welcome to non•trivial

this is a site dedicated to games and the art of writing about them.

you may not see it at first glance, but there's a double negative tucked away inside our name. to be trivial is to be unimportant, unnecessary, not worth the effort. trivialities are about shooting the shit, dabbling here and there, watching paint dry, that kind of thing. a non-triviality, on the other hand, is the opposite. an affirmation despite the negation. it is the condition of meaning. it signifies.

non•trivial is a place for sustained attention on things that matter, especially when it seems like they don't. non•trivial is a home for playful criticism and critical play, a host to conversations about the way games feel, and in feeling, mean. non•trivial is for writers and readers who love games and believe that attentive criticism is the sincerest expression of affection.

games are made up of a thousand delightful slippages. no matter how airtight the rules, playful energy always overflows into our bodies, our communities, and our language. at non•trivial, we intend to follow that energy wherever it leads. non•trivial celebrates games by treating them as the formally complex objects that they are, often overdetermined, regularly joyous and beautiful, frequently damaged and unexamined.

every month at non•trivial you'll find three new things.

first, a longform close read of a game. history, theory, and culture are all at play here, but the attention is on the game first - unearthing what it's doing and how. these are not reviews or think pieces, per se. they're essays tugging at the threads of language, art, and action that every video game spins up into one thing or another.

second, a companion piece. smaller, looser, presenting an orthogonal perspective worth spending time within the space the first essay opened up.

finally, a conversation (in podcast form) with the writers where we'll dig into their writing process, the art of interpretation, and what games have meant to them.

nontrivial effort is required to traverse the text.

trivial effort is the mulligan, the gimme. nontrivial effort is the skill check.

non•trivial is a studio for writers to share their work, not only with readers, but with each other. it's a place to be doing that work out in public, building our shared capacity to talk bout games beyond the fun/not fun binary, the industry speculation, and the hottest take.

it's a place for those of us who know that play has never been less trivial.