both thrilled and terrified me. And it did both for one and the same reason: its honesty. I love to see people open up like this. But then I hate to comment on their words. They feel ... too personal. In some way, sacred.
  
  So see me smile instead, and nod.
  
  ~ Riley MacLeod's stroll through Fuck That Guy had me smile a lot, too. Sometimes incredulously ("C'mon, they can't be all that bad"), sometimes with great sympathy (especially at this part: "I tend to arc toward sleeping with people instead of sleeping with bodies"), and sometimes with bafflement (is Riley pulling our collective leg here or is this observation dead serious?).
  
  At any rate, if the going's going to be that good, I'm holding on for dear life.
  
  ~ Emily Short's experience of Anhedonia is another instance of too personal, too sacred. In fact, here I'd have appreciated if Emily had said more, included more screenshots. Being bipolar myself, I'm deeply curious about others' version of depression and other ways to cope with it. So yes, I want moar. ;)
  
  Also, so far I've been enjoying the essays far more than the game texts themselves. Hmmmm.
  
  ~ And seemingly to compensate me, the book then offers me Imogen Binnie's thoughts on Eva Problems's Sabbat. Where, while I do enjoy Imogen's thoughts, I squeal with laughter (or shudder with this tiny bit of visceral terror) at Eva's writing. It's luscious, lascivious, ludicrous. It makes fun of itself. What more could I ask for?
  
  ~ Tom McHenry's Horse Master is the second game whose narrative excites me. There's a type of jigsaw fiction (speculative or not) where the thrill is in discovering what world we are in. Naomi Clark's notes accentuate the discoveries--so much so that sometimes they feel like the log of certain quests.
  
  Yes, a part of me hates the ending; another part hates the randomness. But the rest of me have been too thrilled (and moved) to nitpick.
  
  ~ Elizabeth Sampat's Nineteen reads like a non-suicide note: summing up all the things that we wouldn't have been able to tell our loved ones if we had gone through with the act. Which is perhaps a tribute to interactive fiction itself, the "what if--but also what if" aspect that makes it far more satisfying than linear fiction for a vast number of themes and situations.
  
  And one of its conclusions resonates with one of my foundations, why I am still alive too:
  
  

  It took a decade, maybe longer, to realize that no matter what I did it would be impossible to handle these feelings on my own. I joined a church in high school, I wrote, I tried therapy. All of these things helped, some more than others, but the only consistently valuable tool I have found has been my friends.
  Depression convinces you that you have no power. Sometimes you need friends to lend you some of theirs.

  
  
  ~ My first reaction to Michael Brough's scarfmemory was, "WTF? A dirge about a stupid scarf?!" Now, after going through it along with Anna Anthropy, I feel ashamed. Stereotyping has many faces. I should know better. :(
  
  (And, Michael, I'm sorry about your loss too.)
  
  ~ Aevee Bee's Removed: another very personal journey. Across the densest jungle so far: each sentence needs its own untangling.
  
  I wish it were longer, though.
  
  ~ In Bryan Reid's For Political Lovers, a Little Utopia Sketch, I didn't enjoy the game but really sympathized (and often empathized) with Avery McDalndo's experience of it. In fact, the game text made me gulp uncomfortably a few times: I, too, am prone to these impenetrable layers of abstraction and having too much fun at the expense of my readers. (I don't always do it on purpose, I promise.) But there was a thought at the very conclusion of Avery's reflections which points to a possible interpretation: that Little Utopia Sketch starts as a muddle and ends as a mirror in order to demonstrate the quality of the transition that it hints at. Sounds good.
  
  ~ Bryan Reid's (literally) poetic response to Miranda Simon's Your Lover Has Turned into a Flock of Birds was eloquent, multi-layered and, well, impenetrable. (To me.)
  
  Miranda's Lover was short. (But I do hope their love was longer.)
  
  ~ Jeremy Penner's There Ought to Be a Word is deceptively simple, yet perhaps the most mature and explorational essay so far. Or at least it becomes so when youI supplement it with Austin Walker's analysis. (Also, is "essay" the word I'm really looking for? How 'bout "analysis"? Yes, There Ought to Be a Word has that effect on youme.) I see all my relationships--intimate or not--in a similarly ambivalent, between-and-beyond-the-words way, so I was the third man in the company, silently pondering, asking and answering and asking again.
  
