A Psychogeography of Games

by Hannah Nicklin

A Psychogeography of Games contains 6 creative critical responses to game design, based on a series of talks and articles prompted by Hannah's 6 month residency at Videobrains June-November 2015. Prompted by the question 'how do the places and spaces important to game designers affect their game design' Hannah went for 6 walks in places important to Jake Elliott (Kentucky Route Zero), Kerry Turner (Heartwood), Llaura Dreamfeel (Curtain), Holly Gramazio (How To Be A Blackbird), Ed Key (Proteus) and George Buckenham (Cubes), and wrote about the experience. The book features the texts for either performance or published originally on RPS, accompanied by extra thoughts, ideas, quotes and drawings. Plus an introduction. A Psychogeography of Games attempts to push the field of critical and creative discourse around video games - producing works that gently respond in form as well as content to the creative questions at the heart of contemporary game design.

Genres: Video Games, Nonfiction, Ebooks

59 pages, Paperback

Reviews

[David Swanson · Rating 2 out of 5]

An interesting read, but not one I can particularly recommend/ I guess the best summary is that this is an interesting attempt to approach the field in a new way but that ultimately an attempt is all it manages. The book felt much more autobiographical than psychogeographical at times, and was sorely lacking in meat.

It was nice enough as a series of short vignettes about various indie game creators and their connection to various places, while simultaneously failing to dig out any real information or insight about that relationship. Poetic and sweet, and very much on the verge of having something really interesting to say without ever quite reaching that goal.

For those with an interest in the field of game design, this is a wonderful contrast to the more technical or historical books (anyone interested in that side should check out Derek Yu's "Spelunky", Alex Wiltshire's "Britsoft: An Oral History", or Jon Peterson's "Playing at the World"), and I'd love to see more of this kind of approach to the field. Understanding the people, the artistic influences, the very real relationship between place and artistic approach to design, is an important and useful way to broaden our understanding of, for want of a better phrase, how games get made.

I will be keeping a close eye out for future work by the author, because I really think there's something there, and I'm fascinated by the approach if nothing else.

As a final note, I believe this started as a series of videos which (full disclosure) I haven't found time to watch. More information on this project (and others) can be found at http://www.hannahnicklin.com/portfoli...

[Pauline · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise for this book was great but it fell flat for me. The author goes on walks with game designers and gets them to talk about their craft and how the place they chose for the walk inspired them. Problem is the result is very choppy, a mix of quotes, reports about the weather, and random thoughts from the designers. I also thought there was too much "scene setting" (which felt a bit waffly sometimes) and not enough actual design talk, which is a huge shame because the designers interviewed are very interesting people.
I feel this book would have worked better if it had been framed around a set of questions to the designers, or if not it might have been better to chose another format like podcasts or videos.
I liked the font idea (one font/style per designer), although I would have liked to see more interesting styles, but I definitely didn't like the spelling mistakes!

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bet these worked really well as talks.

[tourbe · Rating 3 out of 5]

cute