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Product Description
Paperback, brand new, published by Lilliput Press, April 2026.
In CTRL, writers turn their focus to one of the most influential – and persistently misunderstood – art forms of the modern era. Through memoir, criticism, and narrative exploration, these essays chart the ways video games intersect with memory, identity, imagination, and the complicated business of being human.
Here, games become ciphers for joy and escape, but also for pain, addiction, burnout and longing. They emerge as places where we grow up, fall apart, find solace, test our limits, and rewrite ourselves. The essays in this collection explore how virtual landscapes imprint on real ones, how play becomes a way of thinking and how game worlds both mirror and distort the worlds we inhabit.
Ranging from pixelated nostalgia to sprawling open worlds, CTRL interrogates gaming’s contradictions – its artistry and excesses, its transformative potential and its shadows. Alongside these personal narratives lie broader questions: Where does this medium go next? Can it retain its creative integrity amid rapid technological shifts and the pressures of capital? What does it mean to call games art when they so often outgrow the boundaries we try to place around them?
Insightful, intimate, and alive with curiosity, CTRL captures the emotional and cultural force of video games, and the stories we carry with us when we put the controller down.
Featuring Essays By:
Sheila Armstrong, Rob Doyle, Joe Dunthorne, Donal Fullam
Úna-Minh Kavanagh, Róisín Kiberd, Anna Loughranm Darragh McCausland
Lisa McInerney, John Patrick McHugh, Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan
Brenda Romero, Stephen Sexton, Paul Whyte
Games featured include:
Final Fantasy IX, Fallout: New Vegas, Pokémon, DoomTomb Raider, Disco Elysium, The Stanley Parable, Wanderstop, Urban ChaosThe Elder Scrolls, The Witcher, Lemmings, Star Wars, Grim Fandango, Monkey Island 2, Discworld, Bioshock, Hotline Miami, Red Dead Redemption