  So ... what do you call a friend to whom you go when all your words have failed? What about the one whom you call when you've bashed in your own door and can't fix it? The one that shares with you the most amazing visions of the future, kindling the fire to come up with your own? The one you've never seen in person, she who writes the tenderest reviews and sounds just this bit broken and makes you want to make the whole world whole?
  
  "You call them by their names" feels like a cop-out.
  
  ~ Musing on Olivia Vitolo's Negotiation, Katherine Cross wrote
  this.
  
  I rest my case. ;)
  
  ~ Soha Kareem's reProgram was, so far, the most uncomfortable piece for me. Had I been left to read~play it on my own, I most likely wouldn't have been able to complete it. There're chambers I'd rather not enter; there're choices that make me feel like slapping everyone involved. (And not in the kinky sense.)
  
  Amazingly, Mattie Brice's commentary made the experience completely comfortable. She sounds calm, understanding, supportive throughout the journey. A voice that I can trust won't let me down.
  
  Here's another reason why I enjoy listening to people who cherish something rather than people who criticize it.
  
  ~ Nina Freeman's Mangia throws you in the middle of digestive disorders. It's deeply personal. Highly instructive.
  
  And I found Lana Polansky's commentary another welcome hand-holder. (Says the boy out of his depth. :)
  
  ~ Cara Ellison's Sacrilege: :D & <333
  
  Soha Kareem's commentary: :DDD & <3
  
  ~ Anna Anthropy's writing in And the Robot Horse You Rode In On feels the most delicious so far, and her future of cowgirls and cyberhorses, the most detailed. (But is the whole story really a family drama? Some of me shake their heads incredulously. C'mon, there should be moar to it ....)
  
  I also loved listening to Cat Fitzpatrick's commentary. "Listening" here reflects the tangible quality of her voice. And her sympathy.
  
  ~ Zoe Quinn's Depression Quest may be the most realistic depression simulator I've ever encountered. The fact that for any decision you face, you can see all those good, constructive options in your head but cannot act on them, is telling enough. (Toni Pizza, the commentator, asked if there could be any other game mechanics representing this state of anxious passivity. I had an intriguing idea ... but let me try my hand at it before I tell you more. ;)
  
  Considering my own experience with depression, I wonder about the purpose of the two "stat meters", "You're not currently seeing a therapist" and "You are not currently taking medication for depression." Is there any path where these statuses change? To what effect? If I weren't afraid that spending so much time in such a depressive environment (no pun intended) wouldn't drag me down, I might have given
  the game a shot. The website says that choices do matter and there're five different endings, so one day I still may.
  
  While this may be the most realistic representation of depression I know of, the most moving one (also in the sense that it made me move my ass while in a very depressed state: no small feat in itself) was the beginning of
  Dreamfall: The Longest Journey.
  
  ~ Kayla Unknown's 3x3x3 was sweet. To each mermaid, her own mermate. :)
  
  ~ While I shuddered at the beginning of Michael Joffe's Eft to Newt (I find Kafka's Metamorphosis deeply disturbing), I smiled at its endings. (All of them, not just the 7th one.) Quirky structuralist humor is my cup of tea.
  
  ~ Rokashi Edwards's I'm Fine was an instructive counterpart to Depression Quest. It helped me understand my sister better. (She used to get aggressive in her depressive periods; I get passive.) And John Brindle's analysis highlighted the depth and details I'm bound to miss, in my present exhausted-agitated state.
  
  Thank you both, guys.
  
  ~ Lydia Neon's Player 2 is an interesting tool, a sort of vent-your-hurt assistant, but it's too abstract for me. Stories with concrete plots and fleshed-out protagonists have always worked better in my case.
  
  Which brings me to a general observation about Videogames for Humans: If I consider it as an anthology of literary fiction, I won't rate it very highly as a whole. However, I choose to consider it as a much-needed introduction to a new medium, blending fiction and non-fiction, narrative and interactive devices, distancing and self-identification. Twine transcends traditional approaches, so we need new yardsticks for rating it.
  
