Making This Project:
Our Post-Mortem and References

Reflecting our findings and calls for more post-mortems in writing studies, this section begins with two short videos discussing what went right and what went wrong with this research project prior to our webtext submission to the editors and reviewers. Following up on the review process, it also features a brief postscript video detailing our webtext revisions completed in early 2022. Videos reveal the affectively rich, rhetorical practices of this project, and we hope they prove useful for future collaborators working on webtexts and/or doing games research.

What Went Right

In this video, we discuss what went right with our project, such as collecting post-mortems on Game Developer’s website, using Google Drive and Zoom to work remotely, and finding a manageable coding scheme for the project.

Rich Shivener:
Hey everyone, I'm Rich Shivener.

(Lo-fi hip music begins.)

Jessica Da Silva:
And I'm Jessica Oliveira da Silva.

Rich Shivener:
Excellent. And we are here to talk about what went right with our webtext and the research behind it.

(Graphic: "What Went Right")

So just like the developers that we've been studying for this article, we wanted to share some of our insights about this project, so that fellow researchers, teachers, any game studies, and/or writing studies scholars have a better sense of how things went. So let's talk about what we thought went right. We can go right into it. First, we thought what went right was collecting all of the post-mortems.

(Text: "Collecting Post-Mortems")

That's an easy one.

(B-roll: A screen recording of the pages of Gamasutra, now called Game Developer)

There's just an incredible amount of these post-mortems out there through Gamasutra that you can download as PDFs, collect, store with ease...they're all there. It's public information. And so when we started this project, one thing we did is we just started amassing them pretty quickly. And that was mainly one of your first tasks, right, Jess, for this project?

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
Yeah, it was, yeah, one of my first tasks and it was honestly really easy to find on the website. There were some hiccups, where it was titled a little bit differently than with the content actually was. But you could pretty much guarantee if there was post-mortem in the title, it was a post-mortem. And they all have the dates associated right next to it. So super easy to collect and decipher which ones were good and which ones we could ignore.

Rich Shivener:
Absolutely. And to store all of that.

(Text: "Organizing Data")

This is the second thing that went right for us ... I thought was using Google Docs, Sheets, using Zoom.

(B-roll: A screen recording of Google Drive files that read "Postmortem" and "Coding Template")

All these sort of things we try to use while managing the data amid the pandemic--that was the biggest part. And so you were putting all the post-mortems on Google Drive, then we could analyze them from there, annotate them leave notes, and then all of our coding sheets were located either on Docs or sheets for the most part. And this is particularly important once we went fully online at York in March 2020. You and I started in person for about two months in the project and then transitioned, and pretty much from March until August worked entirely remotely.

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
Yeah, it was a pretty smooth transition, I think, because we were using Google Drive and Docs and things that were just relatively easy to collaborate on one document with from, you know, remote places.

Rich Shivener:
Yeah. And also, while we were working on all the data, in terms of online things, you were using Voyant.org for trying to do some data visualizations and things like that, mainly just to make sense of the data, not so much to represent it on the page. But yeah, do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
(B-roll: A screen recording of a Google Sheet that reads "Research Task" and a page from Voyant.org)

Yeah, so Voyant is a really easy to use, you kind of just plug in any amount of words that you have. And it really just provided us like a different way of seeing all of the information because we had a huge amount of post-mortems at one point and being able to see them represented in different graphs, different diagrams and things like that. It just offered us a new perspective. And Voyant also gives you the opportunity to play around with different like bubble graphs, and things like that. And you can also download it right from the website. So it's really great.

Rich Shivener:
Yeah, I mean, we're talking about 1000s of passages and seemed like we were coding and putting together you know, more than 100, post-mortems that we started with sounds a lot of information that we can quickly look at the sea patterns in the data. One thing we'll talk about in the what went wrong section is what we did with all of that data at first, while we're recording it, eventually, we found a pretty manageable coding scheme.

(Text: Coding scheme)

we decided that we were only going to look at articles that had the passages what went right and what went wrong. So as we talked about in the methodology, that gave us some, you know, clear boundaries, for coding, we could easily identify maybe what was more positive and what was more negative.

