The Backrooms Were Always About Games

The Backrooms Were Always About Games

Something a little different! We're focusing on the newsletter now and in a conversational way! This week, I sat down with Danny Snelson, a writer and professor at UCLA who spends his days thinking about the eerie. We start with a strange admission from this year's Venice Biennale, where the Chinese pavilion exhibited a video game you weren't allowed to play, and use it to chase a bigger idea: that games have quietly become a shared grammar, and once you notice it, you can't stop seeing where it has leaked. Into a sculptor's hooded figures pulled from DOOM and recast as the accused at the Salem witch trials. Into a painter who walks you inside his own canvases. Into a flesh-pink office shooter, and into the Backrooms, that empty image of damp carpet and fluorescent hum that turns out to be one of the clearest things our culture has made about infinity after the exhaustion of grandeur. We get into all of it, plus an auto-rickshaw in Goa in 1992, and whether a game is allowed to refuse to be fun.  References * Mitchell Chan [https://chan.gallery/]'s talk at DEMO [https://www.youtube.com/live/FVQ96vAoS30?si=EKc0B5w5V7GEnUTy&t=2546] * Peter Nichols [https://www.elfsend.com/]' Crude Oil [https://store.steampowered.com/app/1653020/Crude_Oil/] * My interview with Leo Castañeda [https://www.killscreen.com/leo-castaneda/] / Talk at DEMO [https://www.youtube.com/live/6ayBEn-LsDU?si=zVfaVfUTbAcS-WG3&t=3461] * Camoflux [https://store.steampowered.com/app/897980/Camoflux_Levels__Bosses/] * Adrian MM Abela [https://adrianabela.com/work/2023-declaration-of-dependence-drafts-and-depictions/] * False.Work Maltese Pavillion [https://www.false.work/declaration-of-dependence] * Chinese Pavillion's Black Myth: Wukong [https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/6787484/dream-stream] * Damjan Jovanovic's essay on The Backrooms [https://worldmakingproject.substack.com/p/the-collision-mesh-of-the-real] * My feature on Catmilk * Catmilk [https://milksaucer.com/] * Gossamer Matrix [https://store.steampowered.com/app/2002840/Gossamer_Matrix/] * Kalp Studio's Rahi [https://kalpstudio.co/?ref=killscreen.com]   Daniel Scott Snelson [https://substack.com/redirect/e44cd497-3650-4432-85ed-e543756cb5ec?j=eyJ1IjoiOWRoZDIifQ.uxj_FQo17gj4Khc5J8lhS7WOOoU6EwkHs2OFHA0S58A] is a writer, editor, and archivist working as an Associate Professor in the Departments of English and Design Media Arts at UCLA. His online editorial work can be found at PennSound, Eclipse, UbuWeb, Jacket2, and the EPC. Published books include Elden Poem [https://substack.com/redirect/3480a75d-704b-4328-ac96-eddcddf0cdd3?j=eyJ1IjoiOWRoZDIifQ.uxj_FQo17gj4Khc5J8lhS7WOOoU6EwkHs2OFHA0S58A] (Hysterically Real, 2022), Apocalypse Reliquary: 1984-2000 [https://substack.com/redirect/feff5ec9-e4e5-44fb-9868-ff92ecb06dd7?j=eyJ1IjoiOWRoZDIifQ.uxj_FQo17gj4Khc5J8lhS7WOOoU6EwkHs2OFHA0S58A] (Monoskop, 2018), and Inventory Arousal [https://substack.com/redirect/88040246-674e-4435-b08f-d547accadfae?j=eyJ1IjoiOWRoZDIifQ.uxj_FQo17gj4Khc5J8lhS7WOOoU6EwkHs2OFHA0S58A] with James Hoff (Bedford Press/Architectural Association, 2011). His most recently published book, The Little Database: A Poetics of Media Formats [https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517918828/the-little-database/] (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), examines the networked afterlives of media-reflexive works of art and letters in search of contingent methods for reading ordinary digital collections. He's just wrapped teaching "That Time I Got Reincarnated as a UCLA Creative Writing Seminar: Isekai x Experiment [https://meta.humspace.ucla.edu/another/world.html]" this spring at UCLA.  Hosted by Jamin Warren. Music by Nick Sylvester [https://www.instagram.com/nicksylvester/?hl=en]. Subscribe to Killscreen [https://www.killscreen.com/membership/] for unlimited access to Jamin's writing and the archive at killscreen.com, member-exclusive newsletters and events. I love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to info@killscreen.com  Please consider supporting independent media! ★ Support this podcast ★ [https://www.killscreen.com/#/portal/support]

The Pink Game About Corporate Violence

Catmilk is a digital artist and solo developer who has been building a game called Gossamer Matrix for about four years. It's a first-person shooter set inside a corporate tower in a climate-flooded future, where cities have condensed vertically, and private militaries defend shareholder value floor by floor. The premise is deliberately hyperviolent. The color palette is, improbably, pink. What caught my attention was the texture. The game looks stitched. Woven. Like something pulled together one color at a time. Catmilk cites the Impressionists and Zdzisław Beksiński, the Polish painter behind a generation of heavy metal album covers, as visual touchstones. You can feel both. We talked about designing for something other than fun, about how working an IT job in a university basement quietly shaped the game's level design, and about what it means to make something you're calling a "digital object" that exists as itself, optimized for nothing. * (00:00) - Pink Corporate Violence * (01:35) - Beach Town Origins * (04:38) - From Painter to Games * (08:15) - Impressionists and Metal Dreams * (10:42) - Playtest Push and Unfun Design * (17:04) - Building the Corporate Tower World * (26:41) - Office Job Level Design Hosted by Jamin Warren. Music by Nick Sylvester [https://www.instagram.com/nicksylvester/?hl=en]. Subscribe to Killscreen [https://www.killscreen.com/membership/] for unlimited access to Jamin's writing and the archive at killscreen.com, member-exclusive newsletters and events. I love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to info@killscreen.com  Please consider supporting independent media! ★ Support this podcast ★ [https://www.killscreen.com/#/portal/support]

