For over a decade, Hamish Black’s channel Writing on Games has demonstrated that video games invite the same careful attention we bring to literature, film, or music. In this conversation with RUDOLF THOMAS INDERST, he reflects on criticism, creative practice, and the uneasy condition of contemporary game culture.
RUDOLF THOMAS INDERST: For readers who may know your channel but not the person behind it – who is Writing on Games today?
Writing on Games: Good question. The long answer is my name is Hamish Black, I have been making YouTube videos analysing games for the last decade and change. Outside of that I make a lot of music, and generally try to remain as well-rounded a human being as possible while not really knowing where the hell I’m going. The short answer is I have no idea.
Your work often blends close reading, cultural analysis, and personal reflection. When did you realize that games deserved, or demanded, his kind of treatment?
WRITING ON GAMES: I suppose my first experience really seeing that kind of treatment of games in action was Extra Credits. I was in my late teens when they started making videos for the Escapist and I found their work pretty eye-opening to the possibilities of games as this pioneering artform. Adam Sessler joining Rev3 Games, whatever you think of him now, was pretty revelatory as well—it coincided with a lot of the reading I was doing for my English literature degree, and had me thinking “wait a minute, why wouldn’t this apply to games?”
I’d been studying a lot of postmodern literature — some real experimental, out-there stuff within that niche — and I was realising that the theoretical frameworks we use to analyse and make sense of the avant-garde of that medium could apply to even the most rudimentary of video games. A lot of that work and that theory revolves around this notion that “author” and “reader” gradually become less easily defined—whatever hierarchy or presuppositions might have existed before no longer do, or at least become far blurrier. The “author” provides a literary web that the “reader” actively untangles—that untangling is the story is the writing is the meaning. Essentially, it’s about control over an experience—that concept is somewhat abstract in literature but in games could not be more concrete, inherent.
That framework through which we make sense of books like Pale Fire and Berg and 1982, Janine and One Hundred Years of Solitude… that all applies to Fortnite. God of War. E.T. on the Atari 2600. Like… normal games. “Bad” ones. Even in linear games, even shifting the camera in subtle ways, technically provides a player a different, unique experience of a central text—the meaning they derive from it will be slightly altered from anyone else’s purely based on how they controlled it. Just think of that concept—games at their most basic are, in many ways, equivalent to literature at its most experimental. That’s thrilling. That’s what got me into this.
I realise I’ve given a super long-winded answer to this question but that question that excited me enough to get me writing about games back in the day still gives me shivers now—thinking about how deep that rabbit hole potentially goes. I haven’t fully dug into it in the decade I’ve been doing this. I want to make a huge video project about it one day.
When you start working on a new video essay, what usually comes first – a game, a question, a thesis, or a feeling you can’t quite shake?
Writing on Games: My mind is constantly bombarding me with ideas for everything. I don’t think of a potential thesis for a video any differently to, say, a rhythmic idea or a guitar tone that pops into my head and I want to experiment with. The impulse and process is the same—a thing I think should exist that doesn’t. If I don’t try to make it exist, it feels legitimately fucking uncomfortable. I guess then, to answer your question, it’s all of the above.
“Game culture” is a term we both operate within. From your perspective, what does it actually mean right now? Has it matured, fragmented, professionalized or something else entirely?
Writing on Games: You’re right to say we both operate within “games culture” to a certain extent, but I find myself quite alienated from games as this thing separate from other art nowadays. Whether I’m listening to an album or reading a book or watching a film, it all feels like it’s in conversation for me, which I suppose gets into my answer to the later part of the question. The culture has done all of the things you mentioned at once, and more—an amalgam of contradictions.
The games industry, despite being one of the most popular entertainment mediums on the planet, has been utterly decimated as a casualty of growth-at-all-costs capitalism. There are more people talking about games than ever, in smarter, more “professional” ways than ever, and yet the game press is all but dead. I constantly come across people on YouTube making similar sorts of videos to myself, they’ll have been doing it for quite a few years in some cases, they’ll have a fanbase, and yet they’ll be a complete unknown to my friends and I. It can kinda feel like we’re all operating as islands.
It all just feels like a total mush right now—a few people are making a lot of money, there are still tons of games being made and people talking about them, and yet talking about games feels like a pointless endeavour when the medium simultaneously feels so capped at the knees by corporate interests. Hard to make sense of, hard to do anything about, hard to say anything about.
It all starts to go a bit HyperNormalisation, end-of-MGS2 if you let it. Just gotta keep doing what you do I guess.
