Post-Procedural Composition: Writing Gameplay Criticism

If video game designers have something to say, and procedural rhetoric is how game designers use video games to say that something, what happens when players play in ways that diverge from or significantly remix the symbols and systems designers use to express their ideas? Building on Galloway's ideas that video games and their themes only exist when enacted (i.e. played), this article begins to chart a theory of player-based expression that repurposes the "stuff" of video games to convey themes and ideas separate from (and potentially in direct contradiction to) video games' intended messaging. In particular, this article is interested in the techniques used by speedrunners, machinima creators, glitch hunters, artists, streamers, and even regular players to repurpose the rules, spaces, and vocabulary of play in ways that articulate new and unexpected things with video games. Bittani has been demonstrating this point for years with the GAMESCENES blog, so my article is a very small attempt to begin understanding these play-based expressive practices.