(B-roll: Screen recording that depicts a split-screen research process. On the left is an text article; on the right is a Google Sheet used for coding the information.)

I felt like once we got there, things started flying, for the most part. You know, personally for me, just going through, I could get through, you know, dozens of the articles in an hour or so because I could just drill down on those sections for the most part. Was that your experience, Jess?

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
Yeah, for sure. Just like the time management aspect of it was super easy to read through them all. But it was also a lot easier to see connections and patterns in. For example, we decided that you were mostly looking at what went right in that section. And then I was mostly looking at the what went wrong section. And it was very easy for us to come to our meetings and you would say oh, "I think that a lot of people find this part positive and I would say it's funny because people are saying this thing is negative" in the negative section. So yeah, it was just really easy to understand the information that way as well.

Rich Shivener:
Absolutely. Yeah. The final thing we want to mention, as in terms of what went right, is the Dean's Award for Research Excellence (DARE) that was given to undergraduate students at York.

(Text: Coding scheme)

It's very hard for students to find these research or opportunities, or let alone get paid a decent wage, to actually do research as an undergraduate. And usually, we think of those being reserved for graduate students and for professors and so forth. But, you know, this whole program was really nice. In terms of the structure that they set up for researchers and for students, I found the way they invited us to work as mentors rather than us sort of coming up with the funding that was already in place...that made that kind of flow a little easier, on my part, knowing that you're getting the support from the university, not just from, you know, another grant that I've proposed. Nothing wrong with that latter part, but I just felt like it was a unique thing I haven't seen since I've started as a faculty. But yeah, what was your experience, Jess?

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
Yeah, well, the DARE experience for me, it was really great, because obviously, I've written academic essays before in classes and things like that. But I've never gotten a chance to use like critical thinking in a way that, you know, I had to use for this published article. And also, in my other job experience, being a student, a lot of it is retail and customer service, and a lot of front facing things.

(B-roll: Footage of people at a shopping mall.)

(B-roll: A hand sketching on paper with pencil.)

Whereas in this research program, I was able to come up with my own ideas of the text we're looking at, and bring them to you. And then we can kind of bounce ideas off each other. And just having that experience was really fulfilling to be able to say, like, yeah, I'm using critical thinking skills, not only to get paid, but also to produce something.

Rich Shivener:
I mean, even in the data we looked at, we saw that developers spoke a lot about publisher supports, right having the funding to actually start the project, rather than coming up with their own funding models or paying out of pocket. And so in a way, the DARE program was that like publisher support, if we could make that parallel to the game development.

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
I'd say so.

What Went Wrong

In this video, we discuss what went wrong with our project, including our first coding pass, working with myriad documents via Google Drive, and collaborating remotely on our analyses.

Rich Shivener:
Hi again, this is Rich Shivener.

[Lo-fi hip music begins.]

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
And I'm Jessica Oliveira da Silva.

Rich Shivener:
All right, and we're talking about all that went wrong with our webtext and the research.

(Text: What Went Wrong)

And I feel like, for me, as a researcher, it's really important to talk about some of these failures or challenges or errors, because, you know, it kind of shows that you're human, like, you're gonna have these sort of issues when you're working on research. It's not clean, oftentimes, you know, you have a lot of second guessing, some experimentation, and so forth. Even if you feel like you have a very solid coding scheme or structure, there are going to be things that change whether it's where you're doing the research, or the ideas, you have that surface as you're doing more readings, so on and so forth.

(Text: "Codings Scheme")

So the first thing I think we thought went wrong was the actual coding we did at the start—because as we mentioned, in the right video, we collected more than 100, post-mortems to begin with. And then we had to figure out how to sort of come up with criteria that would allow us to narrow that data down. The first cutting pass, if I recall, correctly, Jess, we were just reading them encoding every passage, we thought that signaled a practice and emotion. If there were any emotional word, we were going to code it no matter if it was at the first sentence, or the last sentence.

(B-roll: Screen recording of our spreadsheets in Google Drive and the articles we analyzed on Gamasutra, now called Game Developer.)