Your channel occupies an interesting space between academia, journalism, and platform culture. Do you feel closer to one of those worlds or deliberately in-between?
Writing on Games: I’m certainly no journalist, and when my writing fell more in line with my academic pursuits early on it made for absolutely unreadable, unlistenable pish. I usually just say I’m a critic of some description. When asked what my job is by those outside the field, I’ve only recently become comfortable with telling people I make YouTube videos, because in my head that just brought up visions of influencer dafties. I used to say I was a writer, but then people would ask if I wrote books, if I was published, etc., and I’d eventually have to circle back to “YouTube videos” anyway. You cannae win.
All that to say, I care about the work and try not to concern myself with labels, which in turn forces me to think even harder about how to describe it to other people. Pure wank. Nightmare.
Video essays require a specific rhythm — intellectually and aesthetically. How conscious are you of form? Do you think about pacing, tone, and visual language as arguments in themselves?
Writing on Games: I certainly write differently for video, for my spoken voice, than I do for the page. In some ways I feel more comfortable writing things that won’t be spoken aloud—there’s something nice about ensuring each word conveys as much information as possible, even if it doesn’t represent my natural flow of speech.
At the same time, I do appreciate that a video’s visuals exist as the supporting evidence of my claims. I kind of hate how much emphasis has gradually been placed on how videos are packaged and the like—for example, I loathe the thumbnail creation process and the praising of thumbnails as somehow indicative of a video’s quality. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve clicked on a slick thumbnail or seen someone clearly go absolutely ham on After Effects and have the core of that work, the “insight” or whatever you want to call it — the thing I’m ostensibly there for — be absolute dogshit. Pure distraction from having nothing worthwhile to say.
What I’m trying to say is that I’m not big on flashy visuals in my videos, but I do spend a lot of time (probably too much) trying to ensure that the video portion is always, at least subtly, supporting the point I’m making in the script. I can point to exactly the bits in past videos where I’ve let that slip for the sake of just getting a project over the finish line, and while I generally subscribe to the line of “better done than perfect,” I’d be lying if I said those instances don’t irritate me on some level.
I dunno, I like punk music. Noise rock. Grindcore. Weird, abrasive shit. I’m not saying my videos are the 1:1 equivalent of that kind of squall or even particularly close in terms of how an audience would experience them, but in terms of process, I don’t see my videos as so alien from it. It’s all DIY. I’ve only ever gotten help with a few thumbnails in recent years from my incredibly talented friend James (also known as Hotcyder). Aside from that, there’s nothing about the channel I haven’t done pretty exclusively myself. People would always be pretty astounded that I made all the music for the videos, and for many years would create a new track for each individual episode. Like I say, it all just spawns from the same creative impulse for me. A thing that doesn’t exist that I want to exist in a certain way.
Have there been moments where audience reactions reshaped your thinking about a game or about criticism more broadly?
Writing on Games: Ha, usually for the negative in all honesty. I made a video (that I still think is really good, to be clear) on Death Stranding back when it released, trying to make sense of all the conflicted feelings I had towards it, and the viscerally negative response that video garnered from those fixated on how I was apparently playing wrong — death threats, real nasty shite — totally turned me off wanting to even think about that game for many, many years. A shame, because it eventually ended up becoming one of my favourite titles.
I guess that speaks more widely to my thoughts on criticism more generally nowadays. I do spend a lot of time wondering what the fucking point is. On most ostensibly „social“ platforms online, people have been so thoroughly moulded by algorithms to respond angrily, in the least charitable way possible, to anything that even begins to confront their biases. Post a negative review and you’ll have people telling you your opinion is invalid because you didn’t play correctly or technically what you did is not actually a “review” but a “critique” or “analysis” or whatever the fuck arbitrary term they’re applying to things—and all for a game they themselves likely haven’t actually played. You didn’t share in consensus. It’s either that or you feel like you’re preaching to the choir. “Good on you for saying the problem, in actuality, has been capitalism all along. No one has said that before. A round of applause for being so brave.” Pointless. What the fuck are we doing here.
But I guess, like, you’ve still gotta keep saying what you think, right? What do you do otherwise? The only responsibility I believe an artist or critic of that art has is to be honest about their own experience. As I keep saying, all that happens is I get the urge in my head to make something exist that didn’t exist prior. Without wishing to sound corny, I do get people messaging me telling me my videos have helped them, that I’ve helped shape how they view art in some way. If I’m to believe what people have told me over the years, there exist individuals who are alive today that would not be alive had they not seen a video I made. That’s heavy, ya know? It sits weird.