  You won't be surprised by my rating, will you?
• 
  Vanessa Raposo

  Sete meses depois de começar, eu finalmente termino esse bendito livro! A demora se deveu não a uma falta de interesse, mas ao fato de que, bem, são MUITOS jogos, alguns dos quais requerem um tempo maior de digestão antes de se passar para os seguintes. Além disso, eu sempre tive dificuldades em manter o interesse numa obra completa de antologia, sem a linha lógica e temporal de um romance para me guiar até o final.
  Dito isso, eu gostei de ter lido "Videogames for Humans"; mais pelo que ousa fazer do que pelo que de fato faz. A escolha dos jogos é variada e rica, mas o livro em si poderia ser mais. A ideia aqui é que ele funcione como um complemento para cada um dos games feitos no Twine: em cada capítulo, uma figura ligada à cultura underground do videogame joga um deles e faz comentários a respeito. A pessoa está livre para falar o que lhe vier à cabeça, desde aspectos técnicos do que está jogando até compartilhar experiências pessoais de sua vida.
  Em tese, é esse tipo de abordagem pessoal e íntima o que mais me interessa quando se fala de videogames: afastá-lo de seu caráter puramente mecânico, dos gráficos aprimorados e das notas de review ~imparciais~. No entanto, na prática, a abordagem livre de "Videogames for Humans" entrega diversos comentários que saem simplesmente... sem-graça ou, pior, condescendes, no final das contas. Talvez alguns dos autores tenham interpretado muito livremente a coisa do "descrever" o que se está jogando ou talvez não tivessem nada para dizer, mas eu mais de uma vez tive de resistir ao impulso de fechar o Kindle quando um autor me descrevia minuciosamente uma imagem que eu já vi enquanto estava jogando. Ou quando dedicava três parágrafos para falar de um detalhe sem qualquer importância para o resto da narrativa, exceto para talvez satisfazer um pouco o seu próprio ego intelectual.
  O que me leva a meu outro problema com o livro. "Videogames for Humans" denuncia o elitismo na indústria tradicional de videogames, voltada para o entretenimento e feita pelas mesmas vozes brancas, cis, masculinas e heterossexuais. O Twine, uma ferramenta gratuita e baseada em hypertexto, acaba sendo a porta de entrada para grupos com pouca voz nos meios tradicionais. Lindo!
  Talvez eu esteja lendo demais nas entrelinhas, mas me incomoda a defesa frequente e incessante de que o "for Humans" só pode ser alcançado num meio que se utiliza quase que exclusivamente texto. Eu provavelmente não deveria estar dizendo isso no Goodreads, mas isso me cheira a um tipo diferente de elitismo. Uma carteirada academicista, if you will. Eu reaaaaaalmente não gosto desse tom "os textos salvarão os videogames de se tornarem homúnculos robóticos e sem alma".
  De qualquer forma, estou feliz de ter lido e jogado cada um dos games nesta colet��nea. Precisamos de mais vozes se quisermos que os videogames floresçam como mídia, e "Videogames for Humans" é certeiro em dar sua contribuição.
• 
  Eli

  this is an incredible and wide-reaching anthology that deserves real cult status, and there are pieces in here that really pierced me (shoutout to Naomi Clark's piece on Horse Master, because fuck). this should absolutely be required reading for anyone interested in narrative, gaming, art, trauma, gender, sex (the fun kind), transness.
  
  the omission of Porpentine's work, considered in tandem with Porpentine's allegations of abuse against some of the people involved in this volume, should make other readers as uncomfortable as it did me. it's a reminder that the wonder inspired by brilliant artistic communities often masks the ways we fuck each other up. but i hope some of the pieces here can gesture towards hope, towards better ways of being in community with each other.
  
