Sharing Pain and Pleasure by Shivener and Oliveira Da Silva

This section further defines the post-mortem article and situates it as an under-explored object of study in the related fields of writing studies and technical communication. There are exigencies for such a study of post-mortem articles when we review recent research on developer processes (Karabinus & Atherton, 2019; Colby & Shultz Colby, 2019; Thominet, 2020) and gameplay in relation to affective experiences (Anable, 2018; Holmes, 2018; Jiang, 2020) and recent calls for more transparency and mentorship about webtext production (Ball, 2021). Before we turn to reviewing our related fields’ game studies, though, reviews of affect theory and definitions of the post-mortem article are necessary.

2.1 Toward Relational Feelings

As we suggested in our introduction, affect theory is a rather multivalent body of scholarship that crosses disciplines such as rhetoric, sociology, philosophy, and psychology (see, for example, Jiang’s [2020] treatment of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's views on affect). At risk of replicating syntheses of notable yet oft-cited scholars such as Brian Massumi (2002), Sara Ahmed (2005), and Kathleen Stewart (2007), we will say briefly that the terms affect, feeling, and emotion have been flexible and even interchangeable terms among scholars. In Moving Politics, for example, Deborah Gould offers that “efforts to make sense of events and phenomena are never without feeling. Indeed, emotion incites, shapes, and is generated by practices of meaning-making” (p. 13; emphasis ours). However, at their core, the aforementioned terms are concerned with bodies in relation to objects and environments. Working from Casey Boyle’s theory of rhetoric as a post-human practice, bonnie kyburz contends that “we are nonetheless affectively charged agents, and our attunements shape the nature of our various relations in ways that invoke care, study, and critique” (p. 93). Reflecting on these prior arguments and terms, we prefer the term “feelings,” the kind of in-between term that addresses the preconscious and conscious binary between affect and emotion (Shouse, 2005). Useful to us is Teresa Brennan’s definition of feeling “as sensations that have found a match in words” (p. 120) because it suggests that “stress,” “pain,” “pleasure” and specific affective terms such as “sad,” “happy,” and “joy” gesture toward felt sensations at play. We take up more affect theory—including Gregory Ulmer’s theory of “electrate transversal”—in our methods section.

2.2 Post-mortem definitions

Post-mortems show affective potential because developers express their felt sensations in words and images. The post-mortem article is a commonplace genre of professional writing across scientific and technical fields, a genre through which game developers, software engineers and the like narrate the successes, failures, and tensions that shaped a project (Petrillo et al., 2009; Washburn et al., 2016; Politowski et al., 2018). For more than 20 years, the now-defunct Game Developer magazine and its current iteration, Game Developer, a digital publication, have published post-mortem articles written for and by game developers, from solo, independent developers to major teams. Michael Washburn et. al (2016) studied 155 post-mortems on Game Developer because "postmortems offer an open and honest window into the development of games, often sharing the mistakes, setbacks, and wasted effort just as much as the successes and heroics that go into game building" (p. 280). In this publishing space, commonplace sections include thick descriptions of “what went right,” and “what went wrong,” plus screenshots of game drafts and scenes of game development. Washburn et al. (2016) found that game developers reflected positively on "game design," which might include character development and art; and developers reflected negatively about team dynamics, particularly because new teams had “trouble agreeing with each other, which led to problems making decisions during the project” (p. 287).

As windows into positive and negatively charged practices, post-mortem articles for Game Developer are interesting because they are voluntarily written by game developers, mostly stemming from small and independent studios, and game developers aren’t paid for writing them (“Submitting to Game Developer Blogs”). According to many authors of such post-mortems, the articles are written to help developers reflect on their experiences and, more importantly, to share knowledge with peers in the game development industry. Indie developers have more agency when writing post-mortem articles because they aren't constrained by non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) that often silence developers associated with major companies (Zimmerman, 2014, p. 147). Indie developers are often more open to expressing the myriad feelings and practices that shape a project because they own the intellectual property (see Thominet 2018; 2021). As developer Sara Casen (2018), of the narrative-driven supernatural game Lake Ridden, wrote in a post-mortem article:

Our goal with publishing this text is to contribute to the larger body of knowledge about games development out there, as well as take a moment ourselves to reflect on the enormous accomplishment that is creating something from nothing. At the end of this post, I’ll talk about the fact that our game, despite all love it has gotten from its fantastic players and the meticulous marketing effort we did, still four months post-release hasn’t sold close to what we anticipated. This will be a long read, so buckle up! (para. 4; emphasis ours)

