Our Newest Issue: Playing with Reality
For the “Playing with Reality” issue of Immerse, we started by thinking about games as a vehicle for nonfiction methods of recording, mediating, and conveying reality. Many immersive nonfiction projects are built with game engines and experienced with the same gear or through the same platforms. The direct crossovers in software and hardware, however, are but one way of considering the importance of considering games in our field. In covering developments of a broad range of games, from the self-aware hijinks of lyric games to the utility of business-oriented strategy card decks (the latter from Immerse publisher Jessica Clark), we are thinking of gaming not only as a wrapper for nonfiction content. Instead, we turn the focus onto an industry with its own infrastructures of production and distribution, a broad set of tools which can be further developed for nonfiction immersive storytellers, and a unique disposition.
The longest piece in this issue is a wide-ranging conversation between desktop documentary pioneer Kevin B. Lee and new media artist Grayson Earle. Like the other pieces in this issue, their provocations render clear the different interventions that users can exert on larger systems, starting with the act of modifying games. The writing in this issue also takes a granular approach in investigating narrative, spatial, and interactive design elements such as dialogue and decision trees, rendering limitations, and other gameplay mechanics through the online data dungeon performance “Play4UsNow,” DREAMFEEL’s Curtain, “essay games” 1979 Revolution: Black Friday and Attentat 1942, and Bryan LeBeuf’s interactive documentary Home Movie.
During our publishing period, we also launched a new section of Immerse called ICYMI: In Case You Missed It. Curated by Engagement Editor Ngozi Nwadiogbu with great insight and humor, each weekly ICYMI round-up spotlights significant events and thoughtful conversations around immersive nonfiction on social media platforms. Meanwhile, we also playfully covered, in interview format, two projects that showed up at the perennial showcases of Sundance New Frontier and Tribeca Immersive, as well as a dispatch from Black Public Media’s new pitch forum for Black AR/VR/XR nonfiction projects.
Our interest in and coverage of more game-related immersive projects only starts here, and we look forward to publishing more pieces to come.
Abby Sun
Editor, Immerse