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
And that also made it complicated because it was like, sometimes in one sentence, they'll be like, "it was great that this went wrong." And then it's like, how do I code this part? And that section wouldn't even be in a "what went right" or "what went wrong" passage. It would just be in the introduction.

Rich Shivener:
And yeah, they would negate what they were saying, or something like that, or one article would be a top 10 list, and the other would be, you know, a non or sort of just a, maybe five pages, or 10 pages of reflections without headings, and so forth, you know.

(B-roll: Another screen recording of the articles we analyzed on Gamasutra, now called Game Developer.)

And so I mean, it's really cool to see so many different people contributing to this section, and Gamasutra. But we felt like we needed just a little more control. And so again, like, as we mentioned in the right video, having that scheme of what went right, what went wrong, and allowed us to narrow it down. But at first, it was exciting to go through all of that. And we've, I mean, personally, I learned a lot of how game development more than I knew. But it just got too unmanageable later on. Yeah, sure. We also along with like working with Google Drive, and Google Docs, we just had so many documents working with like, we would easily downloaded.

(Text: "Lots of documents".)

And mainly, you know, you had downloaded all this postmortems. But we had several different coding sheets we were working with, we had tabs within tabs with, you know, Google Sheets, because we were just trying to make sense of the data. Right? And it was, it was just a little difficult. What are your thoughts on that?

(B-roll: Another screen recording of our spreadsheets.)

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
It was a lot. It was, I don't want to use the word daunting, because I did understand what every sheet was for. But there was a point where we just kept adding sheets, and there was no clear sign of when we could delete a sheet or remove a sheet. For example, sometimes I would make a new sheet just to testo a way of looking at the information. And then once I got something from that, I would, you know, use what I liked from it, but then I didn't know if I should remove it, because maybe that preliminary stage will be helpful to push something else forward. So yeah, it was just hard to know when to remove a sheet or when to add a sheet when it's acceptable to view these things.

Rich Shivener:
Absolutely. Also, another thing that went wrong was working at a distance, because we started this project in person.

(Text: "Working at a distance".)

So it's like winter, 2020, January, we started doing some of the collection of the post mortems. And then I think maybe maybe we had one meeting where we looked at it together in person, but then we were moved online by March 2020. So basically, from March to August, we've been working at a distance, having to share screens on zoom, and so forth. And sometimes the immediacy of the project was lacking, I think, for that reason. And you have some more experience with that. I think that we were talking about a little earlier, off the call that was challenging for you as a as a student researcher especially.

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
Yeah, it was, when we were in person, it was really easy for me to come to your office and ask you any questions, especially because the lab was working out was just down the hall.

(B-roll: Person walking down a hall.)

Whereas when we all moved online, there were some things specifically with transcriptions or with the data large where I would have some questions and then I would think, okay, So now I need to type out this question in an email form. am I wasting my time? Am I wasting Rich's time? Maybe I'll just save it for a meeting.

(B-roll: Jess flipping through her notebook.)

So then I just have a notebook full of these questions that turns out by the time we get to the meeting, I figured that it's not important anymore, because it happened a week ago, and we're moving forward anyways. And then that just isn't very conductive with being a student and trying to learn some things, because we ended up happening was we ended up having to go backwards. And then fixing a couple things that could have easily just been fixed in the moment if you had a office down the hall from me.

Rich Shivener:

(B-roll: Jess scrolling through her files.)

Yeah, before you had to store everything, save it, send it on, you know, as a large file on Google Drive, probably on your own drive and not one that's within the institution or something like that. Or to share your computer sound or something like that. These kind of issues you can have sometimes with Zoom. You know, we, we couldn't just show up at the office and quickly watch it with headphones and move on, you know, so it's definitely more temporally intense, I'd say, in my experience, and some of the collaborations I've done in the past. In the department specifically. Oh, is there anything else we should mention?

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
I think we're good.

Rich Shivener:
All right.

Postscript: Revising Our Webtext

In this video, we detail our revisions practices related to the writing and design of the final webtext.

Rich Shivener:
Hey, everyone, it's Rich Shivener. I'm an assistant professor of writing at York University.

