Books we're reading this month

Trigger Happy: Videogames and the entertainment revolution, by Steven Poole (Arcade Publishing, 2000)

Looking at videogames through Poole's writing is like examining a speck of dust through an electron microscope: while both might seem worthless at first glance, they are revealed as fascinating and complex when the right perspective is applied. Curious and thoughtful, Poole ponders the big questions for the new art: why have videogames become so popular, what effect do they have on society, and what goals should their designers pursue.

In his answers, Poole explains why videogames will always fail to achieve the realism that currently obsesses most designers and why the dream of so-called "interactive fiction" will never come true. In other chapters, he explores the semiotics, ethics, and aesthetics of videogames, invoking prominent linguists, philosophers, and artists in the process. If there's any flaw in the book, it's that Poole falls into the trap of trying to define the qualities of an entire art form based on only a few examples. Perhaps the sign of videogames' maturation is that their variety now defies easy definition. Any future endeavours to describe the form, however, will rely on Trigger Happy as required reading.

- Chris LaVigne <clavigne@republic-news.org>

Joystick Nation: How videogames ate our quarters, won our hearts, and rewired our minds, by JC Herz (Little, Brown and Company, 1997)

Less a series of essays on videogames than a tragic glimpse into the mind of jaded hipsterdom, Herz' anthology of game-related musings reveals more about her own cynical postmodern sensibilities than the topic at hand. Why she wrote a book on this subject is unclear as she seems to loathe everyone associated with videogames. From yuppie computer buyers to gung-ho military veterans playing tank simulations, sleazy game industry executives to geeky role-playing gamers, Herz treats everyone with an "I'm-hipper-than-thou" attitude. Her tendency to deconstruct and debase everything only points to the lack of substance that might be found in her own soul.

Besides her condescending tone, Herz' theories on the videogame phenomenon don't deserve to be read by anyone outside of a first-year sociology class, loaded as they are with rampant overgeneralizations and sweeping analogies that are trite and insipid. She asserts "facts" such as: women like Tetris because it appeals to their predisposition to make things tidy. I've read Freudians who make more sense.

- Chris LaVigne <clavigne@republic-news.org>

High Score!: The illustrated history of electronic games (2nd edition), by Rusel Demaria and Johnny I Wilson (McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2004)

Like too many videogames, High Score! relies on a superb visual presentation to distract gamers from its lack of actual content. Demaria and Wilson are simply poor historians. Writing as industry insiders, they give games by their friends and colleagues an unfair prominence over other games worthy of the same level of attention. The book is also heavily biased towards computer games over console games. The Nintendo Entertainment System, which single-handedly revived the home videogame industry in the late 1980s, is given only seven of the book's 392 pages.

High Score! ultimately ends up reading like an extended press release for the videogame industry. Demaria and Wilson's comments for each game they discuss are just variations on "Oh man, we remember this game. It was great!" It gets pretty tedious.

As a subtext, however, the book reveals interesting historical details, such as the extent to which game designers blatantly steal each other's ideas. It also charts the industry's movement from a hobby, where lone amateur designers could create bestselling games, to a major business, where studios of hundreds create games with million-dollar budgets. High Score! is not essential reading, but the pictures are pretty.

- Chris LaVigne <clavigne@republic-news.org>