Your Body Is Being Compressed—Lisa Jamhoury on Lossy, Grief, and the Digital Body

Lisa Jamhoury is an artist and performer working at the intersection of the physical body and computation. Her Capture Series—five years in the making—investigates what it means to live through digital representations of ourselves. Lossy, the newest piece in the series, had its world premiere at South by Southwest 2025. In this episode, I talk with Lisa about how a traumatic car accident sent her from circus performance into software design, a 1940s sculpture called Norma that explains everything wrong with how we build technology today, what it actually feels like to walk through Lossy, and why she reached for Kurt Vonnegut to write through grief. This is the main feed cut. Gaming Club members get the extended version—including Lisa's full breakdown of the Norma sculpture, her reflections on motion capture as an ethical practice, and more of our conversation about digital death and the right to be forgotten. Join the Gaming Club at killscreen.com—$6/month gets you extended episodes, monthly game selections, creator interviews, and the editorial layer that makes it all make sense. Read more at killscreen.com. * (00:00) - What Lossy Means * (00:20) - Meet Lisa Giammori * (03:02) - Trauma To Tech Critique * (10:26) - Naming The Capture Series * (14:20) - Norma And The Perfect Body Myth * (15:59) - Wrap Up and Where Next Hosted by Jamin Warren. Music by Nick Sylvester [https://www.instagram.com/nicksylvester/?hl=en]. Subscribe to Killscreen [https://www.killscreen.com/membership/] for unlimited access to Jamin's writing and the archive at killscreen.com, member-exclusive newsletters and events. I love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to info@killscreen.com  Please consider supporting independent media! ★ Support this podcast ★ [https://www.killscreen.com/#/portal/support]

Telling the Bees: Kyriaki Goni on Building a Game from a Stranger's Gift

In this episode, I talk with Greek artist Kyriaki Goni [https://kyriakigoni.com/] about Telling the Bees —her in-development game about a character called the Bee-Seeker, searching for the last surviving bees in a near-future Aegean archipelago on the edge of ecological collapse. We get into the ritual that gives the game its name, the anthropological research behind every design decision, and why she wants players to physically perform the waggle dance to unlock parts of the game. This is exactly the kind of work I cover at Killscreen: art that uses interactivity to reveal something true about the world that couldn't be said any other way. If you want more of this—interviews, essays, and cultural criticism on experimental games and interactive art—the newsletter goes out every Tuesday and Thursday, free, at killscreen.com. And if you want to go deeper,  membership gives you extended cuts of every episode, full transcripts, creator interviews, and a curated monthly game experience. Join at killscreen.com. * (00:00) - Ritual of Telling Bees * (00:34) - Meet Kyriaki Goni * (01:30) - Naming and Family Traditions * (03:33) - The Basket Origin Story * (07:20) - Researching Ancient Beekeeping * (10:23) - Designing the Bee Seeker * (12:41) - Wrap Up and Where Next Hosted by Jamin Warren. Music by Nick Sylvester [https://www.instagram.com/nicksylvester/?hl=en]. Subscribe to Killscreen [https://www.killscreen.com/membership/] for unlimited access to Jamin's writing and the archive at killscreen.com, member-exclusive newsletters and events. I love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to info@killscreen.com  Please consider supporting independent media! ★ Support this podcast ★ [https://www.killscreen.com/#/portal/support]

The Level Designer Who Went Underwater

Jakob Kudsk Steensen [https://www.jakobsteensen.com/] has spent fifteen years building a practice that doesn't fit neatly into any single category. He's not a game designer in the commercial sense. He's not exactly a filmmaker or a sculptor. He's someone using the tools of game engines to document ecologies that are disappearing. In this conversation, we talk about how he started modifying Unreal Tournament at 12 and never really stopped. We talk about why Fortnite's commercial success is directly responsible for the expressive tools artists like Jacob now use for free. We talk about the Far Cry 2 modification he made seventeen years ago—a swimmer, an island, a slope too steep to climb—that was the first time he thought of himself as an artist. We talk about the Berola glacier, which he digitized in 2022 and which collapsed the following year. We talk about what it actually feels like to dive into a volcanic vent. And we talk about Song Trapper [https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/573604122b8ddea9122c6ee9/208cbda8-65b5-433a-a4dc-aa8aeef9f484/Screenshot+2025-10-18+at+09.17.04.png?format=2500w]—his most narrative work yet, and his return to something that looks more deliberately like a game. The full Otherworlds [https://phi.ca/en/events/jakob-kudsk-steensen-otherworlds/] exhibition is on view at Phi Centre in Montreal through the summer. * (00:00) - Meet Jakob Kudsk Steensen * (01:27) - Origins Nature and Mods * (04:42) - Why Unreal Works * (09:16) - Other Worlds and Mourning Hosted by Jamin Warren. Music by Nick Sylvester [https://www.instagram.com/nicksylvester/?hl=en]. Subscribe to Killscreen [https://www.killscreen.com/membership/] for unlimited access to Jamin's writing and the archive at killscreen.com, member-exclusive newsletters and events. I love hearing from you! Email your questions and thoughts to info@killscreen.com  Please consider supporting independent media! ★ Support this podcast ★ [https://www.killscreen.com/#/portal/support]