Whatever the point of it all is or isn’t, however “back to brunch” we may be as a culture as Austin Walker so astutely puts it, the work still helps me exist in the world somehow. It feels honest to me, and seems to be making a positive impact on however infinitesimal a portion of the population happens to stumble across it—making an honest piece of work is a net positive. Realistically, trying to improve the lives of those around us is about all we can do. No matter how grim the industry can be on either the development or coverage side, keeping doing what we’re doing has got to be important, right?
Many games today are platformized, live, ongoing systems. Does this change how we should critique them?
Writing on Games: I think that those sorts of decisions as to how games are monetised are so vanishingly rarely made with the production of great, fulfilling art in mind, and so of course the way they’re talked about changes. You have to answer the question “to what extent are you talking about a capital-P Product?” Perhaps the emphasis shifts away from how personal an artistic endeavour is, to analysing its place within the larger societal, economic framework. I’m certainly interested in hearing about what kinds of highly personal experiences someone might have while playing Fortnite or whatever, how playing it allowed them to reach some core truth about themselves, but that’s unlikely to be the norm necessarily, you know? I say this as someone who has, in the past, written about Fortnite in almost exactly that way, haha.
Generally though I do think the best criticism rarely comes immediately after a game’s launch. You need time with things. You need to live life and mull stuff over with thoughts of that art whirring around in the background, see how it fits into your vision of the world. I guess in that sense, the idea that games are ongoing might somehow benefit that approach? I could be talking shite there. I didn’t mean to, but I produced a series of videos on No Man’s Sky over the years, and I’m glad that my initial thoughts weren’t my defining thoughts on that game, if that makes sense. I kinda like the idea that we can keep thinking about a game as this unfurling tapestry, but that doesn’t apply to those games that are literally not finished yet. That approach applies to almost any game as far as I’m concerned.
Looking back, is there a piece you consider a turning point in your work, creatively or intellectually?
Writing on Games: Turning point is an interesting term to use there. There are certainly pieces I enjoy more than others looking back, but in terms of “things were this way, now they’re another,” it really comes back to my video on Breath of the Wild back in 2017. That represented a real effort to appear more relaxed and less uptight in my delivery (as contradictory as that effort may seem) and came after having worked with multiple editors who were crucial in helping me hone my style—turning me into an actual writer rather than just Another Guy With An Opinion. It was the first video on the channel to hit a million views too, which felt like proof that the shift in style was something to hold onto.
That said, I made a video about the “game” of experimental music a few years back—breaking various pieces and performances down in the same way you might analyse a game’s design. I feel like if any video defines what I look for across art, that’s probably it. It’s the one people talk to me about to this day—the one my non-gaming musician pals are actually able to relate to.
It was one of my worst performing videos in years, of course, but while I’ve never been a numbers guy, that video really cemented in my head that, man, fuck the metrics. I’ve been playing in punk bands too long to a) care about that stuff or b) claim to know anything remotely the fuck about it. When I was in my teens I liked making cool shit. When I was in my twenties I liked making cool shit. Now I’m closer to forty than thirty, and lo and behold, I still just like making cool shit. Not the best mindset if consistently having enough to comfortably pay rent and bills is something you care about, but alas.
Finally: What currently excites you most about games and what worries you?
Writing on Games: There are just so, so many games. That about sums both up.
Rapid fire round:
• A game that is critically misunderstood?
• A game that changed how you see the medium?
• A topic you still want to tackle but haven’t yet?
1) People think Mad Max is just another checklist-ticking open-world game but it’s actually the greatest film-to-game adaptation ever created and you could not create a more perfect Mad Max game.
2) Metal Gear Solid 2 was pretty mindblowing to play as an eleven-year-old, and I would say shifted my view in what I wanted out of art generally. Same with Killer7 when that released.
3) For a long time I’ve wanted to make a video examining the ways in which yakuza cinema portrays its central characters in relation to the Yakuza games, and how that divergence speaks to each medium’s notions of national identity. Like, Kiryu portrays a very particular, heroic ideal of the Japanese gangster. Compare him to, say, Ishimatsu in Graveyard of Honor (in either the original or the remake). “The honour of one lone hero can save Japan” in the former vs. “post-war imperialism/post-bubble capitalism have systemically fucked everyone over and, in that system — in the evil, cruel thrashing of its central character — there exists a twisted kind of… consistency? Honesty?” Tricky subject for sure, but a lot to delve into there.
I also want to talk about how the Kurosawa mode in the Ghost games is fucking terrible. Basically I just want more excuses to talk about films. Games are dead, man (kidding).
Thank you very much for the conversation, and all the best for the future!