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
Hey, I am Jessica Oliveira Da Silva. I am an undergraduate in humanities and professional writing.

Rich Shivener:
Yay! All right. So Jess, this is several months after we initially submitted this webtext, and we're back. Still haven't met in person. You know, in two plus years, we've been doing this all remotely. So you know, we should give ourselves a little pat on the back. I think like, I mean, I'm, I'm certainly happy with the whole experience. But this last video, it's kind of a postscript. We wanted to talk about some of the changes we made to the webtext. Just so it could be useful in terms of, you know, what the revision process is really like. So yeah, let's go ahead and get into it. Just sharing the screen here. So we submitted a letter back to the editor, and the reviewers who were asking for a number of changes, mostly on the textual side. So that meant a couple things. Really, they were asking for a bit more theory––affect theory and so forth and some kind of citations we could bring into the mix. So we changed that in the webtext itself, [and] a little more of a revised literature review to talk about

Rich Shivener:
for game developer research, excuse me, in connection to Compuers and Composition, and what the intervention is and how it might relate to technical communication as well. And a couple of new tables. I thought this was interesting in terms of the design, something they looked for, in terms of the methodology and results ... using more like word clouds and things like that, to tell the story. Because, I mean, let's face it, we were dealing with a lot of data for this project. And so we had to make it relatable in some different ways. And the reviewers in particular and the editors Steve and Rebekah had some good suggestions for changing these introductions to be more concise tables and having two to three takeaways, more than a lot of different sort of discussions that were happening in the original draft. And if you're wondering what the the kind of differences looked like, you know, I particularly was in charge of changing a lot of the textual stuff. And what I failed to do initially, when I had this was take everything I had revised in a webtext and just put the raw code onto Google Docs and change it. So I had to go through each time and add little paragraph tags to each piece, and make sure that lined up back to the actual webtext that we read later submitted. So that was a little challenging, just because, you know, you're trying to make sure that the code you're using, like lines up with the Google Doc is drafting. And, yes, sometimes you have to go through it multiple times, to sort of check. But I think for the most part, the textual revisions were very well, I think, done in response to these really nice suggestions that the editors and reviewers gave. So we were happy to to make those. And then I think the impact on it was ... when it came to your time, Jess, you had to do revisions to the videos, which we waited to do until the near the end of the project, like as I said to the reviewers, or the editors, "it's better for us to wait until you have approved these changes and then have Jess make the changes so that we don't have to go through it multiple times. And that's another challenge is working with video production and the sort of webtexts like this--they're all hanging together, but they have to tell the same stories. So I didn't want you to make changes in the delay. They felt like it was ready to go. But yeah, I mean, recently, we're about to submit this back and and things like that, you know, it's been accepted. You've made changes, do you want to tell us a bit about some of the things you changed along the way?

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
Sure. So in terms of videos, there wasn't a lot of feedback given about the design of the video or how it looked or how it was paced or anything. So in that sense, I didn't really change much of that. I didn't want to change it and have them [say] "actually we like the original better." So I just kind of had to re-record what we talked about because some of the stuff that we had in the original version of the video wasn't relevant by the end of the revision process, of course. I also changed the background music because I feel like the first background music I used I wasn't really into it anymore. I didn't think it was very suited, so I changed it to a little bit more of a like it reminds me of what I would hear in a university or n a classroom. It sounds a little bit more educational. But in terms of changing the actual visuals, I had to change a little bit of that, but a lot of it just came down to adjusting how long the b-roll around for , maybe changing some texts that was on screen, changing some icons. Nothing too major, at least on the video side of things.

Rich Shivener:
Yeah, and you were saying a little earlier, before we started filming this, that the conclusion video was probably the most work to change because, according to reviewers, they wanted to see some more takeaways in terms of pedagogy, right? They want to know, how does this apply to the classroom? Because we kind of glossed over that pretty quickly or started talking about more or less about COVID stuff, they said, you know, try to bring it back to digital writing and technical communication classrooms. So I think ... I remember when I was changing the table to give to you, that was a pretty big change. And we can kind of see that in this video; a lot of new footage, right?

