I DID IT! I’M MAKING A BOOK!
There’s gonna be a Jacob Geller book. That’s what this video is about.
Okay, the facts, up top. “How a Game Lives” is the title of the book. It is, sort of, an anthology
of my essays, but with about a billion new words by me and other unbelievable writers and filled
with original art for every essay. It is a big, beautiful book and you can pre-order it
right now, link’s in the description. Now, for all the rest of you people who
are still here, you want to know
more, you little sickos. Okay. I got you.
How A Game Lives is a collection of my favorite essays I’ve written over the past five
years. Who’s Afraid of Modern Art, Fear of Cold, Every Zelda is the Darkest Zelda, etc, etc. But
I’m not just publishing my scripts. Each one is annotated to hell, just covered in new writing
from me. Would I still include Paul Joseph Watson in my modern art video today? What’s the
relevance of Shelley’s Ozymandias in “Returnal is a Hell of Our Own Creation”? It’
s 2024,
does Call of Duty believe in anything yet? I have written so much new on every essay
that we just had to completely reformat how the pages of the book were going to
be laid out, because the designers were like “wait this is not all going to fit.”
But that’s not all that’s new here, because each essay is going to have a new afterword by writers
that are so talented I’m…completely intimidated, to be honest. For instance, remember “Playing
Metal Gear Solid V,” the New Yorker piece tha
t I said was the best bit of games writing
I’d ever read? The author, Jamil Jan Kochai, will be writing an afterword on one of my essays.
So will Noah Caldwell Gervais and Ian Danskin of Innuendo Studios, maybe the two creators that most
influenced what I wanted to do with my own videos. Chris Plante, the editor-in-chief of Polygon will
be writing an afterword, so will…my father. And the forward to the book will be written
by none other than Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, the writer of the short
story “Through the Flash”
I wrote about in Time Loop Nihilism, the writer of last year’s “Chain Gang All Stars,” which was
a finalist for the National Book Award and one of the Time’s best ten novels of the year?? And
he’s going to write something for my book??? This is– this is probably not a great marketing
pitch, but one of the inspirations for this book, one of my favorite books growing up was
The Prehistory of the Far Side, in which Gary Larson had written all sorts of notes on
what
he thought Cow Tools was about, or how his early drawings turned into his published work. It
felt like…getting to peek into his mind. And look, I am a fraction of the writer Larson is, but
to think that I could give that same sort of insight is something I just can’t resist.
Now let’s talk the book itself, as an artistic object. It’s being published by Lost
in Cult, who’s a wonderful independent publisher of games writing– you might have
heard of their recurring journal Lock-On, of which I
am proudly a contributor. They’ve also
made things like this art book of Sable, which is, no joke, one of the most beautiful art books
I’ve ever seen. The goal, even though my book is full of filthy words, is also to make something
beautiful. I mean look at the cover, baby! Look at this thing! Judge my book by its cover! Or, you
know that painting I’ve stood in front of for all sorts of videos? We commissioned the artist, Carin
Walsh, to do another completely original work, a big actual can
vas, and that’s the art that
introduces “Who’s Afraid of Modern Art.” Every essay will have an original piece like this,
from different mediums by different artists. That’s the book. BUT THERE’S MORE. For only this
pre-order period, and only a limited number at that, we’re running a deluxe edition of the
book. Please let me tell you what it includes. To start with, the first 300 of them will be
signed. By me. I’ll be the guy signing them. They’ll come in a beautiful slipcover, inside a
bea
utiful box. Each will come with several prints, including the glorious cover art. But the real
prize, at least for me, is the 7-inch vinyl that will come with every deluxe edition. On this
vinyl will be songs created for my essays– The Cremation of Sam Mcgee! The Kraken! Stormy Skies!
This is the first time any of these songs have been available on physical media. And of course,
notes from each of the musicians on their work. This deluxe edition is never coming back– if
you want it, you got
ta order it now. Look. YouTube as a platform is, in many ways,
incredible. It is the reason I was able to connect with any of you in the first place. But
I’ve never been able to shake the feeling that everything I put up here is also, inherently,
ephemeral. One day, no matter how upset I get, YouTube could just disappear and take all my work
with it. That cannot happen with this book. “How a Game Lives” gives me a chance to revisit
and re-examine the work I’m most proud of, it gives me a ch
ance to work with the artists of my
dreams, but maybe most importantly, it is a part of my preserved work that you can own forever, no
matter what happens to the rest of this…thing. I am immensely proud of “How a Game Lives.”
You can pre-order it now. I hope you do.
Comments