Lyric Games: Genealogy of an Online "Physical Games" Scene

"Lyric Games" examines a scene of highly personal, independently published role-playing games, including tabletop, live-action, and freeform works, sold under the "physical games" category on the itch.io platform. The paper argues that these games, often created by queer and marginalized designers during online game jams and priced at roughly $5 to $20, are best understood as "incitements" rather than polished products, prioritizing reading as play, difficult themes, ritual, and non-traditional narrative. The scene is presented as global, with many creators based in Southeast Asia, the West Coast of the United States, and Australia, and the term itself is traced to designer John K. Harness in 2019.

The central thesis is that lyric games are not an isolated innovation but continue a lineage of artistic and literary modernism, the "serious" role-playing tradition, game jam culture, and the platformization of contingent media. The author situates the movement within modernist experimentation, linking Fluxus-era game poems by Yoko Ono to William S. Burroughs-inspired role-playing work by Robin D. Laws and Jonathan Tweet's Over the Edge, and then tracing more direct inheritances through Dream Askew // Dream Apart and Apocalypse World. Specific works examined include Maria Mison's Forgetting Your Touch and Jay Dragon's Sleepaway.

The paper's methodology is primarily qualitative and historical, relying on close readings of exemplar games, the creators' own published commentary and social media statements, and existing scholarship on game culture and modernism. It does not present survey data, sample sizes, or quantitative findings. Its platform-related claims are illustrated by anecdotal indicators, such as the 177 entries received for the 2019 "Emotional Mecha Jam" on itch.io, and by the observation that Patreon and itch.io microtransactions have helped sustain the movement financially outside mainstream publishing.