In March 2024, Washington University Assistant Professor of English Gabrielle Kirilloff launched an ongoing column for Forbes covering the intersection of video games with real-world issues.
Kirilloff's column came to fruition thanks to support from the Program in Public Scholarship, whose mission is to help WashU faculty translate their research and expertise for public audiences.
We caught up with Kirilloff to discuss the column's genesis, her history of teaching video game design to students, and what fascinates her about virtual worlds.
How did you connect with Forbes to launch this column? What was the pitch process like, and how did the Program in Public Scholarship assist you?
I had a general consultation with the Program in Public Scholarship, where they asked me about my goals and interests. I mentioned that I was interested in writing about video games for a general audience, and they let me know that Forbes might have an opening.
Forbes has an application process that includes writing several short pitches for potential articles. If they like your application, it is followed by a Zoom interview. The Program in Public Scholarship was incredibly helpful during this process. They offered feedback on my application before I submitted it. I never would have considered applying for something like this without their encouragement and support.
Do you have a mission statement for the column? What elements of gaming and gaming culture do you want to explore through your work with Forbes?
The official goal of the column is to connect video games to real-world issues. While video games are entering mainstream culture like never before (66% of Americans play games) there is still, I think, a tendency to downplay video games as less important than other media. But like other cultural objects, games reflect and shape reality.
I’m particularly interested in how video games intersect with topics, emotions, and perspectives that we don’t typically think of when we think of games or gaming. For example, I’ve written about video games in relation to parenting. I’ve leaned into video games much harder since becoming a mom. It’s offered a chance for me to connect with my partner but also spend meaningful time alone with my thoughts and emotions. Since 2020, I’ve relied on video games as a space to work through feelings of anxiety and grief. I hope that one day, my whole family, including my son, can connect over games. There’s a lot of recent evidence to suggest that moms are gaming (87% of moms game), but it’s still a perspective that is largely missing from the conversation, and it's one I’m hoping to explore more in my column.
Tell us more about your personal history with video games. When did you first discover them, and was there a particular game or genre of game that really captured your imagination?
I didn’t consider games an important part of my identity growing up—I had a Game Boy when I was a teenager in the early 2000s and I remember playing Oregon Trail on PC, but I never thought of myself as a gamer.
Fallout 3, which I played in college, shifted my understanding of what games are and what they can do. It’s an open-world role-playing game set in a post-apocalyptic America. You explore a desolate wasteland (what used to be Washington, DC) as you attempt to find your father, who mysteriously disappears at the beginning of the game. It’s a very story and character-driven game, with a lot of freedom of choice for the player.
I loved novels growing up. I was a very plot-oriented reader—I got sucked into stories because I needed to find out what would happen next. Fallout appealed to the same parts of me that love reading—I wanted to find out what happened to the characters, and I wanted to spend time in a fictional world.
How did you then merge that love of video games with your scholarship? We'd love to hear more about the classes you teach in game analysis and creation. How do students respond to those courses, and how has teaching them changed or expanded your view of video games?
I did not start to merge video games with my scholarship until my first job out of graduate school (I was an Assistant Professor of English at TCU). I connected with a colleague in the English department, Jason Helms, about a shared love of games. He generously invited me to start co-teaching a course he had developed called Writing Games: Gender and Sexuality in Video Games. The class taught students to analyze, and make, video games, with a particular eye to how games reflect and inform conversation about gender and sexuality.
I’m grateful to Jason for his mentorship and for sharing his course with me. We continued to co-teach and develop the course for several years, and the experience helped me gain confidence—up until that point, I hadn’t considered myself enough of a “gamer” to write, let alone teach, video games, but the experience taught me that all play experiences are valuable. Whether Wordle, board games, Candy Crush, etc. people are playing games. They are passionate about what they play, and their play experiences (even with simple games) are meaningful. The enthusiasm and passion my students expressed around gaming encouraged me to start integrating games into my other courses and my writing.
I was incredibly taken by how video games, particularly making video games, brought students together across disciplinary divides. It also gave them a sense of agency and investment in their education. Students with low technical confidence levels felt encouraged to learn technical skills because they had a story they wanted to tell. Students interested in technology learned to value storytelling and rhetoric.
These classes helped me see game creation as one of the best ways to show students that the Humanities and STEM complement one another. This is something I’ve carried with me into other courses: I teach game creation as a unit in Intro to Digital Humanities at WashU. I’ve been so impressed by the games my students are making.
This is a fascinating time to follow the video game industry, from the struggles of big-time studios to the continued rise of indie developers. Which trends are capturing your attention at the moment? What excites you most about the state of video games in 2024?
It really is! A lot of game journalists are referring to 2023 as one of the best years in gaming history, in part because of the sophistication of games that came out last year. At the same time though, we are seeing incredible layoffs within the industry, despite record-breaking sales. While many indie developers are using games to tell incredible stories from diverse perspectives, toxicity is also on the rise in online gaming spaces.
I’m particularly interested in how the popular conception of gaming is going to shift as gaming enters the mainstream in new ways—not only are more people playing games than ever, but game stories are entering popular culture in the form of celebrated TV and film adaptations (The Last of Us, Fallout). We are also entering a moment in which more households will be participating in multi-generational gaming (hopefully as a form of community building). I’m excited to see how this changes the stories we tell about gaming in game journalism, literature, and elsewhere.
