Carmen Maria Machado, 37, is the author of the award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties, the bestselling memoir In the Dream House and the graphic novel The Low, Low Woods. Born into a religious Pennsylvanian household which gave her feelings of guilt around her queer identity, she wasn’t allowed by her parents to play computer games. She is now co-editor of Critical Hits: Writers on Gaming and the Alternate Worlds We Inhabit, a collection of essays that celebrates the lasting impact of gaming and play in real and imagined worlds.
Before we start could you explain your book’s title to non-gamers?
A critical hit in a video game is a damage point. If you’re fighting a guy – punch, punch, punch – the critical hit is the super punch. It suggests the critical lens too, of course, and hit songs. I literally wrote down every video game phrase I could think of to find it – I have a file!
What was your mission as an editor?
To know the impact that video games have had in different artists’ creative lives, and have as diverse a set of contributors and perspectives as possible. We’ve got an essay by a person who worked in video games, which I’m really excited about, an essay by a parent whose child is really into video games, essays on Covid, on analysing racial themes, and much more.
How do games influence you creatively?
In the same way as when I read books or watch films, playing games gives me other ways of looking at my life and looking at reality. I’ve intersected with them in various ways in various moments. I love how the medium helps you access those points.
Is storytelling in gaming particularly strong today?
There’s always been good writing in gaming. Well maybe not in the very beginning, when it was all about Pong [laughs]. Some games were beautiful and interesting when I was first playing in the 1990s, like this interactive fiction adventure game called Curses. I also find pleasure in games where writing is not a huge component, like puzzle games, where the art is what I’m experiencing, not the text. Of course, I notice when writing in games is clunky because it’s what I do for a living, but a good game also depends on what you want out of it.
How do you use gaming in your life?
I’m teaching away from home at the moment, and I didn’t bring my PlayStation with me because any long, involving games would eat my brain alive. So I brought my [Nintendo] Switch to play shorter games like The Case of the Golden Idol, a story puzzle game, and Inscryption, which is just delightful. Playing games is my reward for when I’ve done my work, or done well. They also felt accessible to me during the pandemic in a way that reading did not, which was obviously weird for a writer.
Why do you think that happened?
I just wanted to be lost in something. From 2020, we were suddenly thinking very differently about how we interact with one another. Gaming isn’t a substitute for going to see your family – well, maybe for some people it is – but to be able to do something social that was also very absorbing and soothing was helpful. That’s how you get through tough stuff. You find the thing that makes your brain feel good.
Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, a novel about gamers, was a bestseller in the UK this summer. Do think books like it open up possibilities for more interplay between gaming and fiction?
I know of that book but haven’t read it yet. I think it’s great that people are writing them, but we should also remember that the space between gaming and fiction has always been really open. I wrote an essay years ago about 253 by the Canadian author Geoff Ryman. Originally, it was a link-based online novel [first published on the web in 1997], set on the London underground, documenting the lives of a train’s passengers just before a crash. I first read it in print, but the online version really changes the way the story unfolds – it’s like a novel as a game. Today, who knows where that interactivity could go?
Computer games are still criticised and feared, especially by parents. How would you reply?
If I’m going to go on a rant about a digital thing that’s evil, I would go on about social media and the way that Twitter and Facebook have destroyed democracy. I’m not a parent, but if I had young people in my life, I’d be more worried about screens in terms of eyestrain than what was happening in the game. I’d be, hey, just go outside and breathe some fresh air for a minute! I do think a lot of cultural baggage around gaming has shifted, though. I imagine that when the novel started people were having similar conversations about how dangerous they could be, but eventually every form finds its footing. Games are an art form like anything else.
Critical Hits: Writers on Gaming and the Alternate Worlds We Inhabit, edited by Carmen Maria Machado and J Robert Lennon, is published by Serpent’s Tail (£14.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply. In the US, the book is published by Graywolf Press ($18)