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
Yeah, that our original conclusion video was implications, and it was a lot more based on like, what this means in terms of education and what it means in terms of, like you said, COVID and working remotely and things like that. But in the revision process, it was more narrowed to what it means for pedagogy, what it could mean for specific kind of assignments and students and things like that. And it was actually considerably shorter than the original one. When I first realized it was gonna be shorter, I thought it would be the easiest video to edit, because it's just like removing things. But then it actually turned out to be the hardest, because the actual idea of the video, or the idea of the audio, at least the script changed vastly a lot more than the other videos at least.

Rich Shivener:
Yeah, yeah. You're right. And it's, it's pretty short. Because they said, you know, get rid of the thing about like, just generally like remote work. And so it was just focused on like, this being a useful model, or genre to use and writing studies. And then this kind of quick glance about what I do in my own classroom, which I think you've even had some experience with in 4001 [Digital Authoring Practicum]. Or a kind of post mortem, I know. You've written some reflections in classes with me, but I think we did a post-mortem. I can't quite remember at this point.

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
I think we did like a video post-mortem too. I think it was just a video log.

Rich Shivener:
Yes, in the class not listed on here, right. So and then my view for making a little shorter was that it was kind of the, the jumping off point to what we might think of as really just the second conclusion, but it's a little more substantial, which is about this kind of post- mortem of making the project. So okay, we can't give you the pedagogical application in full. But if you want to see it, here's what it looks like. And here's the post-mortem that we're doing. So yeah, and I wanted to keep the original [video] logs that we filed, just because I think those are interesting. And this will be like the final piece that we've we have a bit all but yeah, overall, I'm pleased with how it came together. You know, using a HTML5 Creative Commons template was really useful for this project. And then having your short videos posted here were really helpful. And the editors really liked those as well. So yeah, happy to get those and anything else you want to say on your end?

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
No, I'm just excited for, for this to be published. It's been a long time working on it. I think we started working on this ... I started helping you collect contact information before the pandemic even happened. And now it's finally happening, you know, it's finally being published.

Rich Shivener:
That's right. Yeah, we worked on data a lot in summer 2020. And then what you talked about in the previous videos, and then sent the [proposal] draft in, I think, in fall 2020. It said, "This is what we're gonna do," and then it got approved. And then we kind of went off did our own things for a little bit, you know, they came back to it again, you know, later on when I was able to bring you back on to the project. And then, yeah, did a couple of different revisions. So you've got to see the full process of an academic publication. It's, it's long, it's very long.

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
It's long and it's messy, but it's, it's cool to see it all come together into a focused thesis, you know, a focused idea.

Rich Shivener:
Exactly. Well, folks, thanks again. We'll go ahead and sign off here. And yeah, grateful to the editors and reviewers. And thanks for watching all the videos and enjoy the webtext. Bye.

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva:
Bye.

References

Ahmed, Sara. (2005).The cultural politics of emotion. Routledge.

Alexander, Kara Poe, & Williams, Danielle M. (2015). DMAC after dark: Toward a theory of distributed invention. Computers and Composition, 36, 32-43.

Alexander, Phill. (2017). KNOWing how to play: Gamer knowledges and knowledge acquisition. Computers and Composition, 44, 1-12.

Anable, Aubrey. (2018). Playing with feelings: Video games and affect. U of Minnesota Press.

Arduini, Tina. (2018). Cyborg gamers: Exploring the effects of digital gaming on multimodal composition. Computers and Composition, 48, 89-102.

Ball, Cheryl E. (2021). Logging on. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 25(2). Retrieved from http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/21.1/inventio/vankooten/index.html

Balm, Michael, Bouman, Bobby, de Meza, Jimmy, & Kamermans, Jeffrey. (2015, August 31). Small indie reaches for the skies - the making of Heroki. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/
small-indie-reaches-for-the-skies---the-making-of-heroki

Berglund, Mathias. (2020, January 10). TILTit postmortem - or how to not publish a game in todays market. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/
tiltit-postmortem---or-how-to-not-publish-a-game-in-todays-market

Brennan, Teresa. (2004). The transmission of affect . Cornell University Press.

