How a Game Lives: The Annotated Essays of Jacob Geller

by Jacob Geller

Over his illustrious career, Jacob Geller has written and produced a sprawling collection of video essays. Deftly interweaving video game analysis with complex narratives about art, politics, and history, Geller’s work positions games as vital tools for understanding each other and ourselves. How a Game Lives re-examines ten of Geller’s most iconic essays accompanied by his brand-new commentary, afterwords on each piece by some of the industry’s best writers, and stunning original artwork by Kilian Eng and other exceptional artists.

With videos like “Who’s Afraid of Modern Art”, “Every Zelda is the Darkest Zelda”, and “The Legacy of the Haunted House”, Geller has taught audiences how to think about the art that’s affected them. How a Game Lives immortalises those works and more, and provides boundless insight into the construction, philosophy, and afterlife of each essay.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Video Games, Gaming, Games

206 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 2025

Reviews

[Enchanted fox]

I need this book so badddd I absolutely love Jacob Geller's youtube channel <3 <3
And the accompanying art and annotations to his favorite essays, plus guest authors?? Buying this right now

[kaiya]

i need my hands on this book ASAP. ive watched every jacob geller video at least twice.

[giuliano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jacob’s work is deeply validating. It’s hard to talk to friends and colleagues about video games without feeling insecure about their perceptions of what makes good/bad art.

However, to write about games, you have to assume that the gaming-inferiority-complex just doesn’t exist. This is a given with Jacob’s essays. The implicit assumption that games are art gives his work an openness that I rarely see in essay writing; it’s very unpretentious, and this is how I want to write.

I’m inspired to write more after reading this book. It makes me want to be open to all forms of art. Even bad art. Everything is worth thinking about.

—

Great criticism is about giving to yourself. To lose hours to something important and to find those hours again.

—

“What is the hour count that a game lives in your memory? How often do you think of it, reference it, dream about it?”

[LA]

tl;dr give me this book now and i would've bought the deluxe edition if it wasn't so damn expensive.

4/5/25
It's officially the anniversary of when I first pre-ordered this book. I was there for when the book announcement video dropped and I was there to see the shipping estimates go from Q4 2024 to Q1 2025. It's currently Q2 2025 and alas, the book has yet to be delivered. Gotta say, if I had ordered the deluxe edition as a gift for myself for the holidays, I would feel punked right now. Seeing as I didn't care for the fancy window dressing (I'm broke) but genuinely wanting to support the channel, I pre-ordered the book. So to my comrades who share my sentiments toward this book as fans of Jacob Geller and his video essays, I want you to know that you aren't alone.

My unjustified, hyperbolic declaration of my mild irritation in regards to the shipping process aside, it's honestly a coincidence that I happened to check on my order today. I completely forgot about the book since I last checked on it around Christmas time since I wanted to know if my order was lost. Today, I guess I wanted to see if anyone actually read the book and ended up here. I think the biggest shame is that some of Jacob Geller's best video essays have come out in the last year. I mean "Nothing Ever Stops Existing," "Art For No One," "Fear of Dark," and his Spec Ops video are bangers and it's unfortunate they won't be in the book. Though, I'm still looking forward to rereading the video essays that made me a fan of the channel. I remember watching the Shadow of the Colossus video—the notorious Jacob Geller video that made him blow up as a content creator—and it always stuck with me even though I don't think it's as good as I remember it. If those dudes can spend years of their life looking for an ending that doesn't exist, I can wait for a book.

Also, I know for a fact Jacob is going to release more books because the man's final evolution has to take his eloquently worded, existential essays and passion for gaming somewhere. I refuse to believe he will stay confined to the restricting, digestible youtube format. And seeing as he has a tendency to say more than the his usual videos permit him to say to the point of having to publish his full thoughts on a different platform, and how he promotes physical items over digital ones, I can see him making that big leap. Being part of the 12,000 who ordered the book is cool because even if my prediction is wrong and I don't have an original copy of Jacob Geller's first book of many, this is one of the only works that captures the video game essay format beyond anything that any other youtuber has published before.

As someone who loves video game essays and books, I think it's awesome that video games have developed from yet another hedonistic form of escapism known to concerned parents for its connection to violence, sex, and gambling to being a legitimate art form exploring the ontological depths of human experience through stories and characters that people actually care about. Video games have always had the capacity to be the best art form and it's nice to know the world is full of these nerds now because these stories are only going to become better. And god, one lifetime is not enough to get through that backlog.

6/16/25
Tis the day yall. I got my Jacob Geller book. I will read it when I get home.

[Cozy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally, it arrived. And it was worth the wait 100%. I already knew I liked the essays in the book, but the footnotes and sidebars were always an interesting way to add context or side tangents that time wouldn't allow for in the original essay. The additional commentary essays by various authors in response were so well done and interesting, not a single one felt like a weak link. I especially liked the paired writing in the "Control, Anatomy, and the Legacy of the Haunted House" essay. It very much gave me some delightful House of Leaves vibes, which was clearly intentional and very, very fun. The overall design of the book itself is spectacular with every illustration grabbing my attention and inviting me to linger on the page just a little longer to take in the detail lovingly crafted into each image. The page formatting and design direction of the book is stunning, too, with a very clear sense of style that brings together and organizes the pages nicely. Overall, I'm very glad I ordered and waited for this book.

