(I had meant to write and publish this post last Monday, but I got distracted and didn't.)

Last week marked a subtle, but significant shift in my video game YouTube consumption. For the first time in over a decade, Stephanie (formerly James) Sterling did not post a new JimQuisition episode last Monday. (As of the time of this writing, I haven't seen an upload for this Monday either). She had warned us that she would be taking a long overdue break. Part of me thought that she wouldn't be able to go through with it, and that she just wouldn't be able to help herself and would publish a video anyway. She didn't.

Stephanie Sterling is part of an "old guard" of video game essayists on YouTube who shaped many of my perceptions of video game criticism, and criticism of the games industry at large. In addition to the JimQuisition, I was a big fan of creators like SuperBunnyHop, Errant Signal, Max Derrat, Noah Caldwell-Gervais, Joseph Anderson, and others. These creators (and others) largely influenced my own content creation philosophies. But many of these creators have slowed down or stopped uploading altogether.

SuperBunnyHop went from uploading an essay about every 2 months, to uploading 1 game essay over a span of about 2 years. Though he has since started uploading more regularly this year, with an excellent history of war-gaming (and how it evolved from table-top to video game).

Errant Signal was similarly publishing a new video every month or 2, but has slowed down to just a handful of uploads over the past 2 years. Almost all of those have been his on-going "Children of Doom" series. Will this series be his swan song? Or will he go back to more broad essays after this massive project is over?

Joseph Anderson is still doing occasional large critiques, but he seems to have moved more towards live streaming instead of pre-recorded, long-form essays. I haven't watched any of the live streams, but I have seen some clips from some of them.

Others, like Max Derrat and Noah Caldwell-Gervais seem to still be going strong, and both seem to be broadening the topics of their content. Max Derrat has begun covering other game series beyond Silent Hill and Metal Gear, while still keeping focused on how philosophy and the occult are adapted into whatever games he discusses. Noah has been creating a lot more "road trip" content, in which he talks about U.S. history from the perspective of driving a particular interstate route. I've actually liked those road trip videos a lot, since they make me nostalgic for the road trips that I took with my family as a child.

In any case, content from these foundational game essayists seems to have become fewer and further between over the past couple years, culminating with Sterling's decision to take her long-overdue break. I've been almost religiously following the JimQuisition for years now, watching almost every Monday. Last Monday, the internet seemed like an emptier, more hollow place without thanking God for her.

Last week marked the first Monday in a decade that Stephanie Sterling did not upload a JimQuisition episode.

I'm not a particularly voracious reader of fiction. Most of my reading is in the form of books and magazines about science or history. But I do try to squeeze in a novel here and there -- usually something from the canon of classics. I never write about them on this blog because I doubt I have anything of value to say about them. Besides, being predominantly a video game writer means that I lack the vocabulary for expressing critical opinions of non-interactive media. I struggle to get by with the reviews of movies and TV shows that I write.

However, I read a rather unique novel over the summer that I do feel I can discuss. In large part, my willingness to talk about this particular novel comes from the fact that this particular novel actually has an interactive element to it that makes some of my video game criticism lingua more applicable. The novel in question is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, published by Pantheon Books in 2000.

I was introduced to this book by a YouTube video from Noah Caldwell-Gervais about the 2019 Blair Witch game on the XBox. Towards the end of the video, he talks about the conclusion of the Blair Witch game, which involves surreal, looping hallways. He goes on to talk about the recent fad of looping hallways, which has been seen in games ranging from Blair Witch to Layers of Fear to P.T.. He then talks about a novel which may have served as an inspiration for these games, and which attempts to simulate the feeling of being lost in a corridor (and the ensuing madness that it brings on) through the structure and organization of the text itself. This piqued my interest, and I promptly hopped onto Amazon and ordered a copy of the book. I was going to have a lot of downtime during the stay-at-home lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic, and needed something to help kill the time.

Indeed, I ended up enjoying House of Leaves, which has become a sort of paradigm shift for me in terms of how the written word can engage the reader. For me, House of Leaves is a watershed work of literature, in much the same way that Demon's Souls was a watershed video game. House of Leaves is my first encounter with true "ergodic text" (unless you want to count the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books I read as a child) and has redefined (for me) how a textual work (such as a book) can go about engaging its audience, and how it can tell a story in a more interactive manner than other peers in the respective media.

It's impossible to discuss this book and its merits without going into spoiler territory. As such, there will be some minor or moderate spoilers in this review. I'll try to keep them as light as possible, but consider yourself warned.

Lost in the pages

House of Leaves employs several framing devices to tell multiple narratives simultaneously. At the center is a documentary movie, called The Navidson Record about a family (named the Navidsons) exploring a supernatural house that is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, and which regularly changes its interior size and geometry in increasingly impossible ways. This movie is being reviewed and researched by a third party named Zampanò, who is writing a book about the documentary in the hopes of determining if the documentary depicts a real supernatural phenomena, or if it is the work of Hollywood trickery. Zampanò dies while working on this book, and his research is recovered by a third party named Johnny Truant, who attempts to piece together Zampanò's research and finish his work. Both Zampanò and Johnny become increasingly obsessed with The Navidson Record, and eventually go mad.

To further obfuscate the work, the introduction establishes that the original version of the work was a series of scattered pages, photographs, video clips, and audio recordings that were passed around on paper, VHS, and cassette tapes before being posted piecemeal to internet message boards in the mid-to-late 90's. The scattered documents were eventually collected by a book publisher and edited together into a single published work, which is implied to be the novel that you are holding in your hand.

Danielewski employs multiple framing devices to tell between 2 and 4 concurrent narratives.

Zampanò transcribed the events of the film into text, along with his own interpretations and commentary. Then Johnny reviewed Zampanò's notes, and added his own interpretations and commentary on top Zampanò's commentaries, while also maintaining a journal of his daily life (and decline in sanity).