Brush, Thomas. (2017, May 3). Postmortem: Thomas Brush's pinstripe. . Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/audio/postmortem-thomas-brush-s-i-pinstripe-i-

Caravella, Elizabeth. (2021). Procedural ethics and a night in the woods. In Colby R., Johnson M.S., Shultz Colby R. (Eds.), The ethics of playing, researching, and teaching games in the writing classroom (pp. 97-113). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-63311-0_6

Casen, Sara. (2018, September 24). Development post-mortem of project lake ridden. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/development-post-mortem-of-project-lake-ridden

Colby, Richard, & Shultz Colby, Rebekah. (2019). Game design documentation: Four perspectives from independent game studios. Communication Design Quarterly, 7(3), 5-15. https://doi.org/10.1145/3321388.3321389

Colby, Richard; Johnson, Matthew S.S., & Shultz Colby, Rebekah. (2021). Introduction: Playing with the Rules. In The ethics of playing, researching, and teaching games in the writing classroom (pp. 1-20). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Cordingley, Charles. (2016, August 2). Concealed intent development postmortem. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/concealed-intent-development-postmortem

Cote, Amanda C., & Harris, Brandon C. (2021). ‘Weekends became something other people did’: Understanding and intervening in the habitus of video game crunch. Convergence, 27(1), 161-176.

Diaconescu, Cristian. (2017, November 8). Postmortem: The totalitarian puzzle-platformer Black the fall. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/postmortem-the-totalitarian-puzzle-platformer-i-black-the-fall-i-

Digital Rhetoric Collaborative. (n.d.). Webtext of the Month. Retrieved June 15, 2021 from https://www.digitalrhetoriccollaborative.org/conference-reviews/webtext-of-the-month/

Eyman, Douglas, & Ball, Cheryl E. (2014). Composing for digital publication: Rhetoric, design, code. Composition studies, 42(1), 114-117.

Gamasutra (n.d.) Submitting to Gamasutra Blogs. Retrieved June 15, 2021 from https://www.gamasutra.com/static2/blogsubmissions.html

Gibeault, Anne. (2018, November 28). Post Mortem - Destination Primus Vita. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/post-mortem---destination-primus-vita

Gould, Deborah B. (2009).Moving politics: Emotion and ACT UP's fight against AIDS University of Chicago Press.

Gregg, Melissa & Seigworth, Gregory J., (Eds.). (2010). The affect theory reader. Duke University Press.

Hawreliak, Jason (2018). Multimodal semiotics and rhetoric in videogames. Routledge.

Helms, Jason. Making rhizcomics. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 23 (1). Retrieved from https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/23.1/inventio/helms/

Holmes, Steve. (2017).The rhetoric of videogames as embodied practice: procedural habits. Routledge.

Holmevik, Jan Rune. (2012). Inter/vention: Free play in the age of electracy. MIT Press.

Ianetta, Melissa. (2019). From the editor. College English, 81(4), 267-272.

Ingold, Jon & Humfrey, Joseph. (2015, October 14). Postmortem: Inkle's 80 days. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/postmortem-inkle-s-i-80-days-i-

Jiang, Jialei. (2020). “I Never Know What to Expect”: Aleatory identity play in Fortnite and its implications for multimodal composition.Computers and Composition, 55, 102550.

Lockridge, Tim. & Van Ittersum, Derek. Writing workflows: Beyond word processing. University of Michigan Press/Digital Rhetoric Collaborative series. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.11657120

Karabinus, Alisa, & Atherton, Rachel. (2019). Communally designed deception: Participatory technical communication practices in an amateur game design community. Technical Communication, 66(3), 257–271.