[sewer rat · Rating 5 out of 5]

owning a physical copy of Does Call of Duty Believe in Anything is such an amazing feeling, shoutout geller for being one of my biggest literary inspirations, now that you have a book i can now skip the "well my favorite author is probably Jacob Geller but he does like. video essays so he doesn't really have a *book* per se,,,, though i preordered his upcoming book so like. does that fit your definition of an author?" spiel anytime i talk about my influences

[joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

probably one of the coolest books i've ever read! i love it a lot. review to come

[Matt Buongiovanni · Rating 5 out of 5]

“[This book] will likely be read by far fewer people than watch even my least popular video. But as long as it’s on someone’s shelf—as long as it’s on your shelf—the context of this art can’t be erased. I care about this book very much. Please take care of it.”

Jacob Geller is my favorite YouTuber, and it’s not a particularly close contest. From the first video of his that I watched (“Every Zelda is the Darkest Zelda,” which just so happens to be one of the ten that made this collection), I was struck by his gift for taking a variety of sources—video games, of course, but also short stories, movies, essays, and so on—and finding a common thread that unites them all, pulling on it and drawing the works together in ways that are always interesting, and often surprisingly moving.

How a Game Lives is a collection of ten of his videos’ scripts, with new illustrations and annotations added to supplement the writing itself. I will never get tired of reading through writers’ words on their own works; I love getting a brief peek behind the curtain to see what their thoughts were as they crafted pieces that spoke to me, and this was no exception. Geller’s notes are often quite frank, apologizing for factual errors or commenting on things that he feels he could have done better, but they never feel self-indulgent or insecure—reading them feels similar to watching a director’s commentary track for a movie you enjoy (remember when movies had those?), getting to hear asides about ideas that were cut, or learning about the initial seed that sprouted into the final product.

One of the biggest surprises I had while reading this book was the fact that Geller’s writing wasn’t my favorite part! Each essay comes with an original afterword, penned by a different author on the same subject. I had seen the videos, of course, and so I knew where the essays themselves would go, but these afterwords were a wholly new experience, and they did not disappoint. Gareth Damian Martin’s companion to the essay on haunted houses was a particular treat, and more than matched the stories the original essay discussed in terms of sheer inventive weirdness.

One final thing that shouldn’t be overlooked: this book is gorgeous. The original artwork is, obviously, remarkable, but every single page has been so lovingly and painstakingly considered. It is a real treat to read, and I could imagine no better way to preserve the words of someone who has had such an impact on my own artistic worldview.

[Dylan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I ordered this early because the idea of bringing video essays into a physical format and then reanalyzing them with annotations and related guest essays is just super cool to me. Noah Caldwell-Gervais being one of those guest essayists also helped seal my decision. The book is beautifully designed and layered with really incredible artwork. I still need to borrow a way to play the included vinyl though, so maybe im missing a grand piece by not listening to its soundtrack.

[Marianne · Rating 5 out of 5]

while i could spend probably countless words talking about the fantastic essays, both the originals and the new additions from other authors, and the beautiful illustrations, the most important thing i think i can say is that this book makes me want to write.

[Marlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

"There’s power in stories, though. That’s all history is: the best tales. The ones that last. Might as well be mine." – Varric Tethras in Dragon Age: Inquisition

I’ve always loved this quote because it manages to combine how I feel about games, how I feel about their characters, what makes some games live in my imagination and even my heart for decades while and even after playing them – along with the reason I’m playing in the first place. It also kind of explains why I decided to dive into How a Game Lives AND, a whole lot about how I approach the world, whether real or imaginary.

Because I play games FOR the story, to be INSIDE the story, to experience the story as a character within it and not just a consumer of it. And some of those stories LAST, not just Dragon Age but also Mass Effect, Horizon Zero Dawn and Final Fantasy X. They feature stories that can still move me and characters that I still think about – often quite fondly. (I STILL miss the original Elder Scrolls game, Arena. The sequels have never quite lived up to the first. Your gaming mileage may vary.)

The stories in games, whether games I play myself or games that I watch Galen play (he loves a good platformer where I tend to throw the controller across the room and hit one of the cats) also inform my own writing about other stories in other formats. I review books, particularly science fiction and fantasy, and there’s plenty of cross pollination between them.

As there is with pretty much every other form of storytelling, which is what games and books and movies and any other form of media ARE. If, as one writer said, “Man is the only animal that blushes…or needs to,” then stories are how we deal with some of that blushing, whether we use it to excuse or explain or change the subject entirely. Stories are how we process the world, and the stories in games are part of that processing.

A part of me is tempted – HIGHLY – to just talk back to How a Game Lives. Not to argue, but to continue the conversation, because that’s part of the point, both for the original video essays and for the book I have in real, live, hand. (I seldom get print books for multiple reasons, but this is one of the rare cases where I requested an actual, physical, reading copy from the publisher and I’m glad I did. The format works MUCH BETTER in print, but if you have to read the ebook use a black background layout for readability. Still, get the real book if you can.)

