CTRL: Essays on Video Games

n CTRL, writers turn their focus to one of the most influential – and persistently misunderstood – art forms of the modern era. Through memoir, criticism, and narrative exploration, these essays chart the ways video games intersect with memory, identity, imagination, and the complicated business of being human.

Here, games become ciphers for joy and escape, but also for pain, addiction, burnout and longing. They emerge as places where we grow up, fall apart, find solace, test our limits, and rewrite ourselves. The essays in this collection explore how virtual landscapes imprint on real ones, how play becomes a way of thinking and how game worlds both mirror and distort the worlds we inhabit.

Ranging from pixelated nostalgia to sprawling open worlds, CTRL interrogates gaming’s contradictions – its artistry and excesses, its transformative potential and its shadows. Alongside these personal narratives lie broader questions: Where does this medium go next? Can it retain its creative integrity amid rapid technological shifts and the pressures of capital? What does it mean to call games art when they so often outgrow the boundaries we try to place around them?

Insightful, intimate, and alive with curiosity, CTRL captures the emotional and cultural force of video games, and the stories we carry with us when we put the controller down.

Featuring Essays By:

Sheila Armstrong

Rob Doyle

Joe Dunthorne

Donal Fullam

Úna-Minh

Kavanagh

Róisín Kiberd

Anna Loughran

Darragh McCausland

Lisa McInerney

John Patrick McHugh

Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan

Brenda Romero

Stephen Sexton

Paul Whyte

Games featured include:

Final Fantasy IX

Fallout: New Vegas

Pokémon

Doom

Tomb Raider

Disco Elysium

The Stanley Parable

Wanderstop

Urban Chaos

The Elder Scrolls

The Witcher

Lemmings

Star Wars

Grim Fandango

Monkey Island 2

Discworld

Bioshock

Hotline Miami

Red Dead Redemption