Kennedy, Alexis. (2015, March 4). Postmortem: Failbetter games' sunless sea. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/audio/postmortem-failbetter-games-i-sunless-sea-i-

Klose, Jan & Lange, Thorsten. Postmortem: Deck13 interactive's lords of the fallen. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/postmortem-deck13-interactive-s-i-lords-of-the-fallen-i-

Kurtyka, Faith M. (2017). Learning how to feel: Conversion narratives and community membership in first-year composition. Composition Studies, 45(1), 99.

kyburz, bonnie. (2019). Cruel auteurism: Affective digital mediations toward film-composition. The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/writing/cruel/

Lester, John. (2019, October 21). Indie postmortem: sydney hunter and the curse of the mayan (2019). Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/
indie-postmortem-sydney-hunter-and-the-curse-of-the-mayan-2019-

Mahler, Thomas. (2015, May 5). Postmortem: Moon Studios' heartfelt Ori and the Blind Forest. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/audio/postmortem-moon-studios-heartfelt-i-ori-and-the-blind-forest-i-

McCabe, Shaun & Dezern, Chad. (2016, May 16). Ratchet & clank (2016) postmortem. Game Developer. >https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/-i-ratchet-clank-2016-i-postmortem

McDaniel, Rudy, & Daer, Alice. (2016). Developer discourse: Exploring technical communication practices within video game development. Technical Communication Quarterly, 25(3), 155-166.

Massumi, Brian. (2002). Parables for the virtual. Duke University Press.

Micciche, Laura R. (2017). Acknowledging writing partners. WAC Clearinghouse.

Mitsoda, Brian. (2015, March 11). Postmortem: DoubleBear's dead state - controlling scope in an RPG. Game Developer. >https://www.gamedeveloper.com/audio/the-spookiest-postmortem-wayforward-s-i-til-morning-s-light-i-

Morris, Ted. (2015, March 23). Postmortem: Petroglyph's grey goo - getting back to the roots of rts. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/audio/postmortem-petroglyph-s-i-grey-goo-i---getting-back-to-the-roots-of-rts

O'Donnell, Casey. (2014). Developer's dilemma: The secret world of videogame creators. MIT press.

Omiya, Taro. (2015). I hate my popular game: Star Driller Ultra post-mortem. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/i-hate-my-popular-game-star-driller-ultra-post-mortem

Pâquet, Lili. (2020). Gamified identification: Gamification and identification in indigenous Australian interactive documentaries. Computers and Composition, 56, 102571.

Pigg, Stacey. (2020). Transient literacies in action: Composing with the mobile surround. WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado.

Politowski, Cristiano, Fontoura, Lisandra M., Petrillo, Fabio, & Guéhéneuc, Yann-Gaël. (2018). Learning from the past: A process recommendation system for video game projects using postmortems experiences. Information and Software Technology,100, 103-118.

Power, Tom. (2020, April 28). How the coronavirus pandemic has affected game developers. IGN. https://www.ign.com/articles/how-the-coronavirus-pandemic-has-affected-game-developers

Quijano, Johansen. (2020). Video games and writing Instruction: Focus on rhetoric and composition. International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations ,12(1), 1-27.

Rhinehart, Chris & Jackson, Ryan. (2015, August 26). Into the asylum: A postmortem of Human Head Studios' Lost Within. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/into-the-asylum-a-postmortem-of-human-head-studios-i-lost-within-i-

Rice, Jenny. (2005). (Meta) physical graffiti: "Getting up" as affective writing model. JAC, 131-159.

Ridolfo, Jim. (2012). Rhetorical delivery as strategy: Rebuilding the Fifth Canon from Practitioner Stories. Rhetoric Review, 31(2), 117–129.

Rule, Hannah J. (2018). Writing's rooms. College Composition and Communication, 69(3), 402-432.

San Filippo, Aaron & San Filippo, Forest. (2016, February 1). Postmortem: Flippfly's race the sun. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/postmortem-flippfly-s-i-race-the-sun-i-

Sarkar, Kaustavi, & Bahl, Erin Kathleen. (2021). Dancing across media: Composing the Odissi body. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 25(2). Retrieved from http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/25.2/inventio/sarkar-bahl/index.html

Shipka, Jody. (2013). Including, but not limited to, the digital: Composing multimodal texts. In T. Bowen & C. W. Whithaus (Eds.), Multimodal literacies and emerging genres (pp. 73-89). University of Pittsburgh Press.

Shivener, Rich. (2020). Theorizing rhetorical-affective workflows: Behind-the-scenes with webtext authors. College English, 83(1).

