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# The Backrooms Were Always About Games [Podcast]
- URL: https://www.killscreen.com/podcast/the-backrooms-were-always-about-games-podcast/
- Published: 2026-06-13T01:09:44.000Z
- Updated: 2026-06-13T01:09:44.000Z
- Description: Plus getting lost in Goa and a blob of petroleum animates
- Author: Jamin Warren
- Tags: Podcast, Horror, The Backrooms, interactive art, Leo Castaneda, Peter Nichols, Mitchell Chan, Camoflux, Adrian MM Abela, Venice Biennale, Damjan Jovanovic, Catmilk, Kalp Studios

*Something a little different! We're focusing on the newsletter now and in a conversational way!*  
  
This week, I sat down with Danny Snelson, a writer and professor at UCLA who spends his days thinking about the eerie. We start with a strange admission from this year's Venice Biennale, where the Chinese pavilion exhibited a video game you weren't allowed to play, and use it to chase a bigger idea: that games have quietly become a shared grammar, and once you notice it, you can't stop seeing where it has leaked. Into a sculptor's hooded figures pulled from *DOOM* and recast as the accused at the Salem witch trials. Into a painter who walks you inside his own canvases. Into a flesh-pink office shooter, and into the Backrooms, that empty image of damp carpet and fluorescent hum that turns out to be one of the clearest things our culture has made about infinity after the exhaustion of grandeur. We get into all of it, plus an auto-rickshaw in Goa in 1992, and whether a game is allowed to refuse to be fun.   
*References*

- [Mitchell Chan](https://chan.gallery/?ref=killscreen.com)'s talk at [DEMO](https://www.youtube.com/live/FVQ96vAoS30?si=EKc0B5w5V7GEnUTy&t=2546&ref=killscreen.com)
- [Peter Nichols](https://www.elfsend.com/?ref=killscreen.com)' [*Crude Oil*](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1653020/Crude%5FOil/?ref=killscreen.com)
- [My interview with Leo Castañeda](https://www.killscreen.com/leo-castaneda/) / Talk at [DEMO](https://www.youtube.com/live/6ayBEn-LsDU?si=zVfaVfUTbAcS-WG3&t=3461&ref=killscreen.com)
  - [Camoflux](https://store.steampowered.com/app/897980/Camoflux%5FLevels%5F%5FBosses/?ref=killscreen.com)
- [Adrian MM Abela](https://adrianabela.com/work/2023-declaration-of-dependence-drafts-and-depictions/?ref=killscreen.com)
  - [False.Work Maltese Pavillion](https://www.false.work/declaration-of-dependence?ref=killscreen.com)
- Chinese Pavillion's [Black Myth: Wukong](https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/6787484/dream-stream?ref=killscreen.com)
- Damjan Jovanovic's essay on [The Backrooms](https://worldmakingproject.substack.com/p/the-collision-mesh-of-the-real)
- My feature on Catmilk
  - [Catmilk](https://milksaucer.com/?ref=killscreen.com)
  - [Gossamer Matrix](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2002840/Gossamer%5FMatrix/?ref=killscreen.com)
- [Kalp Studio's Rahi](https://kalpstudio.co/?ref=killscreen.com)