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Videogames for Humans
Behind the fluorescent veil of modern big-business video games, a quiet revolution is happening, and it’s centered on a tool called Twine. Taken up by nontraditional game authors to describe distinctly nontraditional subjects—from struggles with depression, explorations of queer identity, and analyses of the world of modern sex and dating to visions of breeding crustacean horses in a dystopian future—the Twine movement to date has created space for those who have previously been voiceless within games culture to tell their own stories, as well as to invent new visions outside of traditional channels of commerce.
Videogames for Humans, curated and introduced by Twine author and games theorist merritt kopas, puts Twine authors, literary writers, and games critics into conversation with one another’s work, reacting to, elaborating on, and being affected by the same. The result is an unprecedented kind of book about video games, one that will jump-start the discussions that will define the games culture of tomorrow.
Videogames for Humans, curated and introduced by Twine author and games theorist merritt kopas, puts Twine authors, literary writers, and games critics into conversation with one another’s work, reacting to, elaborating on, and being affected by the same. The result is an unprecedented kind of book about video games, one that will jump-start the discussions that will define the games culture of tomorrow.
576 pages, Paperback
First published April 20, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 13, 2025
A much-needed introduction to a new medium, blending fiction and non-fiction, narrative and interactive devices, distancing and self-identification.
The rest is here:
https://choveshkata.net/forum/viewtop...
The rest is here:
https://choveshkata.net/forum/viewtop...
March 8, 2016
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 coletânea. Precisamos de mais vozes se quisermos que os videogames floresçam como mídia, e "Videogames for Humans" é certeiro em dar sua contribuição.
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 coletânea. Precisamos de mais vozes se quisermos que os videogames floresçam como mídia, e "Videogames for Humans" é certeiro em dar sua contribuição.
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July 18, 2021this 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.
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.
March 21, 2019
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."
"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?
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."
June 3, 2015
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!
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!
January 2, 2016
This book lets you experience Twine games - each contributor plays a game, writing out the text of their playthrough and their immediate reactions to the stories that unfold before them.
A lot of these games come from trans or queer authors, and the contributing writers are often from the same community. I find it valuable not only to read/play games from diverse creators, but also to read analysis from diverse authors. I played Aevee Bee's "Removed" months ago, because I'm a hopeless fan of anything she does. I enjoyed it, but my enjoyment was on a surface level. But when I read Lydia Neon's playthrough and saw the way Bee's writing affected Neon, I had to catch my breath.
Videogames for Humans is good to break off and read a bit at a time. If you're curious about Twine games or you like to see how other people think, this is a great book.
A lot of these games come from trans or queer authors, and the contributing writers are often from the same community. I find it valuable not only to read/play games from diverse creators, but also to read analysis from diverse authors. I played Aevee Bee's "Removed" months ago, because I'm a hopeless fan of anything she does. I enjoyed it, but my enjoyment was on a surface level. But when I read Lydia Neon's playthrough and saw the way Bee's writing affected Neon, I had to catch my breath.
Videogames for Humans is good to break off and read a bit at a time. If you're curious about Twine games or you like to see how other people think, this is a great book.
April 11, 2016
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.
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December 1, 2022Just read the Kopas part, too strange
December 27, 2015
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...
Full review here: https://mediagluttony.wordpress.com/2...
July 5, 2016
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.
March 14, 2016
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.
February 17, 2016
It's all about Twine games... so I'm a wee bit biased.
August 26, 2016
This book was my doorway into the world of twines and videogames i never thought could exist. I'm totally grateful for it!
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews