Game Composition: Writing with(in) Digital Games

My dissertation is a bit of mess. With it, I wanted to work through the connections that gameplay shares with communication practices like writing. I was inspired by the ways that Kaizo levels can take the form of jokes that players effectively construct through their gameplay, as well as how players were repurposing the meanings loaded into various video game scenes and activities in ways that expressed things never envisioned by their designers. In short, I was noticing examples of games being played not only to communicate something, but to actually remake the messages and "intended" meanings coded into them thereby turning games into something of a tool (like a pencil or paint brush) that players use to say something via their game play. The big error with my dissertation is in trying to draw playing games and writing too closely together. Ludographe is a concept that, I think, still has promise, but I do think that this mode of "play writing" has 1.) more influences than just writing and 2.) is not that closely related to writing as much as I would like to compare typing letters to pressing buttons on a controller. Something to return in another lifetime.