About this site

U Play is a writing site about independent play, games and the creative culture that grows around them. It publishes three kinds of piece and nothing else.

Essays

Arguments about how games work: what a design is doing, why a pattern recurs, what a word like difficulty is actually covering. These are opinion pieces and they say so, but they try to earn the opinion by describing the machinery first.

Method notes

Practical writing for people making things: how to run a paper prototype, how to test with someone who has never seen your game, how to scope a project you can finish in a weekend. These are written as procedures, so they can be followed rather than admired.

Notes on play itself

Play is older and wider than the games industry, and some of the most useful evidence about design comes from playgrounds, toys and the house rules people invent at their own tables. Those pieces sit here too.

How the site is organised

The front page carries the newest piece at full size followed by everything else in date order. The archive lists every piece by month. The tags page groups them by subject, and the same tags appear under each title. There is no other navigation, which is deliberate.

Pieces are written for this site and are signed with its name rather than a byline. Nothing here is sponsored, and no product, publisher or studio is reviewed on commission.