Playback — Games in Context
Our Manifesto
What We Are
Playback aims to deliver thoughtful discussion about the past and present of video games. We’ll dive deeper than standard reviews, treacly nostalgia and myopic zealotry. We want to treat games as art we respect enough to critique. Playback is half history and half editorial, plus a handful of skepticism. Playback aspires to be The Atlantic, but for video games.
Why We Are
Gaming media is dominated by two voices. The first, traditional print outlets and gaming blogs, are often warped by the need to avoid publisher blacklists and toxic fan backlashes. While Playback is emphatically not a noxious call for ‘ethics in games journalism’ — we read and respect the oft-maligned game journalists — our view is that there is ample room for an independent, formally analytical approach.
The second voice is YouTubers. There does exist a strong, intelligent community of video producers focusing on video games, and we adore many of those creators! But we are, at heart, writers and readers, and we believe there exists a contingent (small but voracious!) who value written analysis as well (the success of Boss Fight Books bears this out).
In addition to delivering our thoughts on the art form and industry, we hope to cultivate a clever commentariat. Video games often require more time than any other media to fully digest, and we need smart participants to turn our heads and point out things we missed!
What Do You Get
Our current plan is to deliver one or two weekly posts (think of an editorial piece you might see in a newspaper or magazine), and a semi-monthly deep dive (a “feature”, so to speak — our initial plan is a “#GameEveryYear” series, delving into unknown, or well-known but rarely played, games of the distant past). Additional writing will surely flow, but the above is our commitment.
Who We Are
Dr. Nic Barkdull is an independent game designer, writer, narrative designer, and PhD in Cultural Studies. He reviewed games for three years for a website that tried to stay independent and critical (and went down because of it). His work can be seen in various games, magazines, academic publications, and fascinating UN documents.
Matthew Borgard is a fiction writer and software engineer living in Austin, TX. He’s been playing video games his whole life (seriously, there’s a picture of him playing Solar Jetman as a 3-year-old) and thinking about them for just as long. His writing and personal blog can be found at matthewborgard.com
To address the albino elephant in the room: we’re a couple of white people in an industry dominated by white dudes. While we can’t change that, we can promise to be cognizant of our privileges and biases, sincerely open to criticism, and strongly supportive of marginalized and underrepresented voices in what we choose to highlight.
