Killscreen
Killscreen is about games, play, and culture: the artists making them, not the industry selling them. Interviews, essays, and video about why play matters.
Written by Jamin Warren, formerly of the Wall Street Journal, MoMA, and PBS. Founded 2010.
One free email a week: www.killscreen.com/start/?ref=youtube-bio&utm_…
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Killscreen
Some of the most interesting interactive work right now isn't happening on a screen.
Anna Nygren's blush / river / fox—just out from Milkweed Editions—was built the way a game gets built: two collaborators, a shared system of rules, and meaning that emerges from the interplay rather than any single element.\
They and their editor worked through the manuscript as what Nygren calls "careful strangers" in a shared "word-world." They built an internal grammar from scratch. They broke rules to expand the language and only followed them when things got too slippery.
The result is a poetry collection held together not by theme but by linguistic collision—Swedish words whose sounds bleed into English words from completely different contexts. "Parallel siblings", they call them.
I wrote about why this feels like game design, what it tells us about translation as a mechanic, and why the most conversational art forms right now might be the ones that have nothing to do with controllers.
4 months ago | [YT] | 0
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Killscreen
I was told to root for Tottenham Hotspur as a Philadelphia Eagles fan.
That was a cruel joke.
But watching one of the richest clubs in European football slowly destroy themselves has become my favorite sport.
Because what's happening to Spurs isn't just bad management—it's a textbook case of what capitalism does when it gets its hands on play.
They built a stadium for six nights of Beyoncé. They cut senior citizen discounts.
They chase "investment players" over world-class talent. And now they're staring down relegation for the first time in 50 years.
A French philosopher named Roger Caillois called this "the contagion of reality." The idea that introducing financial stakes into play doesn't just change the game—it corrupts it.
I wrote about what game design theory actually tells us about sports, why the English relegation system is secretly brilliant, and why the owners of Tottenham absolutely deserve what's coming.
New essay → link in bio
4 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 0
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Killscreen
If you're in LA, come by our project space to see Alice Bucknell's The Alluvials. It's a video game film and playable work about LA's climate crisis.
RSVP HERE --> killscreen.com/product/exhibition-alice-bucknell-t…
#gaming #climatechange #losangeles #art
2 years ago | [YT] | 0
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Killscreen
Balancing a day job with personal creative projects can be challenging, especially after a long and tiring day. But Pearlyn Lii says using AI to jumpstart the creative process can be a spark.
Sketching out ideas or concepts, even those jotted down years ago in journals, can be quickly brought to life, allowing you to move rapidly and decide what to keep.
This saves time and provides instant visual feedback, fueling motivation and making it more feasible to pursue personal projects in your free time. Let AI be the kindling that ignites your creativity, whether early in the morning or late at night.
Check out Pearlyn's workshop this Thursday! bit.ly/3VZXy00
#gaming #workshop #talks #aiart #ai #generativeai #midjourney #midjourneyart #midjourneyart
2 years ago | [YT] | 0
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