A huge part of me wants to add more fuel to the various contextual fires. I’ve read two books recently that I would have had even more appreciation of if I’d seen Geller’s essay “Fear of Cold” first, as both Michael Nayak’s Symbiote AND Sarah Gailey’s Spread Me reference John Carpenter’s The Thing in very similar ways. Also The Blackfire Blade uses golems, but it uses them in the same way that Dragon Age Origins does, and I kind of want to throw that on the discussion in “The Golem and the Jewish Superhero”, along with the more traditional, if decidedly female, golem in The Maiden and the Monster.

And I would love to do a really deep dive with someone about the issues raised in “Does Call of Duty Believe in Anything?” because the question at the heart of that essay is both profound and applicable to way more than just THAT series. It’s all about the structure of narratives that in effect reinforce the status quo while doing their damndest (and most likely ours) to pretend that the status quo is neutral when it never is. Which, in its turn, jumps straight off a cliff into discussions about how opening up gaming and other media to traditionally underrepresented viewpoints supposedly ‘ruins some people’s childhoods’ and goes against a canon that originally reinforced that status quo and whether or not viewpoints in the public sphere or in art in general should be restricted to the acceptable. That way lies tyranny and book banning and I could go on all day because these essays made me THINK and that’s always an excellent thing.

Before I get down off my soapbox here, I can’t leave without adding a quote from another long-running media property, because the more I think about it, the more apropos it is. It’s part of a dialog between the still somewhat idealistic Bashir and the ever mysterious and frequently duplicitous Garak in Star Trek Deep Space 9.

"Bashir: Out of all the stories you told me, which ones that you told me were true and which ones weren’t? Garak: My doctor, they all were true. Bashir: Even the lies? Garak: Especially the lies."

So I’m not here to review How a Game Lives, because it isn’t a book that lends itself to that treatment. I’m here to talk about what the book made me think about. The trick for me, much as it seems like it can be for the author, is to wrestle those thoughts into a coherent mass less than the size of, oh, say, The Lord or the Rings or the movies it spawned.

I’ve been playing computer and video games for nearly 50 years. I built my first computer out of a Heathkit in 1979 and one of the first things I did was type game code onto cassette tapes from books, because 1979 predates just about everything including even floppy disk drives and color monitors. The first games I remember purchasing were the original Zork, followed by the other Infocom text adventure games because, well, that’s what there was. I also had an Atari but that came later.

In other words, I’ve always played games, and I still do. I play because it’s fun – even when it sometimes literally hurts. There are games I play, like Diablo, because there are just some nights when pixels need to die. But the games that live, the ones that stick with me, are the games with big stories and fascinating characters, and that’s true whether I’m the actual player or whether I’m watching Galen play. Some games, like most of the Assassin’s Creed series, Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn and the Uncharted series, tell great stories and make fantastic television.

So the question of ‘How a Game Lives’ or ‘What makes a game live’ are questions that I’ve been wrestling with for a long time. From a personal standpoint, the games that stick with me are the ones that make me care for their worlds and their characters, which is why Final Fantasy X has stuck with me for more than 20 years, what made the Dragon Age series infinitely replayable – at least until the latest iteration, and why I can’t make myself replay the Mass Effect Trilogy in spite of how good it was.

When I was first offered a review copy of this book, part of what appealed to me as a reviewer was that it presented an opportunity for both Galen and I to get a say. My experience of playing computer and video games is longer, but his is broader, and in the context of this book, he’s played many if not most of the Zelda games which rightfully warranted a chapter of their own in How a Game Lives – because those games certainly do.

So here’s Galen’s essay in response to “Every Zelda is the Darkest Zelda”

Childhood memories can grow dim, but one of the NES-era Legend of Zelda games was quite likely the very first game I played on a home console during a trip visiting a family member. The most vivid part of that memory was how difficult it was to deal with the Tektites; I didn’t get very far before it was time to return home.

Ocarina of Time was the Zelda game that first truly sunk its claws into me; after that I played many but not all of the successor games. It combined a good story with interesting puzzle-dungeons and a successful illusion that there was always more to its world over the next hill. That sense of having a world to explore that felt lived reached a peak in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. To this day, a game that combines good writing, a world to explore that feels real, and environmental storytelling is like catnip to me. It doesn’t have to be a true open world—Final Fantasy X isn’t, for example—but as long as the world has verisimilitude and rewards poking around its corners, I’ll probably enjoy exploring it.

While double-checking some facts for this review, I was reminded that Ocarina of Time came out in 1998; i.e., the year I graduated college. That fact might inspire one of the common questions regarding a platform for telling stories that sometimes still stings: “Aren’t you a bit old to be playing that?” (Marlene’s comment: At this point in my life, when I get questions like that, I just laugh. I’ve got nothing else – or at least nothing else polite – left to say.)

In his essay “Every Zelda is the Darkest Zelda”, Geller provides an answer: video game stories—or at least the ones that are written well—can grow along with the player. The experience (and hopefully wisdom) one gains as one grows older can turn a cartoon tale that features thwacking energy balls back and forth with Ganon into an exploration of adult themes such as maturation and picking up the pieces from a disastrous war…that the heroes lost. It’s not for nothing that Archive of Our Own has 329 fanfics tagged “Link has PTSD”… for a game series that also features a lot of charm and humor. As Geller points out, however, the darkness of some of the themes is balanced by a fundamental sense of hope: not necessarily the adolescent hope that Good will beat Evil and All Will Live Happily Ever after, but the messy adult hope that amelioration from disaster is, while partial, also possible.