Game Developer is careful to state that the content of post-mortems are those of the developers, meaning it reviews content but doesn’t take ownership of it (see Casen, 2018, for example). In a study of 55 post-mortems on Game Developer, Politowski et. al (2018) took issue with this editorial approach, finding that many post-mortems do not articulate the game development process well. “Given its free structure, authors used to write about a wide range of subjects including game design, game balancing, gameplay and many others details that do not add to development process details” (p. 105). As writing scholars, we take an exception to this view on process. Recent studies of composing processes and practices (Micciche, 2017; Pigg, 2020; Rule, 2018; Takiyoshi, 2018) have argued that we can’t ignore the material and social dynamics that impinge on planning, drafting, and revising arguments; they are very much parts of the writing process. The free structure of post-mortem articles leaves it up to game developers to narrate and reflect on the parts and entities of an entire composing process they care about most. The same is true for Kairos’ “Inventio” section of articles, which often highlight, in unique, media-rich ways, vibrant moments of a digital media project—perhaps an argument with a publisher, a video that made the author cry, or a stubborn line of code (see VanKooten, 2016; Helms, 2018).

2.3 Situating post-mortems in studies of developers and the affective

Many games studies in writing studies and technical communication have focused on the pedagogical potential of games as well as student experiences playing with them (for recent examples, see Arduini, 2018; Alexander, 2017; Quijano, 2020; Strømman, 2021; Jiang, 2020; Pâquet, 2020), thereby shaping course designs and notions of play in composition classrooms. Moving away from the classroom, our study of post-mortem articles further amplifies arguments for paying attention to writing and technical communication that shapes game development, for better or worse. While game developers have yet to be discussed extensively in Computers and Composition, studies of this research population have shown promise in edited collections and field journals such as Technical Communication Quarterly and Communication Design Quarterly. Rudy McDaniel and Alice Daer’s (2016) study of an independent game company’s technical communication practices (e.g., tracking a game’s localization text via Microsoft Excel) indeed foregrounded developer voices and envisioned its use for teachers and practitioners. As they write, “Many of these cutting-edge technical communication practices used by video game developers in their work are broadly useful, even outside the field of game development, for working with complex data sources and interactive multimedia texts” (p. 157). Numerous studies in writing and technical communication have followed McDaniel and Daer’s trajectory, taking the inner workings of game development seriously (Karabinus & Atherton, 2019; Colby & Shultz Colby, 2019; Thominet, 2021). As Luke Thominet (2018) contends in his study of the game developers who practice open development with public audiences, “Developers become content creators and communicators. They sell players on the opportunity to become involved in a game’s creation, to learn about game development, and to talk with developers they appreciate” (p. 78). Though temporally different from open-development posts and streams, post-mortem articles are similar in content to open-development communication channels, revealing what goes on behind the scenes for developers.

Our study also intervenes in arguments for highlighting the vibrancy of materials and feelings that shape composing processes, mainly because our study draws on the voices of game developers. Recent rhetoric and game studies have also illuminated the significance of materiality through lenses of embodiment and affect theories (Holmes, 2018; Hawreliak, 2019; Jiang, 2020). As Jiang (2020) observed in a study of gamer-students who took on random character avatars in the game Fortnite, “Apart from exposing players to the bodies they are familiar with, the aleatory procedure simultaneously creates an entry point for players to deterritorialize feelings and assumptions about other, marginalized bodies” (p. 9). Jiang’s study is relevant to Aubrey Anable’s (2018) questions and readings of the affective dimensions of modern games, such as Diner Dash and Kentucky Route Zero. To adapt Anable’s research question: “how might [rhetoric and writing] studies account for the embodied and discursive ways affect circulates through [game production]?” (p. 2). In rhetoric and writing studies, Hawreliak, Holmes, Jiang and others have accounted for such ways by analyzing games and players, as well as teachers who teach writing with games. In this expansive area of writing and games research concerned with materiality and affect, however, the voices of game developers—let alone the post-mortem article—are not as prominent. Adding another layer to our field’s body of research on game developers and gameplay, then, post-mortems spotlight the affectively rich practices of those who develop the games that get taken up by gameful and gamified course designs (see Caravella, 2021). Our contribution aims to shift writing fields’ collective attention to the post-mortem article. Game Developer ’s post-mortem series is a repository of reflective writing on processes that we might model and draw upon more extensively in research and teaching.