• 
  Nick Carraway LLC

  1) [Introduction]
  "Late 2012 and early 2013 was an extraordinarily exciting period for me: I started, for the first time, to feel like I was a part of something. The 'queer games scene' covered by videogame outlets might not have been as cohesive as some accounts supposed, but for a little under a year, it definitely felt real. We were telling new stories in new ways, stories that were not just unheard of as subjects for videogames—which they certainly were—but rare in any medium. We were writing about messy lives on the economic and social margins of society, about the complexities of embodiment and community, about our grotesque cyberpunk dreams and gay pulp fantasies.
  Things fell apart, as they often do in tightly knit, passionate communities of artistic people with few resources—especially when those people are all also friends, lovers, or something in between. But that period was intensely generative, launching a number of authors into visibility and recognition and solidifying the reputations of others. When the burst of activity around Twine during this time ended, it didn't just fizzle out—it left marks on literary and independent videogames communities.
  Twine games ended up on college syllabi, technical resources piled up for those wanting to play with variations on the form, and even the relatively small amount of journalistic and critical attention paid to some prominent Twine works raised the profile of the tool to a new level. When Richard Hofmeier—winner of the 2013 Independent Game Festival's grand prize award for his game Cart Life—defaced his own booth and replaced his game's demo with Twine author Porpentine's well-received game Howling Dogs, it became impossible to ignore the importance of Twine to independent games."
  
  2) [scarfmemory by Michael Brough, played by Anna Anthropy]
  "'bus reaches the stop finally. better take all your stuff.
  take: hat gloves scarf backpack bag of food
  okay lets go'
  all of the items here are links, big blue letters, except for 'scarf,' which sits between them, small and white and naked, unclickable. this is storytelling right here, just through how the text is labelled.
  in older, puzzle-focused text games, the player develops a sort of instinct of, upon reaching a new place, immediately grabbing everything that's not nailed down and taking it with you: you never know when you might need that hairpin to pick the lock on a treasure chest. at this point, you want to alter history, i want to make michael take his scarf, but my inability to is already a forgone conclusion. i wonder how many times michael played out this scene in his head, willing himself, in memory, to just take the scarf. the player's doing the same thing, right now.
  there's a photo of a pile of stuff on the desk: michael's coat, michael's gloves. his scarf can be seen, orange and blue, in the pile.
  when i click on something to take, its name vanishes from the screen, ultimately leaving the word 'scarf' behind, untakeable, alone.
  '> hat
  > gloves
  > backpack
  > bag of food
  > okay let's go
  you're sitting on a different bus, in a different time and place.
  how much of life is spent moving from one place to another?
  > how much of life
  it doesn't matter, it doesn't have to be wasted time, you can read a book, knit something, think deeply, look out at the view, talk to friends.
  maybe in the future these things will have internet connections too!'
  clicking on 'knit' draws me through an entire internal dialogue, as michael goes back and forth about whether he should learn to knit. this game is all about transitions: michael knits his scarf as a way to deal with travel, he loses his scarf while travelling. a scarf is a transitional piece of clothing: you wear it when you're between places, because it's too warm to wear it inside. for michael, his scarf is a way in which he takes ownership of the time of his life he spends out of control of it—the time he spends travelling. but travelling, ultimately, takes it back."
  
  3) [Depression Quest by Zoe Quinn, played by Toni Pizza]
  "'You open your front door and stare at your apartment. An overwhelming feeling of exhaustion overcomes you, and you feel like your energy levels are low enough that you'll likely settle into a single activity tonight.
  What do you do?
  1: Just shake off your bad mood and do something fun for the rest of the evening.
  2. Reach out to someone close to you.
  3: Don't burden anyone with your problems. Distract yourself.'
  Fine, I'll take the only choice that is there.
  '> Don't burden anyone
  What you really want more than anything is to turn your brain off and just disappear for a while. You sink resignedly into your couch and start playing videogames, but you can't seem to focus on what's happening on-screen. You cycle through a few different games, but tonight everything seems either too tedious or too aggravating for you to play for more than a few minutes. A few of your online friends invite you to play a game with them, but the prospect of having to talk, let alone cooperate with other people seems incredibly unpleasant. You decide to give the videogames a rest for the evening, though you worry that you've offended your online friends and your next conversation will be awkward because of it, giving you yet another source of stress to weigh down on you tonight.'"
  
