I am five years in now, and I realise I have written nothing on being a parent. Every year I wanted to, every month. But the years went by and I found myself changing nappies and working at midnight and sleeping very little and it always felt there were More Important things to be doing…
In England, my father drives a car. It is black and shiny and slick and unscratched. Throughout it, gadgets warm seats, gauge performance, mollify and coddle. Tech-fairies transmit signals through the air, so that his other devices, his extended digital self, integrates with it thoroughly. It purrs as it drives down the road. It fits
Of the 40+ print magazines I worked on, less than 5% are still in print. Of the games I’ve worked on as a writer, at least half didn’t make it out of the starting gate. (One, called Legacy, came out this year and is almost impossible to access. I don’t know anyone who’s played it.)
” a wonderful book which makes me consider games more.”
…there is a texture to my vision, like blotting paper or drifting static, with patches of brightness and darkness. It trembles and roils, never keeping still… bubbles drift slowly across my vision, giving me bokeh or lens flares. ..
How are we not talking about the corpses? It’s not like you haven’t seen them – you can’t miss them. When I take the kids out, I see them constantly. Every minute another one, battered or slumped or swollen with gas or smashed apart or flattened. Large and small, old and young. When I’m looking
Gripping the edge of mountains and looking down: Masada when I was 13, belly-crawling to the edge to see a disappointing stretch of sand; Scafell, in a snowstorm, huddling in a lee with friends before the clouds broke; Striding Edge, in the snow, where the hunter and his horse fell; the Roaches, in the snow,
“…a fascinating trip through the philosophical canon, showing how games illustrate key existential questions.”
…and I’m still working on the feature at 4am. I miss the dawn I’m writing so hard, lightening paragraphs with sips of akavit. I roll into bed at 6.30am, next to a sleeptalking V, and doze off… …”MARGARET” comes the cry, jolting us both awake.
Back in 2014, I contributed a list of the 100 most influential video games for a book called 10,000 Things You Need to Know: The Big Book of Lists in the UK. I’ve reproduced the list here.