Game Design
Exploring the Potential of Poetry in Games
Insights from GDC 2024
Recently, I had the delightful experience of joining Syd (aka thechosengiraffe) for an interview on her stream (available to watch here). Together, we played Minecraft and discussed game development, poetry, and the writing life. Syd is a wonderful interviewer and her skills led us in a fantastic conversation.
One of the questions asked by the chat was whether or not I would ever consider blending poetry into one of the games I make — and I answered that I had not considered it. As much as I love both poetry and games, I didn’t have any concepts that made sense to me. And I also could not come up with many examples of games that incorporate poetry on the spot.
After the interview ended, I couldn’t stop thinking about the question. What games did I know off that included poetry? I found a few examples that specifically comprised either an interactive poem or the use of actual poetry in the gameplay. These included:
- “ The horse is dead. “ by Nico May was probably the first interactive poem I played. It involves clicking between two options to reveal increasingly strange and beautifully unsettlingly imagery.
- “ House of Poems “ by Kyra Jaeger is an interactive narrative in poetry, which…