I really appreciated Geller giving me a fresh way of looking at one of my favorite game series. The essay (and the afterward to the essay by Matt Margini) by itself is worth the price of the book. I’m glad Marlene suggested that we do a joint review; I will be following Geller’s work henceforth.

Escape Rating, well, not this time. Neither of us precisely escaped while reading this book. Instead, separately and together, we engaged with this book in a very real way, leading instead to a rather personal Reality Rating of A. Anyone interested in a discussion of video games as art, as storytelling, as a reflection on the world that game players and game creators inhabit is going to be riveted even though their brain is likely to explode while reading – and or diving back into these essays original video format.

Meanwhile, I’ll be keeping my eye out for Geller’s just announced NEXT BOOK, which, based on the book I’ve just finished, may have THE most appropriate title EVER with You’re Not Overthinking It, no matter how much the author fears he – or for that matter his readers and viewers – might be.

Originally published at Reading Reality

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection essays about games/everything by my all time favourite youtuber.

I am somewhat terrible at analysis, so I am thankful for someone as thoughtful as Jacob for the work he does. On another note, his work has lead me on to a number of fantastic movies, books, and games (Chain Gang All Stars is one of the books of all time. The author does the forward for this book).

I’ve been trying to convince my mum to use some of Jacob’s essays in her teaching of high school scholarship english. Hoping this might help!

Thanks for all you do Jacob. Kia kaha!

[Geoffrey Hagberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

What is it: curation.
----
Why 5 stars: on a shelf in my bedroom, I keep a couple stacks of books that have been important to me. Some are pretty predictable to folks who know me (or read a handful of my reviews here on Goodreads)--Cormac McCarthy's The Road, David Ferry's Bewilderment, Mikhail Bakhtin's Art & Answerability, Carlo Rovelli's The Order of Time. Stacked among them is one that's a little less predictable--Basho and His Interpreters: Selected Hokku with Commentary. I did review it, glowingly, when I first read it five years ago, but I don't think I've explicitly mentioned it in my writing here (or on Letterboxd) since then. But it's stuck with me, all the same, in the background. To borrow a Jacob Geller-ism, I think about Basho's interpreters a lot. Because Basho and His Interpreters was proof to me that writing about art is itself a kind of art.

I think about writing about art a lot.

When I'd finished writing my undergrad thesis on The Road, a decade ago now, I found myself and that project caught between two competing pulls. On one hand, my professors, my peers, and even my family to an extent, expected and recommended that I pursue higher education, become a professor, turn the undergrad thesis into a grad thesis, turn a grad thesis into a book. Become part of the academic world that I was, admittedly, very well suited to. On the other hand, when writing that thesis, I saw how much of the literary criticism I researched didn't really seem to care much about The Road after all, or maybe more accurately, didn't care much about Cormac McCarthy or his readers. The academic criticism I encountered was, by the vast majority, critics talking about critics to other critics. A kind of ouroboros, every segment of which was another person obliged to position themselves "in the conversation" in a way that refuted or expanded the work of their peers. A feedback loop, the bounds of which confined that conversation to exclude what I felt was most important: the art itself. Someday, if any of that thesis manages to make its way into a review of The Road here on Goodreads, I hope it would evidence that I intended to remain attentive to the novel rather than get caught up in the discourse that swirled around it.

And after graduation, I didn't pursue higher education, found a job in IT because I didn't see a way words could keep me housed and fed in a world that increasingly doesn't value them, and several years later started writing short essays here on Goodreads about books I read to an audience of maybe three consistent readers (my mom among them) and short essays over on Letterboxd about movies I watched to an audience of maybe five consistent readers (my brother among them). In between leaving academia and returning to essay writing, I found three essayists whose work I now recognize profoundly impacted me:

Noah Caldwell-Gervais (who I think appealed at least initially because I'm such a sucker for long-form content [because I never grew out of my bad habit of long-windedness]), whose work I've pointed to at least once in my reviews here on Goodreads, at the end of my thoughts on Kentucky Route Zero (an example of me being so compelled to write about a game that I had to put an essay somewhere and Goodreads was my best option at the time).

Nate Dimeo, whose Memory Palace podcast remains consistently the best prose writing I've found in modern nonfiction, and whose series of essays about art in the Met during his residency there has stuck with me so strongly that I added time to a work-trip to New York to go visit the Met just so that I could re-listen to those essays while standing in front of the pieces he discussed. I nearly cried amidst the crowd around the Temple of Dendur, thanks to his essay.

And Jacob Geller. I joked to a friend a few years ago, "when I grow up, I want to be like Jacob Geller"(alas, I'm pretty sure I'm older than he is, so I might be perpetually behind on my personal growth aspirations here...). Geller's video essays are a kind of writing I'm bad at. Sure, similarly interdisciplinary sources; drawing from all varieties of media whether visual, textual, or interactive; almost always some bleak undercurrent no matter what the surface material under discussion... but dissimilarly thrilling. Geller's essays have a momentum that's driven in equal measures at different times by the excitement of insight or by the undeniability of emotion. Sometimes that's his own insights and his own emotions, some essays largely just describing his experience of art. Sometimes its others' insights and emotions, where the essay proves itself an exercise in empathy. In all cases, Geller's essays have been, for me, a model of what it looks like when a critic has found something powerful and wants to show how powerful it is to people who might not otherwise encounter it or recognize it.

