Book Spotlight - Rise of the Videogame Zinesters
As we near the end of August/Blaugust, I've noticed that some of my blog posts have ballooned quite a bit in size compared to when I began this challenge just a month ago! Sometimes it's fun to realize that you have more to say than you might initially give yourself credit for. But I'm also reminding myself to keep things low-pressure, and that this has all been in the interest of casual self-expression about things I'm enjoying. Today's blog post will definitely keep in that spirit, since it's a book I'm still in the middle of reading, rather than one I've fully finished — but I'm enjoying it so far!
After reading some of Anna Anthropy's writing in a previous book, I was excited to put a hold on a copy of her book Rise of the Videogame Zinesters (2012) at the library. I'm two chapters in as of this blog post, but it's already been an interesting read so far. It's fascinating to consider, as Anthropy's book urges us to do, how much the culture of zine-making as a DIY form of self-published creative expression can overlap so uniquely well with video games, particularly independent games made as the personal and often self-distributed creative expression of a solo developer or small team. It's just as fascinating to think that this book was published only one year before itch.io began in 2013, which has largely become a major hub for the kind of DIY-feeling independent games where one might find many of the book's titular "videogame zinesters". It feels like the success of places like itch.io is an actualization of the kind of growth in video-games-as-zines culture that this book was reaching for, even if it still currently remains under threat from ongoing censorship. But interestingly enough, maybe it's a good time to revisit a book like this, which existed in not only a pre-itch.io era but also at a time with an internet certainly less centralized than it is now. Perhaps there are useful insights to return to, like recalling how and where people used to publish their games without as many conveniently consolidated storefronts, potentially further beyond the reaches of the sweeping censorship measures we're seeing now.
I'm excited to get further along in my reading, including later chapters where Anthropy gets into slightly more technical detail about the many tools and approaches available to any prospective videogame zinester. Looking forward to digging deeper into the unique intersections of video games and zines, thanks to this book!