GamePoetsSociety

A number of catalysts sparked the decision to create video game poetry, not the least of which was the sheer deficit of existing videogame poetry, high quality or otherwise. A certain video game poetry collection also had a great deal to do with GPS’s creation, as it further confirmed my hypothesis that no good video game poetry exists. My interest and goal is to take this void in gaming culture and filling it with my own writings. Other existing literature on video gaming consists of journalistic works and fanfiction, neither of which is my focus.

Fanfiction currently resides as the only popular method of extrapolating concepts from video games in a literary sense, and the differences between poetry and fanfiction is something that I think needs to be noted here.

Where fanfiction almost exclusively consists of characters from video games portrayed in author-determined situations where the plot is most important, poetry focuses more intently on the method and tone with which the message is being delivered. A fanfiction will chronicle a character’s actions and hijinks in situations outside of the actual game, but the poem’s tendrils are capable of far more elaborate feats.

The poem can take concepts, philosophies, implied paradigms, character qualities, conflicts, and an infinite number of other motes of thought, and convert them into a moment. The poem is a moment in time where through one small cluster of language, the author vividly reveals his message, and the reader vividly grasps it and conforms it to his own. The poem does not use language to convey a theme, but bends language to its will, and molds it to create an art form that can only be observed by an appraisal of the emotion behind the syntax.

That is poetry, and I am a video game poet.