That is, Geller's essays remind me why I didn't like academia by demonstrating an alternative. There's room in the world for writing about art that is, in fact, about art, about artists, about the people who encounter art, and most fundamentally of all about the experience of art. The feedback loop finds an exit in essays like Geller's.

Geller's the kind of essayist who can write about a piece of art you've never heard of, and in the span of a few paragraphs, convince you that you absolutely have to seek out that piece of art and then convince you that it will be life-changing when you do encounter it for yourself. To his credit, that's been my experience of multiple pieces of art he's mentioned. My review of Elena Helfrecht's Plexus is truly just me aping Geller's own writing about exactly that book, the result of me watching his essay "Art for No One," immediately ordering a copy of the book, waiting a month for international shipping, and setting aside a couple hours of an afternoon the day it was delivered to experience what Geller promised me would be a potent encounter. I've had similar experiences with his essays on "The Shape of Infinity" and "The Legacy of the Haunted House" (the latter of which is included in How a Game Lives).

All of that to say, I'd be here giving How a Game Lives a glowing review if all it was was a printout of those essays. I'm happy to be here giving How a Game Lives a glowing review for being far more than that. If anything, How a Game Lives feels more, to me, like Basho and His Interpreters.

Because this book isn't just the essays' scripts, but also a layer of annotations from Geller as he compiled the essays for this book. Some of those annotations are small asides in the margin, some are longer digressions set apart in blocks, none necessarily radically alter the content of the essays but all provide a better understanding of the thought-process or emotions behind the essays. And beyond Geller's own comments, this book is also a compilation of essays from other writers who either interact with or cooperate with the essays Geller's written. Some of these afterwords are direct responses to Geller's essay; some are in parallel to his writing, discussing the same subject from a different perspective; and a couple stand out as games in-and-of-themselves, playing out on the page for the reader.

This extra material strikes me not just as fun bonus content but, like the inclusion of interpretations of Basho alongside his poetry, a reminder that writing about art is a kind of art too. Here's a bunch of excellent writers writing about art, Geller among a crowd insightful and empathetic and all eager to remind that art, artists, and audiences matter.

Which is to say, I'd be here giving How a Game Lives a glowing review for being such an energizing set of models to learn from and be inspired by. But I also get to give How a Game Lives a glowing review for, on top of all that, being a beautiful object. It's a gorgeously designed book. Simple and impossible as that. There's a lot of layers of material here--essays, annotations, afterwords, commissioned artworks for each essay, all of it compiled into a thing that confounds what would typically comprise a collection of critical essays. It is credit to designer Annie Maynard that all this material is kept organized, impactful, and delightful. Geller notes in his own afterword that the book is a kind of coffee-table book, which I take to mean a lot of evident care was taken to making it an object that is as enjoyable to look at as it is meaningful to read.

So look at it and read it!
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You might also like: looking at and reading the work of any of the authors Geller invited to write afterwords in this collection, they're all great!

[Andreas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jacob Geller is my favourite youtuber despite the fact that I haven’t played a videogame in about a decade. His video essays are great - when he’s talking about games, it feels more like he is talking about stories and big ideas in general, making it meaningful even for someone who has never played the games he is talking about, and most of his videos make me feel a lot of things.

This book is a gorgeous compilation of his essays with additional art and annotations. I honestly love the idea of a youtuber making this and I wish more of my favourite youtubers did something similar! And I’m even more excited about his second book, which will focus more on his non-videogame essays.

[Sam Pollard · Rating 2 out of 5]

tl;dr: this book is a kind of "DVD commentary" to Geller's essays, but in my opinion the essays don't translate well to print. This is a review of the deluxe edition and the star rating takes into account the time to deliver the book (a whopping 15 months) and its eye-watering price of $196 USD ($88 USD for the non-deluxe edition, including shipping).

It feels kind of wrong to give this book a 2-star rating, since it's clear a lot of work and passion went into it, but I have a hard time recommending this book to anyone, even die-hard Jacob Geller fans. I won't go so far as to say this is a cash grab, since for $196 you do get quite a bit of stuff for a small-press print shop, but the new words per dollar ratio is quite low, especially considering how much high-quality game journalism and essays you can get on other mediums.

However, this book is quite literally a work of art: the cover design is by the always-fantastic Killian Eng and the dust jacket design fits well with Geller's modern art theme (and several of the essays link video games and modern art). My main critique in its design is its typesetting: placement of footnotes, quotes, huge amounts of white space (and text-less inked space) make it read more like a periodical whose designer is paid per-page versus an honest-to-goodness book (Whoever decided to put pull quotes in this should have a stern talking-to). I think this stems from a desire to give the readers what they pay for, but most of it felt like "feature for feature's sake." Similarly, the 4-page spread for the YouTube thumbnails was a silly design choice, since thumbnails are designed to be splintered across several phone screen swipes. It's things like huge pull quotes, big spreads, and inefficient typography that contribute to its price tag. Addressing these may have shaved off a few dollars and in my opinion made the book better.