  4) [I'm Fine by Rokashi Edwards, played by John Brindle]
  "The best illustration of this writing is also most telling difference between these games. [Depression Quest] begins with a lengthy paratext setting out, with trigger warnings and links to mental health resources, its aims, its content, and its omissions. The writers explain that they have amalgamated the real experiences of 'several people' and tried to include 'as broad a range as possible.' They're careful to qualify the game's relation to reality, saying that it won't reflect everyone's perspective. They also say that they want to help people who don't have depression understand what it's like. This comes across in the writing, which works to order and express the counter-intuitive spirals of depression in a way which can be understood from outside them.
  I'm Fine does not come off like an amalgamation. It's aggressively specific, locked into the mind of one person. It isn't committed to a representative paradigm and doesn't show any interest in 'hitting the key points.' It doesn't really care about being accessible to muggles, either; it's not trying to translate. It is what it is, it jumps right in, and it comes on as thick and strong and bleak as difficult as a person might in the thick of this shit. I'm not passing judgement on the artistic goals of either of these games, because both have their reasons to be. But the contrast between how hard DQ works to be polished and accessible, and how hostile and uncompromising I found my first try of I'm Fine, could not be more instructive. This is a game which fully inhabits its topic. It remains 'inside,' trapped in the loops, and there's no way to do that without being alienating for some."
• 
  Rachel

  This is a collection of playthroughs of notable Twine games with excellent commentary. Twine games are essentially interactive fiction, only with things like variable tracking (so it can remember what choices you've made). That's how it's possible to put complete playthroughs of them in a book.
  
  The range of games was excellent. There were some I had played, like
  Depression Quest and
  Even Cowgirls Bleed, and a bunch I had never heard of. Some of the games I probably never would have played on my own, like the one about gay hook-up culture and the one about a Satanist ritual. I enjoyed expanding my knowledge about the types of Twine games out there, although I did feel uncomfortable at times. I thoroughly enjoyed reading some of the games and their commentary, like the one about a pregnant mermaid
  (3x3x3), and the one about raising a futuristic race horse (
  Horse Master).
  
  Sometimes I have a hard time focusing on Twine games when I just have them up in my browser. I like the idea of downloading them as HTML files and sitting down just to play them, rather than having them up in a browser tab as something to "get done." I really enjoyed reading the ebook on my ereader (as opposed to reading it on my computer or something). The commentary helped me to slow down and enjoy the poetic language too--sometimes I have a hard time with reading things slowly and imagining everything that's going on, and the commentary/analysis helped me savor the experience.
  
  There were some times when my daughter woke me up in the middle of the night and I didn't feel like being awake, but having this book to read made it less of a bother. I feel like I want to play more Twine games, but I don't really want to go to the trouble to curate them. Maybe someone is already doing that! I should go see. Here's a
  list from 2013. I wish Free Indie Games still updated!
• 
  Anna Glassman

  Videogames for Humans incorporates a lot of my favorite things: In-depth analysis of how games function, indie weirdness, and minority representation on media. The linear mix of game and review allows the reader to experience the game from both their own eyes and the eyes of the reviewer, and some of these playthroughs are as lovely to read as the games themselves.
• 
  Brendan

  Just read the Kopas part, too strange
• 
  Thomas Hale

  The rise of Twine games is one of the more interesting parts of the increased access folks have to the tools of game creation. For those who don’t know, Twine games are text-based games, usually rather short, usually covering personal and abstract topics and developed by only one or two authors. In this collection, merritt kopas (a writer, game dev and podcaster) brings together game creators, critics and writers to play through one Twine game each (curated by kopas) and comment on their playthrough. Since Twine games are primarily text-based, the game texts are reproduced in full on the page, separated from player commentary by font. It’s a really great idea and one that effectively turns Videogames For Humans into a book-length collection of Let’s Plays.
  
  Full review here:
  https://mediagluttony.wordpress.com/2...
• 
  D.J. Sylvis

  A really great way to acquaint yourself with what's being done in Twine games - a series of combination playthrough/essays that allow you to see the text from the games themselves, as well as someone's thoughts and experiences while playing. What the book showcases most of all is the personal side to these creations, and the relationship that emerges between the writer and player each time - things that you see far less often with big commercial gaming. Highly recommended if you're interested in text adventures, and absolutely necessary if you want to write them.
• 
  Shaun Welch

  Videogames for Humans is a diverse collection of text-based games made in the Twine engine, and the commentary and insights of people who play them. Each one provides different insights into the creator of the game, the person playing it, and in a way ourselves. I'm uncertain what more to say: it is unique, it is good, and if you like collections of essays or enjoy internal dialogue or video games, you ought to check it out.
• 
  Chris

  It's all about Twine games... so I'm a wee bit biased.
• 
  Aiden

  This book was my doorway into the world of twines and videogames i never thought could exist. I'm totally grateful for it!