How a Game Lives
How a Game Lives
hardback
Published:
20 November, 2025
Description
Over his illustrious career, Jacob Geller has written and produced a sprawling collection of video essays. Deftly interweaving video game analysis with complex narratives about art, politics and history, Geller’s work positions games as vital tools for understanding each other and ourselves.
How a Game Lives re-examines ten of Geller’s most iconic essays accompanied by his brand-new commentary, afterwords on each piece by some of the industry’s best writers and stunning original artwork by Kilian Eng and other exceptional artists.
With videos like “Who’s Afraid of Modern Art?”, “Every Zelda is the Darkest Zelda”, and “The Legacy of the Haunted House”, Geller has taught audiences how to think about the art that’s affected them. How a Game Lives immortalises those works and more and provides boundless insight into the construction, philosophy, and afterlife of each essay. Featuring original scripts and new industry analysis of the following works:
Who’s Afraid of Modern Art?
Returnal is a Hell of Our Own Creation
Control, Anatomy, and the Legacy of the Haunted House
Does Call of Duty Believe in Anything?
The Decade-Long Quest for Shadow of the Colossus’ Last Great Secret
Every Zelda is the Darkest Zelda
Art in the Pre-Apocalypse
The Golem and the Jewish Superhero
The Future of Writing about Games
Fear of Cold
More Details
| Type | Book |
|---|---|
| ISBN13 | 9780008752293 |
| ISBN10 | 000875229X |
| Number Of Pages | 208 |
| Item Weight | 900 g |
| Product Dimensions | 196 x 247 x 26 mm |
| Publisher / Reseller | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Format | hardback |
Media Reviews
Featured on Sight and Sound’s list of “Best Video Essays of the Year,” – 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
Featured on Polygon’s list of “Best Video Essays of the Year,” – 2020, 2022, 2023
Jacob Geller … is to the video game essay what Annie Dillard is to the literary essay" – Patrick House, LA Review of Books
"It probably goes without saying that Jacob Geller is the Future of Writing about Video Games, but he’s also the future of writing about … kind of anything?" – Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, How a Game Lives
Jacob Geller is the host of the podcast Something Rotten.
GoodReads Reviews
Author's Bio
Jacob Geller writes about the intersecting worlds of video games, politics, art, and storytelling.
He primarily publishes essays to YouTube, where his work has been cumulatively viewed over one hundred million times.