Issue Zero - Begin at the Beginning

Welcome to Non-Trivial. 

Do you remember the first time you felt dissatisfied with a conversation about a game? Like, really grumpy about it. Did it stick with you through the day? Did you subtweet the people with whom you shared this disappointing moment? What did you do about that dissatisfaction?

I did a lot of school about it, personally. Too much, by most reasonable measures. I read and wrote about games a whole lot for a very tiny audience from 2009 to 2019, right up to when I left my PhD program to solve the two-body problem with my partner. I think everything I read and wrote was in the service of making my conversations about games better with whomever would have them with me. Sure I had my specific research areas, my favorite platforms, that kind of thing. But at the end of the day, I was trying to purge myself of that feeling Roger Ebert spoke of when he talked about fandom: 

If you know absolutely all the trivia about your cubbyhole of pop culture, it saves you from having to know anything about anything else. That’s why it’s excruciatingly boring to talk to these people. They’re always asking you questions they know the answer to.

Basically I wanted to ask different questions about games than the ones I was used to hearing. You know, which games were my favorite or is this game worth my money or is that review score wrong or right. And I wanted to be asked different questions by others too - wanted to be pushed into a deeper relationship with these playful things. 

In the Spring of 2009, I was finishing up my junior year as a psychology undergrad. I’d completed most of my core curriculum by then, so ahead of me lay three semesters of mostly blank electives. I’d worked at my college’s writing center since I was a freshman, so I asked a buddy in the English department what class I could take that would improve my writing the most. He recommended the major’s weed-out class, Literary Analysis. The class hit me like Frankenstein’s spark of life, transforming my relationship to  writing and reading in a way I’d never recover from. Sitting around with a bunch of other nerds reading things slowly, carefully, letting the language unfold before us rather than bulldozing through it like a maniac. That’s the stuff.

A year later I was presenting my senior thesis on Mass Effect. It was the first time I ever wrote seriously about a video game, unless you count the pros and cons list I wrote for my dad to convince him the family needed an Xbox. In that thesis I did what would become my habit - drew promiscuously from different theoretical fields to make an argument that felt deeply rooted in my own textual close read. In this case, I mostly relied on Darko Suvin’s notion of the “novum” in science fiction and Ian Bogost’s idea, “procedural rhetoric.” The paper was, I think, probably fine. What I loved the most was the conversations it unlocked with my peers and professors. I knew right away this was my way forward.

Non-Trivial is about that moment. Both, in the literal sense, for me, a guy who invested a huge chunk of my life in the idea that close reading games is a worthy endeavor, and in a more general sense that I hope will translate to you all as this thing takes shape. It’s about focus. Creating a small space, just a corner, where talented writers and critics can indulge in a bit of attentive textual criticism with whatever game fascinates them most at the moment.  

Over the next couple months, everything you see here will be part of Issue Zero, a sort of long run-up to the site’s full launch. In that time you’ll see us starting to set a rhythm ahead of Issue One in November. You can read more about that rhythm here, but suffice to say, Non-Trivial is a place where criticism stretches out like a long, spacious conversation with a game, a series of games, or just a playful moment at the center. If that sounds like something you’d like to see, consider sticking around through the rest of Issue Zero. We’ll also be developing a bit more of a voice - what it means to sound like you’re writing for Non-Trivial. If you’re the kind of writer who wishes you had another outlet where you could publish (and get paid for, to be clear) ambitious, stylish, deeply attentive games criticism, keep an eye on our socials here. We’ll be putting out a call for folks soon.

Non-Trivial is a personal project. It’s just me in here right now, along with some partnership from a couple friends who will be using Issue Zero to test out more of what that looks like. There are no investors, there aren’t any ads, there aren’t any boards or even metrics we need to be accountable to. It’s a monthly publication born out of dissatisfaction with what kinds of conversations are even available to have about games. It may be that this flames out quickly. It may be that I’m overestimating my capacity to keep a thing like this going. But my hope is that in some small way, even while Rome burns, Non-Trivial can show there’s so much more that’s possible.

So yeah. Hang out for a while, please. Ask some questions you don’t know the answer to. Have less boring conversations about games, what they do, what they mean, and how they mean it. 

Take a break from industry speculation, the review score hamster wheel, the embittered 24 hour news cycle, breathe, and read some goddamn crit.