Babycastles affiliate Colin ‘scallopedlion‘ Snyder’s just launched a new Kickstarter campaign to complete ‘What’s in a Game?’, a video mini-series investigating “the complex evolution of videogames over time” that’s already proving to be worth a deeper look.

The series, originally meant to be a companion to another publication that subsequently fell through, will consist of 11 episodes looking at aspects of game culture including why we play, games as social activity, competition and women in games, and narratives & rituals of players, and will include appearances by a number of familiar faces including Double Fine’s Tim Schafer & Johann Sebastian Joust creator Doug Wilson, both of whom you can see in the trailer above.

Of particular note are a few of the limited rewards which are being snapped up quite quickly: the iPad version of Matt Parker’s body-posing party game Recurse, and the still-unreleased Miracle Adventures in 2113, the faux-Famicom-sequel shooting game above, from Noah Sasso, creator of competitive sports-brawler BaraBariBall.

All backers will also receive early beta access to Gameifesto, an indie-focused match-making site meant to better enable artists, coders & musicians to find and collaborate with each other on new games.

Find more info on the series & see Snyder’s full presentation via its Kickstarter page.