36: A Videogame is not a Video Game
Meaning in empty spaces.
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A Videogame is not a Video Game
The itch Manifesto Jam 2026 ended on the weekend two weeks ago and the submissions are generally interesting and varied enough to browse through. Further down I’ll list some favourites of those that I’ve seen, but the overall energy I got as I went through was a feeling of general despondency and of resistance to that despondency.
The best aspect of the Manifesto Jam is that most of it is text or text but with flair. You go to a submission and you read it. Then you go to the next one. And as most manifestos are short you can get through a lot. This is good as there are 333 entries. Playing games for game jams can be a laborious process (and also hardware limiting.)
One of them is mine: A Videogame is Not a Video Game.
It’s more definition than manifesto, though if we’re going to be picky about words isn’t that what a manifesto can be too? It achieves three goals for me. One, it’s a side project at a small enough scale that I was able to complete it. This is an accomplishment as I’ve been stuck in perpetual unfinished state. The only side project I’ve had consistency with these last few years is this writing but the problem there is that there is no end goal. No end state. This manifesto I finished.
Two, it gets me back into my web roots. Though small it let me play around with typography again, quirky CSS stuff, and things that ostensibly I was hired for but no longer do at my day job. And above all else it’s a style guide for me. As I’ve been writing more consistently I have tried to be more consistent in my writing. A song title should be in quotes, an album italicized. A movie name should be italicized. I think. Some style guides prefer quotes. And a videogame should be italicized. It should not be a “video game.”
The last one has been the most inconsistent. I’ve used both, interchangeably, most often influenced by whatever I was reading at the time. No more. I’m putting my foot down. As someone that has been a videogame writer I will only write “videogame” and never “video game.” Until I do.
Not long after the Manifesto Jam Valve released details on the pricing of their Steam Machine computer/console: $1500 Canadian for the base model without a controller. Then XBox raised its prices. Then Apple computers went up in price. Switch 2 and Playstation had already risen. Players are being priced out, with videogames becoming a luxury product, to fuel a massive speculative bubble of massively unprofitable companies.
Someone on an internal channel said they wished the AI bubble would pop so they could afford a Steam Machine. Buddy, when that bubble pops you’ll be lucky to afford a steamed bun.
Though it’s particularly egregious for XBox to talk about increased supply costs when Microsoft is one of the biggest drivers of the bubble making those supply costs go up. Why are sales not increasing? Layoffs. Studio closures. More layoffs. More price increases.
Who do they think will be able to afford games on their platforms? Who do they think will be able to buy computers that run their shitty AI? A system so profit driven and parasitic that it consumes itself. In the wreckage, corpses. I am one of them. “When the bubble pops” is now for many. How many more will join us? How can you prepare for it?
Then you go to itch.io and see people, with less, with more, putting their hearts out in their art via videogames. I can’t play most of them, I won’t play most of them, but I’m glad they’re there.
Some favourites from the Manifesto jam, in no particular order:
And also kinda: Stop Saying Lore by K-Ramstack. I hate “lore.”
Sometimes it’s better to be vague and not expand on things.
sometimes.