Shouse, Eric. (2005). Feeling, emotion, affect. M/C Journal, 8(6). https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.2443

Stewart, Kathleen. (2007). Ordinary affects. Duke University Press.

Strømman, Elin. (2021). Crossover literacies: A study of seventh graders’ multimodal representations in texts about Pokémon Go. Computers and Composition, 59, 102629.

Surt, Romanus. (2019, April 12). Das geisterschiff postmortem. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/production/das-geisterschiff-postmortem

Swink, Steve. (2008). Game feel: A game designer's guide to virtual sensation. CRC Press.

Takayoshi, Pam. (2018). Writing in social worlds: An argument for researching composing processes. College Composition and Communication, 69(4), 550-580.

Thominet, Luke. (2018). How to be open: User experience and technical communication in an emerging game development methodology. Communication Design Quarterly, 6(2), 70-82, https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3282665.3282672

Thominet, Luke. (2021). Open video game development and participatory design. Technical Communication Quarterly, 30(4), 359-374, https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2020.1866679

Thomsen, Michael. (2021, March 24). Why is the games industry so burdened with crunch? It starts with labor laws. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/03/24/crunch-laws/

Tierney, Adam. (2015, August 11). The spookiest postmortem: WayForward's til morning's light. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/audio/the-spookiest-postmortem-wayforward-s-i-til-morning-s-light-i-

VanKooten, Crystal. (2016). Singer, writer: A choric exploration of sound and writing. Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, 21(1). Retrieved from http://kairos.technorhetoric.net/21.1/inventio/vankooten/index.html

Wakeley, Martin. (2015, May 14). Going mobile the right way: A Crack Attack postmortem. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/going-mobile-the-right-way-a-i-crack-attack-i-postmortem

Wardell, Brad. (2016, April 26). Postmortem: Stardock and Oxide games' ashes of the singularity. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/audio/postmortem-stardock-and-oxide-games-i-ashes-of-the-singularity-i-p

Washburn Jr, Michael, Sathiyanarayanan, Pavithra, Nagappan, Meiyappan, Zimmermann, Thomas, & Bird, Christian. (2016, May). What went right and what went wrong: An analysis of 155 postmortems from game development. In Proceedings of the 38th International Conference on Software Engineering Companion, 280-289.

Watson, John. (2016, June 10). Postmortem: Stoic studio's the banner saga 2. Game Developer. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/postmortem-stoic-studio-s-i-the-banner-saga-2-i-

Zimmerman, Josh. (2014). Psyche and eros: Rhetorics of secrecy and disclosure in game developer–fan relations. In J. deWinter & R. Moeller (Eds.), Computer games and technical communication: Critical methods and applications at the intersection (pp. 141-56). Routledge.

A glowing computer keyboard

Literature Review:
Situating Post-Mortems

A study of post-mortem articles would further amplify theories of feelings that limit and drive rhetorical activity.

Hands typing on a computer

What Went Right

A number of developers argued that collaboration, design and testing were critical to their development process.

Blue, green, and purple-coloured sketches of webpages

Concluding Ideas &
for Creators and Teachers

What would happen if writing scholars wrote more post-mortems? What does a post-mortem assignment look like in a writing classroom?

A red, glowing question mark at the end of a hallway

Methodology: Collecting & Analyzing Post-Mortems

We analyzed 60 articles through the lenses of rhetorical and affect theories to understand feelings.

A streak of light running across a road

What Went Wrong

A number of developers argued that management, design and marketing were difficult when working remotely.

A desktop computer with speakers and a coffee mug

Making Our Project: Our Post-Mortem & References

We make our rhetorical moves and affectively rich experiences visible and draw more parallels to game and webtext development.

About the Authors

Rich Shivener is an assistant professor in the Writing Department at York University in Toronto, Canada. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in enculturation, College English, and Technical Communication Quarterly.

Jessica Oliveira Da Silva is an undergraduate student double-majoring in professional writing and humanities at York University. Jessica is two-time recipient of York's Liberal Arts and Professional Studies Dean's Award for Research Excellence (DARE), which supported this research project.