Video Games with Footnotes: Understanding In-Game Developer Commentary

Abstract

In this chapter, we examine a specific and often overlooked kind of video game paratext: the commentaries inserted by game developers into games themselves, which may illuminate a game’s production history and gameplay details from the perspectives of the people who created it. We offer some thoughts on how to approach a concept like annotation by comparing media forms and then work through a set of examples from the games Portal, Gone Home, Tacoma, Never Alone (Kisima Inŋitchuŋa), and The Stanley Parable, followed by a conclusion that considers not only how to understand in-game developer commentary, but also why it matters.