Anyway, on to the content. My issue with this book is one I should have expected. They're the essays Geller made videos on. Video games being such a visual medium, Geller and the book designer does try to have similar impact, but all the while reading it, I was thinking, "I wish I was watching the video right now so I could see what that Zelda game looked like." The footnotes Geller adds are certainly... extra text, but I'll paraphrase from one of the guest essays by Noah Caldwell-Gervais: Geller is efficient at communicating his point. These footnotes just feel like the stuff that didn't make it into the final script of the video.

So this leaves the guest essays as the main chunk of "new" content, and I didn't find these particularly engaging, since they went from a critique being "writing about art," to "writing about writing about art" and that level of indirection is just too heady for me.

The guest essays are all incredibly thoughtful and full of admiration. If I were Geller, I'd not be able to resist publishing people saying such nice things about my work. But whether those are interesting to read I think depends on your taste. For me, the most interesting part of the guest essays was reading something more personal from writers who primarily write journalism with all its pressures and restrictions. Geller's father wrote a really sweet story about the Golem video and you can see his influence on his son. But others felt a little self-indulgent. Gareth Damian Martin's essay prefacing "Control, Anatomy, and the Legacy of the Haunted House" seems only to exist to prove to you that they have a Ph.D. in experimental literature.

Overall, this is a beautiful book to keep on your library, but I wish I had spent my money on a 2/3 of the lifetime Nebula subscription used to offer instead.

[Riley Ludlow · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is, and i’m not kidding, one of my favourite books ever produced. It’s not non-fiction like most of the books I’ve read, but instead it’s the author looking back at some of the scripts he’s written over the last few years, and talking about the reasons he wrote them, the things he regret including, and new thoughts he’s had since they was published.

Jacob Geller is my favourite writer of all time, and he has been since 2019 (the time I think most of his long time followers jumped on the Geller train), and each video he posts and every review he writes are things I hold close to my chest (even if I haven’t played the game/read the book the essays are about).

Of the scripts he’s decided to look back on, he included one of my favourite videos of all time, one that struck me like lightning out and inspired me to create my own works in a way nothing else ever has (though Jacob Gellers other videos come close). It’s called Control, Anatomy, and the Legacy of the Haunted House. I don’t have the words to explain the way it impacted me, and I think watching the video will make you get it in a way I could never explain. I ran out of sticky notes trying to mark out all the sections of the script that I wanted to make sure I could find quickly when I inevitably wanted to look back at it. I’m genuinly considering scanning the pages of that chapter and printing out an Anatomy only booklet so I always have it on hand.

There were many scripts chosen to look back on, some of which I questioned initially. I didn’t have a particular fondness for the videos (beyond the general fondness I have for everything Geller makes), and I couldn’t think of any new thoughts he might have to add (especially given some were only originally made a year before he wrote this book) and yet all of them gripped my attention with there forwards and there afterwords, their annotations that showed the process behind them and the sections he had to leave out, and in what was suprisingly one of my favourite parts, the reveals of how the scripts are written to help translate to an audio/visual medium.

This book will stay on my shelf forever, and i’m sure it’ll be referenced a million times in the future by professional writers, and also in my own personal works. There was a brief blurb at the end of the book where Geller says “it was such an amazing experince to write my first book” (i’m paraphrasing, he expressed his thanks in much nicer words), and I hope to god i’m not reading to much into the use of “my first book”, because until he either publishes another (of any genre; I believe Geller could tackle any type of book; non-fiction, a biography, a How a Video Game Lives 2! lol, jk) (unless 👀) or I die, I will be waiting eagerly.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

“A good piece of writing functions as a guide, showing you a path to walk, by which you might come to your own destination” (182)

Of course the book was amazing. It was always going to be amazing.

How a Game Lives is an essay collection made up of the scripts of Jacob Geller's video essays, with the new addition of annotations, artwork, and companion essays from other creators, critics, writers, and journalists. Each essay combines references to video games, movies, books, history, and other media to showcase how certain thematic through-lines manifest across mediums and time.

Full disclosure: I have watched every single one of the video essays whose scripts appear in this book, many of them multiple times. You might imagine that this would inhibit my reading experience, and you would be wrong. New content aside, reading these essays feels like a novel experience despite the fact that I can quote some from memory. Think about listening to a song and then actually looking up the lyrics–that's about the experience. The additions are lovely, particularly the footnotes which offer some behind-the-scenes looks at Geller's experience before, during, and after creating and posting an essay. Some of the companion essays were also fantastic, expanding upon ideas or offering person impact on more intangible themes. I wasn't focused much on the art going in but every one is just awesome and totally matches the vibe of the original video.

I've been watching Geller's videos for years and subscribe to his nebula, not necessarily for the extra content but because I like what he's doing and I want to support it. I love video essays in general, but the way that these essays show the interconnectedness of works separated by miles and decades really speaks to the parts of academia that appeal to me. Even before I ever stumbled across Geller's videos I was getting in trouble for writing stuff like this in English class, connecting Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to the case of Candace Newmaker or Octavia Butler's short story Bloodchild to the movie Alien (or as my english teachers called it, "getting off topic"). His videos bring such full-hearted academic curiosity and earnestness to a genre that (let's be honest) can be shallow and repetitive and I always feel a kinship when I meet another fan of his because, you, you understand the joy of learning and understanding!

