Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games [Paperback]

A wide-ranging anthology of essays exploring one of the most vital art forms on the planet today


From the earliest computers to the smartphones in our pockets, video games have been on our screens and part of our lives for over fifty years.Critical Hitscelebrates this sophisticated medium and considers its lasting impact on our culture and ourselves.

This collection of stylish, passionate, and searching essays opens with an introduction by Carmen Maria Machado, who edited the anthology alongside J. Robert Lennon. In these pages, writer-gamers find solace from illness and grief, test ideas about language, bodies, power, race, and technology, and see their experiences and identities reflected inor complicated bythe interactive virtual worlds they inhabit. Elissa Washuta immerses herself inThe Last of Usduring the first summer of the pandemic. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah describes his last goodbye to his father with the help ofDisco Elysium.Jamil Jan Kochai remembers being an Afghan American teenager killing Afghan insurgents inCall of Duty. Also included are a comic by MariNaomi about her time as a video game producer; a deep dive into portal fantasy movies about video games by Charlie Jane Anders; and new work by Alexander Chee, Hanif Abdurraqib, Larissa Pham, and many more.

J. Robert Lennon is the author of nine novels and three story collections, includingLet Me Think,Subdivision, andBrokenRiver.

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of the memoirIn the Dream Houseand the story collectionHer Body and Other Parties.

Being a gamer is not a cost of entry intoCritical Hits, which emerges as a fresh deviation from stale debates. . . . Here instead is an array of arguments for how games structure our behavior and perception of the world around us. Lennon and Machado have emboldened a discourse on how we are learning to live among games in thought andlc.