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Hello!
I’m writing to see if you would be interested in a piece for Unwinnable.com with a working title of “Gaming to Remember.”
The essay focuses on my recent play through of Breath of Fire II, a game I first played as a child while my parents provided care for my great aunt in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s disease. In the piece, I argue that the game elevates these human concerns by attributing memory loss to demon attacks while, at the same time, providing a vehicle to manage these traumatic experiences (those same demons can be defeated). In this way, retro gaming becomes as much about recovering narratives from aging media as it is about preserving the memory for the aging gamer that they ever took place at all.
By way of bio: I work in the University of Virginia Library, where I teach and write on technology and media culture. I regularly blog on topics related to technology and education. My video game writing has largely been for Backlog, where representative pieces include one on The Banished Vault and loss and a more recent one on The Long Dark and depression.
Thank you for the consideration.
Brandon Walsh