Patrick Fiorilli

@patfio.bsky.social

1618 Followers 3040 Following

writer, critic, & theorist; games & literature; bylines in the LA Review of Books, Gamers with Glasses, Bright Wall/Dark Room; lecturer in media arts & design at the University of Chicago; he/him; read my newsletter, "Critical Theorycraft," at www.patf.io

Website screenshot: Running Laps I already used "More-athon" as a pun last week. I've got nothing else! But the critical community still does. Marathon Is a Heist Game, Actually | Critical Theorycraft Patrick Fiorilli considers the long game in an of-the-moment game-of-the-moment (Further Reading: Will Butler on getting away with it on TCIV). Older Than Empires, As Deep As Death | Bullet Points Monthly Grace Benfell muses on gender, colonies, empires, and the logics that run through all of them on Tau Ceti IV.
transcript of a standup special: The odds of falling in love with the perfect person at the perfect time are about the odds of, I don't know, being discovered in Hollywood. Wait a minute. I asked a similarly desperate question for many years, which was, how do you make it in show business? Do you move to San Diego and disguise yourself as a bush? Moving slowly northward beneath the cover of dusk? And what do famous people always say? They always say, "Well, do you enjoy doing it?" Great.
Google chart showing the popularity of "nothing doing" spiking after 2021
a large orange bear puppet from bear in the big blue house smells coffee with satisfaction
Article Screenshot: "Video Games Need a Theory of Language" by Patrick Fiorilli. "Introduction: How does a world emerge from language? This is the fundamental question posed by the medium of the video game, a form literally inscribed in code and in circuitry and thereby experienced as a phenomenal world. Yet this question goes unheard in studies of video games, and the fact that the video game can articulate such a quandary goes unrecognized in theories of language. The reason why is historical. The theories best suited to realize the potential of video games to imagine new relations between world and language were waning in influence just as the popularity of video games was on the rise. Where the link was located, in the niche area of game studies, it was only partially explained. How does a world emerge from language? This is precisely the question posed at once by video games and poststructuralism. Realizing this, we are prepared to conceive both apparatuses anew. Spend time in games-adjacent spaces and you will realize that this essential connection to language is not lost in discourse about video games. One often hears game designers and critics speak of video games in terms of “objects,” “verbs,” and other parts of speech. We talk about jumping in Super Mario Bros. (Nintendo R&D4, 1985) as if we were talking about the word “jump.” But despite the popularity of these turns of phrase, their meaning is most often uninvestigated. Why does it make sense to talk about video games as if we were talking about language?"
man with a handlebar mustache in a blue plaid bathrobe, T-shirt, jeans, beanie, and wraparound sunglasses, holding a dog in an alligator costume
Mosaic of Drew Struzan's iconic theatrical posters for Star Wars, episodes 1-6. Portraits of the leads arranged amidst spaceships and swordfights.
Left, Juliette Gariépy as Kelly-Anne in Red Rooms. Right, Anna Cobb as Casey in We're All Going to the World's Fair.
David Lynch sits in an armchair on the set of the chevron-floored, curtained "red room" from Twin Peaks
standing beside the Mothman statue in West Virginia
Rita Hayworth's hair toss in Gilda.
Text of NIGHTWOOD: "What is a ruin but Time easing itself of endurance? Corruption is the Age of Time." etc.
museum display of "primitive tetrapod skull," coincidentally shaped like the head of the hollow knight silksong protagonist