Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This is a book that tries to be four different things and, surprisingly, manages to succeed at all of them. Bart Motes took it as a series of essays to be read for enjoyment and insight into the experience and meaning of video games. I agree with what he wrote from that perspective.
My interest is broader and shallower. I am interested in games and play in general, and also in the technology used to create deeply interactive computer software. I only dabble at games at low difficulty levels and short attention span, more to satisfy curiosity than for enjoyment. I have never been stirred by in-game events, it's all pixels to me. Nevertheless, I see their great power, and respect that they are an important part of our evolving culture. You don't understand the world today unless you have at least nodding acquaintance with these games, and this book offers considerably more than a nodding acquaintance. The less you know about video games, the more you need this book.
The ostensible topic of the book is critical analysis of video games. It is an exploration, not a conclusion, and as such it is tentative and dialectical at many points, but can suddenly switch to positive certainty, backed by the authority of the native speaker. I disagree with Bart Motes that the author is apologetic, he is a rigorous advocate for both the games and traditional standards of criticism. The two often conflict, and the book makes only suggestions about potential resolutions. You won't find the answer here, but you will find the question poked hard from a lot of non-obvious angles.
Finally this book is a fascinating piece of autobiographical fiction. I don't mean that I disbelieve the personal anecdotes, only that they are clearly chosen for dramatic effect rather than illumination of the author's personality or career. I was strongly reminded of one of my favorite works, A Drifting Life. The parallel is not obvious, as Yoshihiro Tatsumi wrote his explanation of what fascinated him with manga and how it fit into the world as a whole after a 60-year career of extraordinary achievement in what is now universally acknowledged as a serious art form. At one third the age, with zero achievement in creating video games, which are still more often classified as silly or dangerous commercial toys for kids and slackers than culturally important art; Bissell is no grandmaster. But the Bissell-point-of-view that narrates this book gripped me in the same way that the young Tatsumi did. Tatsumi draws a cherry blossom to describe how he felt trashing his university entrance exams, and goes brilliantly outside panel to evoke the facial expression of the older waitress who tries to seduce the drunk and inexperienced teenager. Bissell uses his exceptional writing talents to make running a virtual semi truck over a helpless virtual derelict or diving into a virtual pool in a desperate search for a virtual sword (inadvertently virtually dropped) convey both personal and general meaning. I remain more impressed by the former than the latter, but Bissell is young yet. There are also echoes of the disruptive cultural analysis of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
I won't argue with anyone who gives four stars from any of the individual perspectives, but I think it takes a five-star book to do this many things, this well.
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