For the record, some of my favorites in this book are "Who's Afraid of Modern Art", "Does Call of Duty Believe in Anything?", and "Fear of Cold" and I encourage you to at least watch the videos on Youtube even if you don't want to read the book.

You get it. I could fangirl about this forever, but I can't stress enough what a joy it is to get to see content you love as if for the first time and I envy the people who might be introduced to Jacob Geller's videos through this collection!

Thank you to Jacob Geller and HarperPop for this ARC in exchange for my full, honest review!

Happy reading!

[Luke Kruegel]

First off, the design of this book is PHENOMENAL. There's a good deal of cool art and visuals which make How a Game Lives a real joy to go through (especially loved the fold-out section on video thumbnails in this regard).

The essays from other writers are very good for the most part. Highlights include Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah's wonderful introduction which worked very well to get me hyped for the rest of the book, Ian Danskin of Innuendo Studios' essay on modern art, and Jamil Jan Kochai's writing on COD.

The real meat and potatoes of the book, however, is of course Geller's essays and the annotations added to them. How a Game Lives includes a number of my favorite of Geller's works, and it's endlessly enjoyable to revisit them in this format with added insight from the man himself. If you're subscribed to Geller's Patreon it feels somewhat similar to watching through one of his director's commentaries. I really adored how much the annotations varied, ranging from thoughts on what he would change about earlier videos if he could, brief dives into side-topics which didn't quite make their way into a script, or even a clarification that his use of "bricked-up" in his Shadow of the Colossus video predated the current meaning of having a really hard boner.

I will say I think all of the scripts here are better experienced in their video formats since you are obviously missing out on both visuals, music, and delivery, all of which are very strong in Geller's work. Still, I think this provides an interesting way to return to his writing, and is definitely worth picking up for any major Geller-heads out there. I certainly enjoyed my time with it.

[Joe Murray · Rating 5 out of 5]

(realised i never logged this because I read its essays piecemeal so fuck it I guess i finished it tonight)

easiest 5 stars of my life. really it's unfair because this is less a book and more a culmination of about 5 years, hundreds of hours spent on YouTube and Nebula watching Jacob Geller's video essays and a long uninterrupted monthly contribution to his patreon.

for those who don't know him, Jacob Geller is one of the best working games writers (as in writing about games) and not only does this book collect some of his best, most groundbreaking essays - like "Control, Anatomy and the Legacy of the Haunted House" which bears so much responsibility for my taste in horror - but it also contains countless new annotations by Geller that contextualise, update or just playfully contribute to the essays' original texts, a full suite of complementary essays by other writers and a bunch of gorgeous illustrations to boot. Jacob Geller's work has made such a profound impact on the way I view art and appreciate stories and this book is a treasure that will always remind me of that impact and will hopefully enjoy space on my bookshelf forever, long after YouTube has collapsed into the past (but not Nebula, Nebula is forever...they literally sell lifetime memberships?!?!?)

the best part about being a fan of Jacob Geller is that recommending him is as easy as pasting a youtube link and so i recommend anyone reading this to visit his page, scroll through his videos and watch whatever speaks to you (here's a secret...they're all good). https://www.youtube.com/@JacobGeller/...

[Rachael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do not go into this expecting any entirely new ideas from Geller himself. That is not this book.

Though there does exist many additional annotations and notes form the man himself that is far from the point of this book. Instead, included with each essay there are forwards and afterwards written by exceptionally talented authors who expand upon the central themes of some of Geller’s most influential work. Some to agree and add context, some to disagree and provide their own opinion, and some to simply spout pure poetry. All, however, provide a new perspective on the video essays everyone who has bought this book likely know by heart at this point. It’s these writings where the book truly shines. Geller’s transposed essays serve mainly as a jumping off point for these authors, and Geller himself, to expand upon. The transcripts themselves are truly only there to provide background and context for all additions that are included.

So don’t read this book expecting new thematic analysis from Geller. Instead read it if you believe Geller’s work deserves to be viewed through the same lens as its subjects: inundated with context and supplemental work that leaves you not only with a greater appreciation of Geller and his work but of art itself.

[Jacksy-Roo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Damn, I love Jacob Geller. Everything about this book makes me love him more. It is gorgeous, feels nice, smells nice, and also just includes some of my favorite essays I've ever heard or read. Who's Afraid of Modern Art just gets better every year, as fascism gathers power and those words ring truer and truer. If this book just included Who's Afraid, I would still happily buy it. But! But! There's more! Anatomy, Control, and the Legacy of the Haunted House still gives me shivers - several of my favorite books on this account are mentioned in that video - and when the Anatomy monologue is placed next to the intro to The Haunting of Hill House ... I have to agree, it's some of the best horror literature ever made. I've actually memorized the opening to Hill House, I love it so much. So of course, I love that essay too. And it keeps going, every essay in this book just blows me so far out of the water, I don't know what else to say. I haven't even mentioned the additional authors and commentators, whose voices just elevate the essays that much further. Of course, you don't need this book, you can just watch Jacob Geller's videos, but I'm so glad to support someone I love so much. I can't recommend him enough.

