About Game Poems

Game Poems is an online literary magazine dedicated to exploring the artistic and poetic potential of short-form videogames.

Mission Statement

The videogame poem is a concept that challenges traditional boundaries between art forms. While poetry is often seen as a medium for introspection and cultural critique, videogames are typically associated with industrialism, consumerism, and resource consumption—more often about conquering worlds than contemplating them. However, these assumptions can be subverted.

At Game Poems we are interested in short-form videogames that explore every aspect of human experience. Not only “What happens when two objects collide?” (what many videogames have historically been about) but also: “Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love?” (Annie Dillard.) 

Each issue of Game Poems curates an innovative collection of small, poetic videogames, or "game poems." That is, short interactive artworks that borrow language and framing from traditional videogames (e.g., they may utilize a player-controlled avatar or make use of classic videogame iconography), while also presenting themselves as poems in some way (perhaps by engaging with creative material constraints, playing with poetic text, or simply following in the lyric tradition of short-form personal expression). 

The magazine foregrounds the convergences that exist between game making and poetry, highlights "born-videogame" poetics, and promotes videogame creation as a legitimate form of poetic practice.

Inclusivity Statement

Game Poems is dedicated to platforming and amplifying game poets from all walks of life. We believe that game poems can and should be made by anyone and everyone, reflecting the full spectrum of human experience. We especially welcome submissions from disenfranchised creators, those with marginalized perspectives, poets new to game development, game developers new to poetry, international creators, and creators who may not feel at home in either academia or the games industry. Your voice matters, and we want Game Poems to be a space where it can be heard.

Audience and Distribution

Game Poems connects independent artists and game designers with scholar-makers, academic theorists, and that portion of the game-playing public interested in avant-garde and artistic short-form games. As such, we seek to appeal to a wide range of makers, readers, players, and scholars across a variety of domains. We distribute the games we publish via our website, within academic networks, at poetry conferences and art festivals, and on mainstream gamer-facing platforms such as Itch.io and Steam.

Models and Inspiration

Publications such as The New River, Taper, and The HTML Review serve as a crucial models of online literary magazines and journals that feature interactive works aimed at an academic audience—but Game Poems draws equal inspiration from the indie spirit evident in self-published zines and newsletters such as Indiepocalypse, ChoiceBeat, and Knucklebone Magazine.

Partners

Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton

We will be showcasing a selection of game poems from this magazine at the Winchester School of Art in collaboration with the University of Southampton and the Winchester Poetry Festival.

Winchester Poetry Festival

We will be showcasing a selection of game poems from this magazine as an official dimension of the upcoming Winchester Poetry Festival, in collaboration with the Festival, and the Winchester School of Art.

Additional Partners

We are actively seeking mutually-beneficial partnerships with institutions, organizations, and publications that might help us expand our reach and impact. If you are interested in partnering with us, please get in touch.

Editorial Process and Selection Criteria

For information about our editorial process and selection criteria, please see our Submissions page.

For information about our editorial team, keep scrolling. 

The People

Editorial Collective

Gregory Avery-Weir

Gregory Avery-Weir is a queer game developer and writer. Their early Flash web games include "(I Fell in Love With) The Majesty of Colors," "How to Raise a Dragon," and "Looming." As co-founder of Future Proof Games, their work focuses on promoting audacious compassion for unfamiliar perspectives. They're currently working on the hacktivism puzzle web game Exploit: Zero Day and writing a book on a unified theory of games. You can find Gregory at ludusnovus.net.

Jarory de Jesus

Jarory de Jesus is a game developer who specializes in narrative design, implementation, and programming—with a strong interest in poetry that stems from his love of Hip Hop. Jarory inspires his colleagues and next generation developers through collaborative projects and teaching game development. As a developer he's worked on properties such as Madden, Marvel, and Star Wars as both a Narrative and Technical Designer. He dedicates his spare time to a Hip Hop RPG which he describes as a passion project. He has participated in multiple game jams including global game jam and train jam. As a developer of color, he seeks to amplify minority voices through inclusive design, unique perspectives in narrative, community service, and activism. Jarory is also a community organizer for Black in Gaming (BiG) and a member of the Latinx in Gaming community as well as a board member for Global Game Jam. His current studio, Coquito Games, is the culmination of his years of experience and passion for telling stories from under represented voices. You can find Jarory at jarorydejesus.com.

