Jamin Warren of Kill Screen Media
Calvin College, Meeter Center Lecture Hall
Jan. 14, 7 p.m.
Free
calvin.edu/sao, (616) 526-6282
I’ll admit it: video games have become somewhat of a guilty pleasure for me. When I pick up the controller, I do it hastily and with little thought. Yet there I was, contemplating the metaphysical implications of Super Smash Brothers just the same.
My first visit to the website of Kill Screen Media – the brainchild of former Wall Street Journal culture reporter Jamin Warren – led me to an interesting bit of prose comparing the experience of playing the iconic Nintendo franchise to tai chi’s pursuit of interior self-mastery. And that was just one article.
Before long I found myself questioning my own predilection for the zombies mode in "Call of Duty." Why did I enjoy the twistedly Sisyphean fate of facing down ceaseless waves of the undead? And why did I feel oddly ashamed in spite of my revelry? Was my gaming more than the mindless entertainment I believed it to be?
Warren founded Kill Screen Media in 2009 out of a desire to bridge the gulf between video games and culture at-large. The company’s print magazine and online content have since obliterated the boundaries of the test-and-review fare that had always been the extent of video game journalism, drawing praise from the likes of Wired, Ars Technica and NPR along the way.
“I’m not interested in being the culture publication in the gaming sphere,” Warren said. “I’m interested in being the gaming publication in the culture sphere.”
In addition to video game design and playability, Kill Screen articles explore our motivations for playing games, the different ways we play and what this says about ourselves and our society. Warren doesn’t look for writers who are glued to their consoles – he wants them to make connections that readers never see coming.
“The biggest thing we look for is called intertextuality, which means people who can make connections between different disciplines,” he said. “So when you’re writing about games, you’re also thinking about music and you’re able to draw these connections back and forth, because that allows you to speak to the world through metaphor. . . . We want people who are like, ‘Games are amazing to me because they open up new ways for me to think about theatre, or death metal or architecture.’”
In making the conversation around video games not only accessible, but massively pertinent, there emerges a heightened awareness of how play is systemically tied to human experience. Play not only motivates our creativity; it fosters social engagement as well. In Warren’s eyes, that’s a recipe for innovation, so much so that he’s even expanded Kill Screen Media’s reach beyond journalism and into other arenas.
There’s the arcade game exhibition the company organized at the Museum of Modern Art, for instance, and two5six, an annual conference that converges leading thinkers in gaming and related fields together in a TED-like symphony of discovery and wonder. With so much unexplored territory out there, the possibilities seem endless.
“The writer Steven Johnson said, ‘Chance favors the connected mind,’ and there’s a bunch of research out there that suggests that what makes people creative is the ability to draw connections between the different hemispheres of the brain,” Warren said. “I felt like if game makers and also the game-playing public weren’t making those connections, that was going to be a problem. A lot of times you need someone to start helping things along, and I wanted Kill Screen to be that voice.”
Other Literary Events
Reading the Great Lakes
Grand Rapids Public Library – Main Branch
Jan. 8, 7p.m.
grpl.org, (616) 988-5400
Join your fellow readers as you traverse the haunting depths of Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, the latest installment in this city-wide monthly book club that explores fiction set in the Great Lakes region. Discussions are lead by the library’s team of top-notch bookworms.
Jack Ridl Writers Series: Orlando Ricardo Menes
Hope College, Holland
Jan. 22, 7 p.m.
Free
jrvws.org, (616) 555-5555
Orlando Ricardo Menes’ family immigrated from Cuba to the Unites States when he was 10 years old. Many years, a doctorate degree and several collections later, the poet, editor and translator retains a powerful voice. His 2013 effort, Fetish, is fresh off a Schooner Book Prize win.
Todd Kaneko and Beth Peterson
Grand Valley State University – Cook DeWitt Center
Jan. 22, 6 p.m.
Free
gvsu.edu, (616) 331-5000
The Grand Valley Writers Series kicks of 2015 with a double feature: local authors Todd Kaneko and Beth Peterson. Kaneko’s prose and poems have appeared in the likes of Bellingham Review and Barrelhouse, while Peterson has been featured in River Teeth and Passages North, among others.