[Ian Cornelius · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was predisposed to enjoying this collection of essays, given that I already have before. The addition of annotations and afterwords/forewords from other essayists are what set the collection apart from its video counterparts. I’m very much inspired by video game essayists and the conversations regarding games that they spawn. Having recently dipped into this (probably overcrowded) world, Geller’s essays provide appreciated inspiration. His introduction about the context in which words, poetry, and essays - his, in this instance - live was insightful. His words are on my shelf now. Without having to read these essays again, without having to open the book or even look at it if I don’t want to, adding them to the context in which I live and learn and create has an indescribable effect on the works to do create. That’s the amazing thing about art: it doesn’t have to be great, it doesn’t even have to be good (in fact, it can be very “bad”), yet it can still guide the conscious and subconscious decisions made within the multitude of contexts in which it also exists. Make sense? I don’t know. I think it’s incredible. Anyway, I’m going to go play a game.

[Inna · Rating 4 out of 5]

For context I am a fan of Jacob Geller's work and am familiar with all the essays in this collection. I loved the annotations and it was a fun peak into his brain, and a unique way of showcasing scripts that I personally haven't seen before. In general this is a very beautiful book aesthetically.

Some pieces work better than others, as with any collection, but what I enjoyed the most out of this book was the feeling of connection between the writers. Obviously, there is a love of games and games writing as a medium, but there is an admiration for each other as well. You can feel the passion that was put into this book, not even just with the writing, but with the design and editing.

My favorites from this collection were: The Golem and the Jewish Superhero and the Afterword by Andrew Geller
The Future of Writing About Games and the Afterword by Blake Hester
Afterword by Gareth Damian Martin
Does Call or Duty Believe in Anything?

[Gabie Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly, outstanding. Besides being a beautiful art object, a core objective of a book like this isn't just to reprint a series of Youtube videos as essays, but to tell the reader "there are other people out there doing excellent writing and criticism on video games as art - and look! Here they are!" It's a very generous take on what could have ended up as being a very self-serving project, a rising-tides-lifts-all-ships approach, and from what I've consumed of Jacob's work already: yeah, sounds about right.

Also, Gareth Damian Martin writes an absolutely BANGER afterword to the Control essay and I cannot BELIEVE how scary it ends up being. They House of Leaves a video essay script, people.

[Aspen McClain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jacob Geller is perhaps the greatest modern non-fiction writer of this decade. While excellent in filmography and editing, his writing, both humorous and deeply emotional, translates excellently to the written page. It is clear that this book was a labor of love, a product only produced of such quality due to the passion of all the talented authors and artists the collaborated on it.

If you are at all a fan of Jacob Geller, I highly recommend getting this book. Watch his videos, then read his videos scripts on the page and listen to him break himself down with the same empathetic yet fervent passion as he does other people’s art. The best coffee table book of all time.

[Thumping · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of essays by Jacob Geller that are incredibly insightful and informative without being so convoluted and filled with jargon that they become tiresome to read.

Though, I will say that these were previously video essays and on many occasions that does show – especially if, like me, you haven’t seen all of said videos – some aspects just don’t translate all that well onto paper.

This was, however often explained by Geller himself in his many annotations, meaning that despite the lack of visuals in places where they were clearly heavily relied upon, I was not left completely out of the loop.

Overall, this was a truly wonderful thing to read - world-view-changing, in fact. And that is the highest compliment I personally can give.

----Using goodreads only because Bookdigits doesn't allow reviews over 500 characters and I've given up trying to figure out LibraryThing, if you want more of me (for whatever reason) please go here: https://bookdigits.com/user/Rupert-----

[Phoenix Briar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm a huge Jacob Geller fan. I got this pre-ordered the second I saw the video for it in my YouTube feed.

It expands wonderfully on the videos it's about, breathing new life into each essay. I'm very glad to have a copy.

The art is wonderful, every foreword and addition feels perfect. Always adding, never taking away or taking more time than it needs. It clears up any past mistakes. It's a perfect retrospective.

Should Geller ever write another for more essays on the future, I'll eagerly be waiting.

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

While it doesn't include all my favorite essays by Geller it's still a certified banger of a book. I love being able to read Geller's thoughts on how some of his older essays have aged. Getting to take a peak into his thought process behind each essay was a real treat.

I need a sequel to this asap! The Museum Theft and Rationalizing Brutality videos would be great to have in a potential follow up book.

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pre-ordered this more than a year ago but it was worth the wait! While I think I’d watched the video versions of every essay contained in this before, it was great to read them with Geller’s annotations, and the follow-up essays all added interesting new perspectives on the concepts explored. I’m hopeful this isn’t the last of his writing to see print!

[Aaron Myles · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an extraordinary thing. Impeccable design, magnificently produced with bags of extra content from other excellent writers and artists. A wonderful nostalgia trip for someone who's been following Jacob's work as long as I have.

Also, I would be remiss if i didn't mention the double spread title page for the essay 'Fear of Cold'; spine tingling genius.