Farhanaz Kassee-Elahee (aka Joy)

Joy is a French artist and gamedev, as well as an author and poet. She has worked on many video game projects, from AAA to independent games, as a 3D/2D animator, narrative designer and art director. She has also worked on animated series as a 2D animator and character designer. She has written and drawn books for children, teenagers and adults, and received a major award from the UNESCO Chair in Sexual Health and Human Rights. She has published several poetry collections and enjoys creating interactive poems. Since 2022, she has co-founded Purple Meadows Studio, of which she is now CEO and Game director. They are developing Blue Bird's Song, a narrative game, written in poetry, a retelling of a dark French tale. Joy recently joined the Enjmin school as a teaching engineer for the Game Art department. You can find Joy on Linktree.

Jordan Magnuson

Jordan Magnuson is a longtime creator of experimental and short-form videogames, and the founding editor of Game Poems. He also founded The Independent Gaming Source (aka TIGSource) once upon a time, and is author of the book Game Poems: Videogame Design as Lyric Practice. Since 2010, Jordan's serious games, art games, "notgames," and "game poems" have been featured by Wired, PC Gamer, Le Monde, and others, shown at festivals and exhibitions around the world, and nominated for a variety of awards including the New Media Writing Prize, the Extra Credits Innovation Awards, and the IndieCade Grand Jury Award. Jordan is currently Senior Lecturer in Games and Media Art at the University of Southampton, and 2024-25 Fulbright Scholar in Digital Culture at the University of Bergen. You can find Jordan at jordanmagnuson.com.

Jon Stone

Jon Stone is a UK-based poet, editor and researcher. As an author, he has won a Society of Authors Eric Gregory Award, the Poetry London Prize (twice) and the Live Canon International Poetry Prize, as well as being shortlisted for the New Media Writing Prize in 2023. As an editor and co-director at Sidekick Books, he's conceived and compiled several mixed-genre anthology series. He also published a monograph, Dual Wield: The Interplay of Poetry and Video Games, in 2022. He leads the MA Creative Writing course at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. You can find Jon at gojonstonego.com.

Agata Waszkiewicz

Agata Waszkiewicz is a video game scholar at the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin, Poland, with a special interest in the intersection of poetry and games. Their poems have been published in Polish in Tlen Literacki, and their current research project is focused around the role and significance of puzzle poems in video games.  They have authored two research books, Delicious Pixels: Food in Video Games and Metagames: Games About Games, which reflect their academic interests surrounding the use and significance of metareference and cozy aesthetics in video games. They are also a mental health professional specializing in adults with ADHD, and an illustrator. You can find Agata on Google Scholar.

Production Team

John Domenico Calvelli

John Domenico Calvelli is an American and Italian game developer, creative technologist, software engineer, and educator whose primary interests lie in game programming patterns, computational narrative, game development as a poetic practice, and gameplay as a method of educating. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Digital Game Design and Development at Long Island University. You can find John at jdcalvelli.itch.io

Matt Griffin

Matt Griffin is obsessed with the many modes of narrative games as means to shatter a writer's understanding of what is happening in the mind of a reader, opening up to more ways to play together. He has been interviewing authors of (massively) longform interactive novels about how they create their work for a forthcoming interview academic book, and covers narrative games for ChoiceBeat Zine and other journals. He is currently writing an interactive novel himself in ChoiceScript for Choice of Games to explore the mysterious ways horror as a genre asks new and better questions why the hell we tell (scary) stories to each other. He is Conference Chair for NarraScope 2025. He teaches in the NYU IDM and NYU ITP interactive art & design programs. He has an MFA in Writing (Fiction) from Columbia University, which mysteriously launched him into a fifteen+ year career in bioprinting & additive manufacturing. He is a proud father and husband of his favorite writer/singer/artist/person.

Jordan Magnuson

See above.

Advisory Board

Andrew Baillie
Founder and curator of Indiepocalypse.

Hannah Brooks-Motl
Former acquisitions editor at Amherst College Press.

Kavi Duvoori
Editor at Taper.

Noah Wardrip-Fruin
Professor of Computational Media at UC Santa Cruz.

Shelby Wilson
Co-editor of The HTML Review.

Special Thanks

Nick Montfort
Proprietor of Bad Quatro, publisher of Taper.