Sickness, Systems, Solidarity

The global cataclysm of COVID-19, and the quarantines and social distancing that have accompanied the still-unfolding pandemic, has brought enormous changes to the games industry, the ways we play videogames (and physical games) alone and together, and the meaning and content of games old and new. Sickness, Systems, Solidarity collects more than 30 micro-length essays submitted as part of the Pandemics and Games Essay Jam, a collaborative writing event about the tangled relationships between pandemics and games hosted by Critical Distance and the Center for Science and the Imagination at Arizona State University. It features a foreword by Yussef Cole, a games critic, animator, video artist, and art director at Glow Up Games. 

The essays cover a broad array of themes, including how transmissible diseases are represented in games, how the social aspects of gaming have been transformed by the pandemic, COVID-19’s role in catalyzing changes in the games industry and its labor politics, and how our collective trauma has retroactively changed the meanings and legacies of older games.